Organic Mini Chocolate Cupcakes

Last week was my little boy’s second birthday and the first time I’ve made cupcakes for him.

It goes without saying that he absolutely loved them and couldn’t get enough of them and I felt a little bad because in the rush of preparing for visitors and a birthday party, I used a packet mix.

So to feel a little less guilty about allowing my child to eat chocolate cupcakes, tonight I made another batch of cupcakes and I modified a basic buttercake recipe (that I learnt in high school) to make my own “healthy” organic version.

I’ve recently been inspired by my friend Vidi who writes a raw food blog The Raw Recipe, to add some new ingredients to my pantry. So while these cupcakes are definitely cooked, some of the ingredients are ones that have been suggested to replace some of my regular ingredients to add a bit of extra nutrition to our diet.

I’ve been using organic eggs, milk and butter for quite a few years to minimise our intake of pesticides and hormones found in regular dairy and eggs and now I’ve found a great local organic store where I’ve sourced some raw cacao products (from a great company called Loving Earth) and Organic Panela (evaporated cane juice).

The Organic Raw Cacao contains potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium and iron and has up to 4 times the amount of antioxidants of traditional cocoa powder.

The Organic Panela retains the nutrients naturally found in sugar cane that are stripped away in regular sugar products. Evaporated sugar can juice only undergoes a pressing and drying process, so the natural qualities (carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins) are retained.

Enjoy chocolate mini cupcakes in moderation

Organic Chocolate Mini Cupcakes

Ingredients:

• Mini patty cases (more than 60)
• 175g Organic Panela (Evaporated Cane Juice) ground fine in a bamix mill to resemble caster sugar
• 175g Softened Organic Butter
• 3 organic eggs
• 125 ml organic milk (raw if you’re game & can source it)
• 1 tsp natural vanilla extract
• 175g Organic Self Raising Flour
• 4 Tablespoons Raw Cacao Powder

Method:

Preheat oven to 180? (or 350? – my current oven is ancient & in Fahrenheit but bakes beautifully).

Line a mini cupcake tray with mini paper patty cases.

Beat softened butter with the sugar in a mixing bowl until pale and creamy.

Add the vanilla extract to the milk.

Sift the flour with the raw cacao powder.

Beat one egg at a time into the butter and sugar mix until well combined.

Alternate adding the milk and flour, mixing well between each addition.

Spoon the batter into the patty cases (almost to the top) and bake for 15-20 minutes or until firm.

Transfer cupcakes to a wire rack to cool. When cool decorate as desired.

My little boy doesn’t like the icing so they stay plain for him

Makes approximately 60 mini cupcakes.

Well, I have a confession to make; I have been focussed on wanting to lose weight since I was in my mid twenties (so it wasn’t just the pregnancies) and I have to admit it’s all become a bit tiring. Admittedly back when I first met my husband, it was only 5kg (about 11 lbs) that I wanted to lose and over the last 12 years through two pregnancies and the stress of losing a child, it’s slowly crept up. I have been so focussed on the weight that I wanted to get rid of that I ended up with more of exactly what I didn’t want. My one saving grace is that I’m tall and I have great proportions, so the weight is evenly distributed – having said that though, I still want to be a size 12 again (I’m currently an Aussie size 18).

I don’t think you can go disliking the way you are and wanting to change for this length of time without discovering some things about yourself and the way you tick. What I have learnt about myself over these years is that I hate dieting or being forced to eat according to someone else’s food ideas. Some people wanting to lose weight are perpetual dieters, always looking for the next big thing in the latest women’s magazine. I have been able to change my day to day eating for differing periods of time on a few occasions according to what someone else told me was healthy and worked for them, only to fall back into my regular habits. Changing what you eat because someone else says you should doesn’t usually work very well. You really need to have a clear reason that resonates with you in terms of creating long lasting change.

Because I didn’t think it was eating that was my problem (I’m not a pack of Tim Tams a night kind of girl), I was searching for other reasons as to why I had this weight gain (emotional & hormonal imbalances) and my solution has usually leaned toward the exercise option. Now that I look back though, exercising for weight loss wasn’t sustainable (I thought it was torturous and I was planning to stop when I got to my ideal weight) and every time a personal trainer asks me to monitor what I’m eating (writing a food diary for a week) I just want to puke.

Side note: I don’t see the point of me writing down what I am eating – I already know the “right” things I should be eating, so during that week of writing, I would eat the “right” things but then go back to my regular eating after the monitoring period is over (not that my regular eating is bad, it could do with a little improvement just like most people’s). Ideally, you would want to have someone else monitoring what you eat without you knowing it – that is the only way to get an accurate reflection of current eating patterns.

