My beloved next-door neighbors had to say goodbye to their VERY beloved 15-year old Golden Retriever, Gator, this weekend. We’ve known it was coming as his health declined, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I’m learning that I really love baking for others to show I love them and care about them and am thinking about them. As I’ve tested out my various cookie recipes on them, they’ve given me their candid feedback and no question they’ve tended to prefer the ones on the sweeter end of the spectrum as opposed to “sugar-free” ones ;)

So- I went in search of more superfoods in my cupboards combined with just-sweet-enough recipes to deliver them some feel-good foods in their time of heartbreak … . and VIOLA! I found this one that I liked: Cacao Muffins! In fact “they” say we should eat it every day!

What is so great about cacao (other than it’s been sold to us as the health sibling of milk chocolate which we all love!?!).

For starters, “Cocoa is one of the richest sources of polyphenols. It’s especially abundant in flavanols, which have potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.” And my personal favorite perk: mood enhancer! “In addition to cocoa’s positive impact on age-related mental degeneration, its effect on the brain may also improve mood and symptoms of depression. The positive effects on mood may be due to cocoa’s flavanols, the conversion of tryptophan to the natural mood stabilizer serotonin, its caffeine content or simply the sensory pleasure of eating chocolate.” - Source HERE.

So-it tastes good, like chocolate in fact, helps my mood and contains antioxidants and offers anti-inflammatory effects. Yes HELL yes.

My Notes about the recipe linked above: I was all out of honey so I substituted a little bit of good ol’ basic sugar along with applesauce for honey, and I used coconut oil instead of butter. I also used Bob’s Red Mill Almond Flour.

In a nutshell …. these muffins did NOT work out, at all. They baked into crumbly crumbles… I am sure it was user error or perhaps I pushed the ingredient substitution too far. Either way- not successful here.

Rather than toss them out, since they were so full of good quality ingredients, I called an audible, emptied the muffin wrapper contents into glass/plastic containers, added some oats and will add almond milk and warm at the office this week for a delicious breakfast treat. Muffin fail. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Next- I switched to making cookies. Oats and cacao, please, google …

Recipe HERE.

Yes… much better. Cookies, flowers, and card — delivered to my wonderful neighbors tonight. And that’s a wrap of this weekend! Tomorrow is Monday, #letsdothis.

Quick run to the store for flowers. And TP. Just the essentials.

And a bonus squirrel sighting in my backyard today. ;)