Category Archives: Giveaways

Cocoa Molasses Coconut Cookies, and a Giveaway!

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Cocoa Molasses Coconut CookiesA few months ago, I was sent (free of charge) an enormous jar of Tropical Traditions Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil to play around with and, if I wanted, host a giveaway for. (Host a giveaway for a brand-new jar, that is, not the one I’m halfway through.)

I’m not one to wax lyrical about the health claims of various “superfoods”, so I’ll leave that purported side of coconut oil alone. What I can say, however, is that I’ve been enjoying using this coconut oil in a great many food-related ways, including:

- The Roasting of Glorious Brussels Sprouts;
- The Stir-Frying of Assorted Other Glorious Vegetables;
- The Veganisation of an Australian Childhood Treat For My Work Colleagues (recipe to come); and
- The Baking of Cocoa Molasses Coconut Cookies, Also For My Work Colleagues.

Cocoa Molasses Coconut CookiesI used this Soft Chocolate Molasses Cookies recipe from Serious Eats as my base, making the following changes (it’s a listpalooza today):

- Used melted coconut oil instead of butter
- Used blackstrap molasses which, I warn you, makes for an Intensey McIntense from Intensetown molasses flavour. Use non-blackstrap molasses for a milder flavour.
- Forgot to hold back half the granulated sugar for rolling, i.e. I added all the sugar into the batter in the first instance and didn’t roll the balls in more sugar before baking.
- I made about 35 cookies out of the recipe. And they weren’t tiny cookies, either. They were normal-sized cookies. America, YOU BE CRAZY. 14 cookies out of this recipe? THAT WOULD MAKE FOR COOKIES THE SIZE OF A SMALL CHILD.

Cocoa Molasses Coconut CookiesAnyhoodle, the cookies were lovely. They were crisp on the outside but wonderfully chewy within, not-too-sweet yet still treat-like for sure, and with a deep molasses and cocoa flavour that felt very, well, “grown-up”. The coconut oil worked perfectly. Hurrah!

If you’re interested in winning an enormous (seriously; it’s a behemoth) jar of Tropical Traditional Virgin Coconut Oil yourself, read below for Tropical Traditions’ blurb and the giveaway details.

Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil - 32 oz.Win 1 quart of Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil!

Tropical Traditions is America’s source for coconut oil. Their Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil is hand crafted in small batches by family producers, and it is the highest quality coconut oil they offer. You can read more about how virgin coconut oil is different from other coconut oils on their website: What is Virgin Coconut Oil?

You can also watch the video they produced about Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil:

Tropical Traditions also carries other varieties of affordable high quality coconut oil. Visit their website to check on current sales, to learn about the many uses of coconut oil, and to read about all the advantages of buying coconut oil online. Since the FDA does not want us to discuss the health benefits of coconut oil on a page where it is being sold or given away, here is the best website to read about the health benefits of coconut oil.

To enter, subscribe to the Tropical Traditions Newsletter and leave a comment telling me you did so.

For extra entries (leave a comment for each one so that you do get the bonus entries):

- Follow me on Twitter;
- Follow Tropical Traditions on Twitter;
- Follow me on Facebook; and/or
- Follow Tropical Traditions on Facebook.

Open to residents of the U.S. and Canada. (Note for Canadians: Tropical Traditions is not responsible for any customs or duties that Canada may charge for the prize’s delivery.) Winner will be chosen by random number generator on 18th April 2013.

Skinny Cow’s New Ice Cream Cookies, Indulgence, and a $150 Westfield Voucher Giveaway

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Skinny Cow Ice Cream CookiesSponsored by Nuffnang

It’s rare that I write sponsored posts on this blog, but three things swayed me in favour of the Skinny Cow Ice Cream Cookies invitation:

  1. I get to hold a giveaway for one of you to win a $150 Westfield Gift Voucher. $150 could buy you many bars of chocolate. Or a pair of boots. Or glitter-encrusted sunglasses.
  2. Skinny Cow Ice Cream Cookie samples. Despite my lactose intolerance and vegan-inclinations, I succumbed to the delicious sugary frozenness.
  3. The theme of “overindulgence” prompted a longwinded discussion with myself inside my headmind.

Let’s take these points in reverse order. The concept of overindulgence is, to me, rather foreign. A side effect of overthinking everything and being prone to anxiety-based (non-edible) frozenness is that I rarely spontaneously overindulge and feel guilty later.

