A Healthy V-Day Treat: Chocolate Covered Cherry Fro-Yo Cups
When a toucan finds that special someone during mating season, he scours the rainforest for the choicest berries, which he brings in his beak to his mate. The two lovebirds will toss a berry back and forth between one another, enjoying the antioxidant-packed projectiles as part of this flirtatious sport. With such healthy and active courtship habits, it’s no wonder the toucan can live twenty adventurous years in the rainforests of Costa Rica!
Unfortunately, humans have much different customs when it comes to the romantic exchange of food. Many women, regardless of their general intention to avoid excessive sugar and calories, expect and demand a heart-shaped box of chocolates from their significant other on Valentine’s Day. It’s not unheard of for couples to “eat light” during the day to “save room” for a binge meal on a special night. And even those for whose lives romance is not currently a part have been known to indulge in unhealthy quantities of comfort foods on February 14th, as if this can make up for the emptiness they feel in their hearts. Which is physiologically impossible, since food travels down the esophagus into the stomach, where it is liquified by acids and then goes… long story short, it never reaches the heart.
Why can’t humans come up with a healthier way to celebrate love on Valentine’s Day? Rather than shoveling buttery pasta and pharmacy candy down one another’s throats to prove our true love, it might be wise to start a new tradition: how about enjoying some homemade, healthy treats made by hand for that special someone with simple ingredients and a pinch of love? With these Chocolate Covered Cherry Fro-Yo Cups, you can do just that this year.
Let your sweetie cook a romantic dinner (with less butter, if you please) and pop these in the freezer ahead of time for dessert. After freezing for just over an hour, they have the texture of soft frozen yogurt; after several hours overnight they harden delightfully. Masquerading in the shape of a candy cup, they are actually a wonderfully tart, chocolatey frozen treat filled with luscious fruit preserve (use your lover’s favorite flavor.) These would make a great treat after a romantic dinner or a sweaty afternoon of berry-tossing! Alternately, if you’re lonely and craving chocolate, make Chocolate Covered Cherry Fro-Yo Cups before your eyes start drifting to the chocolates in a pink box in the grocery store or the pint of emotional-eating ice cream… these give you the best of both worlds, without the guilt following either!
Whatever your plans are for this Valentine’s Day, I hope you will give these delicious frozen snacks a try. And feel free to change up the fruit preserve flavor! Make them for any occasion, for those you love, hate, etc… click here for the full recipe: Chocolate Covered Cherry Fro-Yo Cups!
Toucan Image From: http://saflights.hubpages.com/hub/Toucans-One-of-the-Most-Interesting-and-Amazing-Birds
Toucan Info Sources:
http://saflights.hubpages.com/hub/Toucans-One-of-the-Most-Interesting-and-Amazing-Birds
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/toucan/
Digestive System Info Source:
http://hes.ucfsd.org/gclaypo/digestive_system.html#Where does the food go when we
“Cherry Garcia” Fro-Yo in a Blender! No Ice Cream Maker Necessary
Happy Easter to everybody! Aren’t you glad spring is finally (sort of) here? Actually today it was really foggy and raining where I live. Not the best weather for egg hunts. But once the rain cleared up, I saw a small group of parents in the neighborhood with a couple little girls wearing dress-up clothes and hunting for eggs on this one strip of grass in front of their apartment building. Though they only had about 15 square feet of area to search, they took their quest very seriously and screamed excitedly every time they found something: “I found gold! I found gold in these bushes!” A likely story. Ah, to be five years old again and have a super-active imagination…
Here’s a semi-imaginative, super-easy dessert recipe, as my Easter gift to you. It makes one serving, but feel free to make more if you wish to serve this to friends and family.
As spring is coming (I hope) I decided to celebrate with a fruity, cold treat. I have made frozen yogurt in the blender before using this recipe from Happy, Healthy and Whole. The first time I did this, I came up with my own flavor combo. This time, I was less creative and copied one that Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream popularized: Cherry Garcia. Cherry ice cream with chocolate chunks, except I healthified it by making it frozen yogurt, and used chocolate chips because that’s what I had on hand. I assure you my frozen soft-serve has much more actual fruit than the Ben & Jerry’s alternative (is there even any real fruit in there?) That’s why mine has this dramatic, deep red color, not the shy pink of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
See, this is both a healthy treat and a fashion statement!
Cherry Garcia Soft Serve Frozen Yogurt
based on this recipe
serves 1
Ingredients:
- 1 cup frozen sweet dark cherries
- 2 tbls plain Greek yogurt
- 1 tbl pure maple syrup
- semisweet chocolate chips, to taste (I used about 1 tbl)
Directions: Place the cherries, yogurt and maple syrup in the blender. Blend until there are only a few chunks of cherries left and most of the mixture is homogenous. I needed to blend for less than a minute.
Scoop the soft-serve into a small bowl. Top with chocolate chips. I recommend storing the fro-yo in the freezer a few minutes so it gets even colder.
Serve cold and savor the sweetness!
True Healthy Me 