Healthy chocolate cookies

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a naturally healthy person. If I could I'd eat out for every meal of the day. When people struggle to finish a meal I find it bizarre- maybe my parents were just really strict with me finishing meals growing up, but even when I'm full I'll continue to eat. The other day I spent a good ten minutes contemplating what I'd do if I had to give up one of either cheese or chocolate, and I still didn't come to any resolution. You get the gist- I like food. For the past couple of years I've made very conscious efforts to improve my in-built bad eating habits and try to make better choices.
That's where these cookies come in; they don't contain any flour or butter, only have a tiny amount of sugar in, and are legitimately pretty healthy coming in at just over 100 calories each. Earlier today I realised we had an avocado which was about to get to the bad side of ripe but I wasn't in the mood for guacamole. Then I remembered I'd once seen a recipe for avocado cookies online so I went on a search to find it. My recipe is very heavily based on this one with minor adjustments. I'm a bit dubious about all these 'healthy' baking recipes doing the rounds at the moment- if you want a brownie surely you want it to taste like a brownie and not a sweet potato. But please, like me, give these cookies a second chance. The texture definitely isn't like a traditional cookie, more like a cross between a brownie and a cookie, but since when has that ever been a bad thing?

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 small-medium banana
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda/baking soda
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder; I used Bournville
• Chocolate chunks; I used about 70g of dark chocolate chunks
• A little sea salt

1.  Preheat your oven to gas mark 4/175 degrees celsius
2. Mash up your avocado flesh and banana in a bowl
3. Add your sugar and use a handheld electric whisk to mix it all up. In all honesty if you want to be extra virtuous you may not need this extra sugar but I wasn't sure if one banana would be enough to substitute what was meant to be half a cup of sugar.
4. Add the egg, give it another mix
5. Add the bicarb & cocoa powder and mix again
6. Using a wooden spoon, incorporate the chocolate chunks
7. Line a baking tray with baking paper, then spoon the mixture in blobs on to the tray- this recipe made 9 decent sized cookies. They hardly spread out at all so flatten them out a little with the spoon. 
8. Sprinkle a tiny bit of the salt over the tray- I like to do this with most cookies nowadays to make them a little less sickly
9. Bake for anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes. I set my timer for 10 minutes, at which point the cookies looked very shiny but weren't quite done. They'll never properly firm up as a traditional cookie would but keep checking them every couple of minutes until they hold their shape and you can lift it off the baking paper easily

That's it! If you can resist the temptation of a warm cookie with still-melted chocolate then you're a better person than I am, but even when cooled they have a very fudge-y lovely texture. Enjoy!

A postcard from Lisbon

Long time no see. Again. It's becoming a bit ridiculous how lazy I am with this blog, but the thing is that right now my life is in a particularly boring & uninspiring place. That's not to say I'm unhappy; I just don't have much to talk about. 

Luckily, my blog-draught is temporarily over. Last week I, along with 7 others, accompanied my best friend for a few days in Lisbon to celebrate her 22nd birthday. We stayed in a lovely air bnb which I really can't recommend enough- we all appreciated having a full flat to ourselves, especially when waking up feeling a little worse for wear. Until last Thursday I hadn't been out of the country since summer 2013 so you can imagine how excited I was to get to explore somewhere new; though I can't really complain since I've now booked my one-way flight to the other side of the world..but that deserves a post all of it's own! Anyway, I really liked Lisbon and I thought I'd share a few things about it as I don't think it's quite as well-known as some other European destinations.

• Lisbon is incredibly hilly. It's very strange because a lot of the buildings are really tall meaning you can't see what's coming round the corner- the difference between whether you'll be puffing and panting your way up a steep incline or tip-toeing down one. But at least it meant that my thighs didn't suffer too much from being in holiday mode (ie. eating & drinking everything).

• Speaking of indulgence, if you're a lover of pastry you really needn't look any further for your next holiday. 'Pastel de nata' are possibly the best gift that Portugal has given to the world- they're basically egg custard tarts but maybe 20 times better than anything matching that description that I've had on home turf. You'll find them pretty much everywhere in Lisbon, displayed in windows tempting in poor tourists, which is why I averaged 2 a day while I was there. Top tip- the best I tried was from Aloma, part of the Time Out Mercado da Ribeira food hall. Just don't buy them from the airport so you can bring the joy home to your loved ones- from personal experience I can tell you, you'll just be sad with how bad they are.

• The nightlife is varied and starts late. We didn't get a chance to go to any proper clubs and we didn't go to that many bars but those we did go to were all very different. On our first night we wandered towards the Bairro Alto area, which is the main spot for bar-hopping, and found a great little bar full of weird and wonderful things. Then on the second day we spent a lot of time in a bar called Sol e Pesca (translation: Sun & Fish) drinking far too much 'Super Bock' beer. This place is possibly the most fish-themed place I've ever seen; even the menus were displayed on fishing rods. Then, later on that night we ended up watching a drag queen show in a strange club. It seems that in Lisbon the possibilites are endless. Just head out late- locals don't even leave the house until 1am. 

• Linked with the above, if you visit Lisbon you'll likely end up drinking more than you intended to due to the ridiculously low prices. In the first bar I mentioned above, 6 beers and 2 glasses of (actually drinkable) white wine came to a grand total of €7.50. The conversion rate for pound to euro is particularly strong at the moment, but it seemed like most places were similarly priced. 

• As with most places I've visited in Europe, crossing the road is a pretty terrifying experience. Trams and cars share the same road space and pedestrian crossings don't really seem to mean much. That combined with, as I mentioned, never really being able to see round corners means you just have to trust your gut. Oh, and walk fast. 

So maybe we didn't do that much in the way of specific sight-seeing and I'm sure there's plenty more we would've got round to seeing had we had more time, but I think my biggest tip for Lisbon would be to just wander and see what you find. It's a lovely place to walk around, the people really do seem friendly and you never know what you might find hidden at the top of a hill!