Local fitness enthusiast Jason Murphy remakes favorite meals of his youth into healthy dishes. See the full list of his recipes at www.mysaline.com/shirtless.
Jason says Trust the Process (and don’t trust the processed)
Folks, it’s time for a rebrand. Just like with food and lifestyle choices, sometimes you have to take a step back, evaluate where you are, and make some changes. I had to google my articles to refer to a past recipe, and there are a plethora of “Shirtless Chefs” out there, and they are all putting off extreme “Delta Bravo” vibes if you are familiar with the military code for someone you do not want to emulate. Truth be told, I’ve never been comfortable with the name, as I am neither a chef or shirtless for the most part. I’ll leave that to the Insta influencers that are younger and dumber, and probably using some chemical help to get their body fat results. I’m just a guy that cooks and tries to make healthy, non-processed meals a sustainable way to live.
I’m thinking of being The Non-Processed Cook instead. Not catchy? How about NPC for short? Are you down with the NPC…yeah, you know me. There, now that the song is stuck in your head, maybe it will catch on. We’ll see how it goes. If it doesn’t work, I can always modify it just like I do with unhealthy foods. Take chocolate cake. It should just be off limits for a non-processed lifestyle, but you and I both know I’m not about that. We don’t have to get our cake from a box and frosting from a tub, full of so many ingredients it would make your printer run out of ink. No, chocolate cake can be just a handful of healthy ingredients that can be enjoyed at any time.
The main problem with this cake is it might taste too good. It’s hard to limit the serving size on this one, and while this cake is as low on processed ingredients and sugars as you can get, it’s not a low calorie food. Budget accordingly for the extra calories on days this cake is around, which won’t be long. I know a lot of people out there immediately turn their nose up at anything if they are told it is healthy, and frankly, those people are idiots. It’s good for us, though, because that means we can have more of this cake. I made this on a Saturday, and it was gone in two days, and I’m kind of sad about it. Cake, I hardly knew you.
Let’s compare the list of ingredients in my version of chocolate cake against what it would be in the standard box cake and tub-o-flavored lard from the mega-mart. My cake uses:
Grass fed cream, butter, eggs, almond flour, coconut flour, salt, stevia in the raw, cacoa powder, cream cheese, powdered monk fruit, and vanilla extract.
That clocks in at eleven ingredients, and not a weird made up flavoring or preservative in the lot. Now, for a normal chocolate cake out of a box:
Sugar, Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Emulsified Palm Shortening (Palm Oil, Propylene Glycol Mono- and Diesters of Fats and Fatty Acids, Mono- and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate), Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate Monohydrate), Wheat Starch, Contains 2% or Less of: Salt, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum, Dextrose, Artificial Flavor, Yellow 5, Red 40, 1 cup water; 3 large eggs; 1/3 cup vegetable oil, Sugar, Water, Palm Oil, Cocoa Powder Processed with Alkali, Corn Syrup, Canola Oil, Contains 2% or Less of: Corn Starch, Salt, Mono- and Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Invert Sugar, Caramelized Sugar (Sugar, Water), Natural and Artificial Flavor, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Citric Acid, Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant), Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Sodium Citrate, Acetic Acid, Caramel Color.
Hold on, I have to take off my shoes so I can finish counting. As you can see, there are all sorts of big scary words in there that mean two things. Some evil mad scientist concocted it in a lab out of chemicals, and it’s full of artery hardening trans fats. My cake is not low fat by any means, but the fats in it are anti-inflammatory grass fed omega-3 fats that can actually improve your cardiovascular health instead of being the equivalent in your veins of chewed bubble gum in a 1980’s perm.
Honestly, if I hadn’t told you that was chocolate cake, would you have even been able to guess what that was going to end up as coming out of your oven? I’m betting you would be thinking whatever it was, you’d be standing by with a pitchfork and a flamethrower to kill it before it could get out of the house and break down the fence.
So if you have any of those idiots in your house that I mentioned earlier, just don’t tell them it’s healthy. I mean, you don’t tell your dog when the heartworm pill is in the peanut butter, right? Same deal here. As far as they have to know, it’s terrible processed food that with any luck should triple their triglycerides within one hour.
The only main difference with this cake is that it vastly improves if you let it sit in the fridge overnight. It takes a bit for the coconut flour to fully hydrate, so give it time and your patience will be rewarded. Buy some low-carb vanilla ice cream or better yet, make your own and this cake goes from great to Meg Ryan in a cafe with Billy Crystal levels. Make it, eat it…then make it again because it is gone so fast.
Next Day Cake
Ingredients:
- 1½ cups fine almond flour
- ½ cup coconut flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 sticks grass fed butter at room temp
- 4 free range eggs at room temp
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk or vanilla hemp milk
- 1 cup stevia in the raw granulated sweetener
- 3/4 cup unsweetened raw cacao powder
- 8 ounces grass fed cream cheese at room temp
- 4 Tbsp butter at room temp
- 1 cup Lakanto powdered monkfruit
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 Tbsp grass fed heavy cream
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, except for the cacoa powder and powdered monkfruit, which will be used in the frosting.
In another large bowl, add the 2 sticks of butter and Stevia in the raw. Use a hand mixer to cream until it becomes light and fluffy. Then add the eggs in one at a time, mixing each with the hand mixer until fully incorporated.
Once all the eggs are in, add the 2 tsp of vanilla and almond milk and mix again. Then add the wet team to the dry ingredients and combine with spatula until it has all come together creamy and smooth:
Rub an 8×11.5 baking dish with cold butter and then transfer the batter to the dish. It will be thicker than store bought batter so you will need to even it out and spread it in the dish:
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes, checking at 25 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting the cake:
In a large mixing bowl, combine the cream cheese, 4 tbsp butter, powdered monkfruit, 2 tsp of vanilla, cacoa powder, and heavy cream. Blend with a hand mixer until smooth. Carefully spread across the cake by scraping it all out in the middle of the cake and slowly working it across from the top of the frosting. This is thick stuff and will tear the cake if you aren’t careful. Place in the fridge for 24 hours for optimal taste. Serve with low carb vanilla ice cream on the side.
See the list of all Jason Murphy’s recipes at www.mysaline.com/jason-murphy.