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ts a brand New Year. Without sounding cynical and old before my time I’ve always hated the pressure that comes with this shiny promising New Year and the new ‘you’ that will suddenly look and feel better and hopefully get a pay rise? Whilst its a great starting point for change and ambition January 1st is just another day and sadly your problems will follow you here and continue to exist in 2016 so its time to tackle and importantly embrace these!
But it is the perfect time to write down those ambitions, resolutions, plans or even bad habits with a permeant pen and a piece of real paper. I stress this because for me 2015 was filled with Macs, iPhones, technology, contactless payment, more technology, digital memories and even more technology. However with such reliance on this new digital age to hold our memories what happened to the good old paper ones that will no doubt last a lifetime, don’t need an expensive external hard drive for back up, cannot be deleted at the click of a button (I’m talking about you resolutions) and are more personal than ‘Times New Roman’. So one of my resolutions this year is to get back to using the pen and paper for recipe ideas, food styling, menus, ideas and thoughts.
Being a New Year, many use this time to kick start their diets. Whatever the diet purpose i’m sure we’ve all learnt from 2015 that the diet will probably involve less refined sugar? Which can only be a good thing? I personally don’t have a sweet tooth so you’ll rarely catch me gorging on a cake however this hasn’t always been the case. When younger I could devour bowl upon bowl of cereal, manufactured cheesecake or sweet sugary chocolate. It wasn’t until overdosing on chocolate one Christmas that I kicked off Easter lent without it. And in an unprecedented turns of events I didn’t touch the stuff for 7 years (rest assured I do now). But the point I’m getting at is that even 40 days with no sugary chocolate and very little sugar, my body began to crave it less and less to a point where I no longer needed or wanted it at all. Sugar addicts out there are probably rolling their eyes at this well used cliche but you only have to persevere to realise the truth here.
However, this be said, if you are a sugar addict and have planned on changing your diet you may not want to cut sugar out completely if you are that way inclined. Try reducing your intake bit by bit until you no longer feel the need to take sugary tea or to go back for that double helping of dessert. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about moderation within a diet. They should include sweet special delights and rewards but special they should be and for that you need an element of rarity. So in an attempt to help inspire, this little recipe will satisfy any post-dinner sugar cravings. Bitter, warm, earthy black espresso coffee poured lovingly over ice cold velvetly cinnamon ice cream. It is a perfect cleansing low sugar finish to a filling meal providing a satisfying hot and cold feel and to hit the sweet spot kindly and the stomach gently.
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‘ll admit this hardly calls for a recipe and is more an assembly but use it here for inspiration. Ice cream flavour is obviously open to taste. I have used my left over Christmas Cinnamon Ice Cream (found here). You’ll be pleased to know a sweeter ice cream works well here to balance the bitterness of the coffee.
With an ambition for 2016 to buy those ingredients I’ve ‘always wanted to try’ or try that new technique I aim to make my own match latte (authentic green tea for those unaware). Being partial to a matcha latte takeaway treat I am salivating now just thinking of the perfect combination of warm velvety, bitter and creamy green tea poured lovingly over some sweet white chocolate ice cream!
- Ice cream of choice (I have a modest list of homemade (cheat and non-cheat) ice cream recipes in the archive
- Hot dark coffee (espresso is traditional)
- Ball the ice cream into deep bowls
- Pour over a shot of your hot dark freshly brewed coffee