What I’ve also noticed is that when I exercise because I want to lose weight, I make some progress, but then the results seem to get even further away from me and the motivation wanes very quickly and I think this quote from Esther Hicks (Abraham) sums it up beautifully – I didn’t have the inspiration from within:

Inspiration comes forth from within. It’s what the light burning within you is about, as opposed to motivation, which is doing it because if you don’t do it, there will be negative repercussions. Motivation is making myself do something that I don’t really want to do. Inspiration is having the clear picture of what I am wanting — and letting Universal forces come into play to get the outcome.

— Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Spokane, WA on Wednesday, July 7th, 1999

The “Get Back into Shape” Plan

I decided during my second pregnancy that I needed a plan once I had the baby to get to my size 12 body.

During my first pregnancy I had some issues with my pelvis and particularly the pubis symphysis joint (see a full explanation here). This pain started in the third trimester and a course of Bowen treatments made a huge difference.

During my second pregnancy, the pubis symphysis pain started earlier in the pregnancy, so I started the Bowen treatments again but not soon enough, so the pain did get to a point where I couldn’t walk long distances. Each Bowen appointment I had relieved the tension in my hips and pelvis, but the underlying weakness remained and the pain wasn’t completely eliminated but it was stabilised so it didn’t get any worse.

While everyone around me was super impressed that I had a four hour labour and gave birth at home, I ended up having to go to hospital briefly to have the placenta removed. I don’t know why the placenta didn’t want to come out – perhaps emotional aspects surrounding the death of my first child and the fear of the same thing happening with this baby. At the hospital I couldn’t relax because the pain in my pelvis was excruciating and as much as I am against drugs, I ended up having a general anaesthetic so the placenta could be removed. I was told later that the placenta came out quite easily once I was fully relaxed – no surprise there. After giving birth, it took about a week before I could actually walk on my own & getting in and out of the shower over the bath was a nightmare.

So I decided to come up with plan for getting back into shape – nothing like extreme pain to motivate you into getting strong again. Briefly, this plan consisted of working my way up to walking 30 min every day, then adding in a couple of pilates sessions per week to strengthen my core, then moving on to strength/weight training to increase strength and lean muscle and burn the fat away. And I wanted to be back to at least a size 14 by Christmas 2008. Well, if that had all been successful, this post would have had a different title

Looking back now I can see the mistakes I made that meant I didn’t achieve my results:

1. I didn’t write my plan down, it was all in my head,
2. I didn’t write my milestones and goals down either,
3. I was swayed by what I read about “the right way” to lose weight rather than listening to my own body.

Over the last 4 months I have been working with a personal trainer to beat this body of mine into submission, to make up for lost time not exercising much last year and get back to a shape and size that I’m happy with again.

Well I have discovered that forcing myself to do something I don’t really want to do, does not create the results I want. For years now, various people (my husband, my homeopath, my NLP training partners and some work colleagues) have been telling me that until my head is in the right space, no amount of physical work would create the change I was looking for. As an NLP practitioner myself, I know this on a conscious level – that conscious change doesn’t create results – it’s changes on the unconscious level that create the spectacular results.

On some occasions I didn’t do any exercise other than the occasional walk or yoga class because I knew my head wasn’t in the right place, so what was the point of doing any serious exercise – it wasn’t going to have lasting change. I really thought though that this year when I started with a new personal trainer, the results were going to be amazing and permanent. After a two week holiday in Byron Bay recently where I walked on the beach every day for over an hour without feeling tortured (in fact I loved it and wish I could have stayed) I decided to give up on the personal training for now.

Get so fixated on what you want, that you drown out any vibration or reverberation that has anything to do with what you do not want.

— Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Boston, MA on Saturday, October 2nd, 2004

After I read this quote, it really did hit me that when I do personal training, I am more focussed on weight loss and the negative aspects of my body, when what I really want is to be healthy and strong. I’ve also realised that the path to health for me doesn’t necessarily lie in full-on personal training sessions.

So what do I think is going to do it for me? Well I have noticed that in my life in general I have become more forceful and less flexible / go with the flow – I have been trying to make things happen rather than allowing them to evolve, so perhaps a physical focus of relaxation, increased flexibility and internal strength rather than external brute strength is a better path for me right now and will help my mind shift to that relaxed and flexible place too. It’s sort of a case of the chicken and the egg – what comes first, the physical flexibility or the mental flexibility? Well for now and the foreseeable future, mediation, yoga and pilates is how I am choosing to move towards a healthier body both physically and mentally.

Do you have to think specific positive thoughts about your body in order for your body to be the way you want it to be? No. But you have to not think the specific negative thoughts. If you could never again think about your body and, instead, just think pleasant thoughts — your body would reclaim its place of Well-being.

— Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Orlando, FL on Sunday, January 10th, 1999

Are you doing what’s working for you? Share your thoughts and inspire someone else to follow their path

Another article I saw tweeted recently shared some interesting snippets about vaccination.

The article “Historical Facts Exposing the Dangers and Ineffectiveness of Vaccines” is from the website Vaccination Debate.

(As with all of this information that I come across, I recommend reading it with an open mind.)

• In 1871-2, England, with 98% of the population aged between 2 and 50 vaccinated against smallpox, it experienced its worst ever smallpox outbreak with 45,000 deaths. During the same period in Germany, with a vaccination rate of 96%, there were over 125,000 deaths from smallpox. (The Hadwen Documents)
• In Germany, compulsory mass vaccination against diphtheria commenced in 1940 and by 1945 diphtheria cases were up from 40,000 to 250,000. (Don’t Get Stuck, Hannah Allen)
• In the USA in 1960, two virologists discovered that both polio vaccines were contaminated with the SV 40 virus which causes cancer in animals as well as changes in human cell tissue cultures. Millions of children had been injected with these vaccines. (Med Jnl of Australia 17/3/1973 p555)
• In 1967, Ghana was declared measles free by the World Health Organisation after 96% of its population was vaccinated. In 1972, Ghana experienced one of its worst measles outbreaks with its highest ever mortality rate. (Dr H Albonico, MMR Vaccine Campaign in Switzerland, March 1990)
• In the UK between 1970 and 1990, over 200,000 cases of whooping cough occurred in fully vaccinated children. (Community Disease Surveillance Centre, UK)
• In the 1970′s a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)
• In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists, that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 “Abstracts” )
• In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People’s Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)
• In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness. Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times! (BMJ 283:696-697, 1981)
• The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine.
• In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to $11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged children and children who died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994, Nambour, Qld)
• In Oman between 1988 and 1989, a polio outbreak occurred amongst thousands of fully vaccinated children. The region with the highest attack rate had the highest vaccine coverage. The region with the lowest attack rate had the lowest vaccine coverage. (The Lancet, 21/9/91)
• In 1990, a UK survey involving 598 doctors revealed that over 50% of them refused to have the Hepatitis B vaccine despite belonging to the high risk group urged to be vaccinated. (British Med Jnl, 27/1/1990)
• In 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association had an article on measles which stated ” Although more than 95% of school-aged children in the US are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in schools and most cases in this setting occur among previously vaccinated children.” (JAMA, 21/11/90)
• In the USA, from July 1990 to November 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration counted a total of 54,072 adverse reactions following vaccination. The FDA admitted that this number represented only 10% of the real total, because most doctors were refusing to report vaccine injuries. In other words, adverse reactions for this period exceeded half a million! (National Vaccine Information Centre, March 2, 1994)
• In the New England Journal of Medicine July 1994 issue a study found that over 80% of children under 5 years of age who had contracted whooping cough had been fully vaccinated.
• On November 2nd, 2000, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) announced that its members voted at their 57th annual meeting in St Louis to pass a resolution calling for an end to mandatory childhood vaccines. The resolution passed without a single “no” vote. (Report by Michael Devitt)

Now I’m aware that there are just as many, if not more “statistics” that show the efficacy of vaccinations. This isn’t meant to be a “tit for tat” type of post. It’s about sharing information that is out there, that the health authorities don’t want you to know and the question to ask is “Why don’t they want people to have this information?

Why do you think both sides of the story are not being shared?

This past Sunday their was an article on Vaccinations, sparked by the death of 4 week old baby Dana, who reportedly died of whooping cough.

Channel 7 was inundated with calls and emails regarding this story and going by the results of their poll “Do you think immunisation should be compulsory?”, as of this evening, out of 4414 respondants, 27% voted yes and 73% voted no.

Because of the enormous response, there will be a follow up story aired this Sunday – it will be interesting to watch.

My husband was one of the people who sent an email to channel 7 to perhaps enlighten and be included on the forum for this coming show – here is the email to Stephen Tucker at Channel 7:

Stephen

I have been forwarded the message you sent out about opening up the debate on vaccinations and would like to contribute my opinions.

Whilst I fully understand the agony of losing a child (I myself have lived through this unfortunate experience), I feel that your story last Sunday was nothing more than emotional blackmail designed to get the masses to toe the party line. A line, I might add, that is based more on smoke and mirrors than hard evidence, and heavily promoted by big pharma (who stand to gain the most from higher vaccination rates and more frequent boosters).

I’ll be honest, my personal belief is that vaccinations are both unnecessary and dangerous. I think most intelligent people would share this view if they were presented with all of the facts in a balanced way. However, I would not consider myself an anti-vaccination crusader – I believe everyone has the right to make their own decisions.

My beef with your article is three-fold: that the audience was not given balanced information on which to make an informed decision, that you should even consider anyone has the right to force someone else to do anything against their will (eg, your suggestion of compulsory vaccination), and that you insinuated that those of us that do make an informed decision are either uneducated, irresponsible or even outlaws (your claim that we could be potential killers).

Some of the points in your article that I believe particularly need addressing are:

• You just blindly accepted that vaccines are responsible for the decline in deaths from the major diseases. However, if you track the death rate for any of these diseases over time you will find that in just about every case the majority of the decline was before the vaccine was introduced. In some cases the death rate even went up for a period after the introduction of the vaccine. I can supply you with the graphs that prove this if you want, but the information can easily be found on the internet.
• Realistically, the majority of the decline in death rate can be attributed to better sanitation (stopping the spread of the diseases), with support in advances in the treatments for some diseases.
• Even assuming that vaccines were actually responsible for “eradicating” these diseases, how can people simultaneously believe that vaccinations work and still believe that unvaccinated people put them at risk? If the vaccines really work, it wouldn’t matter if you were exposed to someone that was infected (isn’t that the whole point of vaccinations?), yet this seems to be the underlying presupposition behind the push for wider vaccination and was not questioned in your article.
• As for those that are “too sick” to be vaccinated, generally they are too sick to be around the general public and are in tightly controlled environments anyway.
• Further, if you recognised that vaccines should not be given to people who already have weak/compromised immune systems (eg the heart transplant child mentioned), why did you not question the sense of giving these vaccinations to babies (who have a very underdeveloped immune system)? Worse still, how can you suggest that it is a good thing to support vaccinations at birth, when the child is at its most vulnerable?
• How can you accept that vaccines should not be given to the sick (presumably because that would be dangerous), and at the same time believe they are safe to give to the rest of us, especially our precious children?
• It is also interesting that the article seemed to accept the statement that there is no link between vaccinations and autism without any proof (and no, just because a doctor said it does not necessarily make it true). Again, if you do the research, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the link, but the medical community and the big pharma go to great lengths to ensure that any scientific study that even suggests a link is quickly discredited, if only because it does not meet the “double blind” standards.
• Also, there is a lot of evidence to show that even vaccinated people will catch the diseases if exposed, yet no-one seems to question this. Even your article included some comments on vaccinated children who got the diseases (eg, Meryl’s children), but did not stop to consider how this can happen if vaccines are actually effective.
• I know that any “preventable” death is a tragedy, but to make the leap from one baby dying to suggesting compulsory vaccination is a bit extreme. Should we similarly call for the removal of all cars from the roads because a child dies crossing the road? Imagine being told you no longer have the choice to drive, just to protect the population as a whole (BTW – more people die on our roads each year than from “preventable” diseases).

It’s time to stop playing on people’s emotions to fuel a witch hunt and start providing balanced (and properly researched) information to empower people to make their own decisions. After all, Australia is still a free country.

Please note that although I live in Melbourne, I would love to come to Sydney to be in the audience if this could be arranged.

Cheers

Warren Denley

I think that pretty much sums it up.

What are your thoughts? (And if you haven’t already, cast your vote in the poll to the right).

I’m really interested to know what your thoughts are on the whole vaccination issue – it’s a very emotive topic and one that polarises people quite drastically. Are you a believer or not?

Click on the answer that best suits you in the poll (in the sidebar on the right)

You will be able to see the results of the poll once you’ve selected your answer and clicked on the vote button. Share it with your friends – obviously the more people that can answer the poll, the more interesting the results will be. Your vote is anonymous, so share truthfully

And of course, your comments below are always welcome – please share your views.

Update: 1st August 2009

I’ve moved the from the sidebar to this post – you can view the results by clicking on the “view results” link  - interesting spread of results.