Hannah at Harajuku, Tokyo, 2006Exploring Harajuku, Tokyo in June 2006

Instead, I overindulge after consciously deciding to treat myself. I don’t believe in feeling guilty for eating dessert every night (or eating eleven desserts in one night), or for splurging on an entire new outfit at Cue after not buying any clothes in eight months.

Hannah in new outfit from CueWhy yes, that is an embroidered toilet roll holder behind me in the shower room.

For me, the hardest thing to “treat” myself to is time. Time just for me, time to while away hours reading on the couch, or jot down notes for a novel instead of a blog post, or sketch out plans for a new adventure. Because, in truth, my biggest indulgence, my lifeblood-necessity indulgence, my favourite overindulgence, is travel.

Hannah doing the Undersea Walk in MauritiusFeeding the fish during an Undersea Walk in Mauritius, April 2004

When I travel, I allow myself to be, to do, to eat, to dance, to stay silent, to laugh out loud and indulge without guilt or the pressure to conform to expectations. Since starting this blog, I’ve been able to share my travel indulgences with you wonderful people and, thereby, relive them all over again. That makes me joyful.

Who needs to see the top of The Eiffel Tower anyway? March 2010

So that’s my take on overindulgence. I splurge on silence for my heart and soul, I splurge on delicious food without attaching moral judgements, and I splurge on travel. I love it all.

As for these new Skinny Cow Ice Cream cookies in vanilla, caramel, and chocolate, they’re positioned within Skinny Cow’s Month of Indulgence. However, to me, dessert is less an indulgence than a necessity. According to my sources, these treats are now 15% bigger yet still low in fat, and devoid of artifical flavours. My favourite flavour was the caramel with its blend of not-too-sweet-rich-cocoa-cookies and butterscotch-esque-creamy-ice-cream. That said, I truly enjoyed every flavour, particularly when I ate three in a row upon arriving home after the ANU School of Music’s epic four hour concert last week. Mmm, delicious low-fat ice cream midnight snacks.

Skinny Cow Ice Cream CookiesLast but not least, Skinny Cow is offering a giveaway of a $150 Westfield Voucher to one of my readers. All you have to do is answer the following question:

What is your biggest indulgence?

For extra entries, you can:

  1. Follow me on Facebook, leaving a separate comment for this.
  2. Follow me on Twitter, leaving a separate comment for this.
  3. Follow Skinny Cow on Facebook, leaving a separate comment for this.

Terms and Conditions: This giveaway is open to Australian residents only, and entries will close on June 8th. Winner will be chosen by Nuffnang and Skinny Cow.

And now, with that, I’m going to move away from the computer and treat myself to the indulgence of curling up on the couch and either finishing Lolita or starting Game of Thrones. I suggest you treat yourself too.

Baked and Delicious Giveaway Winner, and Why You’re All Winners

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Baked and Delicious

It’s time to announce the winner of my Baked and Delicious Subscription Giveaway. Huzzah! I had a grand old time reading your entry-answers to the question of what your favourite muffin flavour is, because my nights have been filled with dreams of inventive muffin-y deliciousness ever since.

(Actually, that’s not quite true. The other night I dreamed about sitting with a certain musical director and eating ice cream while resting my feet atop a pet crocodile. There were no muffins involved.)

If you’re ever stuck for muffin ideas, I recommend checking out the comments section of that giveaway post. However, you’ll probably end up wanting to make Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins, because a great many people cheered for that particular creation.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the winner. The winner of the Baked and Delicious subscription is:

CECILIA!

Cecilia entered the competition with “My favourite muffin is probably a JUMBO blueberry (lots of it) muffin with a generous amount of crumble on top. Greedy much?! :) And I always save the muffin top for last!”

Bravo, fine lady. I, too, tend to save the best parts of any eating experience for last. Please do send me an email with your address, so that we can get you on your way to merry silicone-bakeware-assisted baking!

However, the rest of you are winners too. You’re all winners because:

Passionfruit Cheesecake from My Cafe, CanberraYou didn’t have to eat this. After eighteen months of craving but resisting cheesecake, I succumbed to a slice while at My Cafe in Manuka.

Worst. Decision. Ever.

At first I was going to say that this cheesecake was almost as bad as the Bad Karma Cheesecake, but I’ve changed my mind. This bland, soggy, preservative-ridden-canned-passionfruit-gloop-supporting hunk of solidified cow juice on a flavourless oily biscuit crumb was far worse, because at least I knew that I deserved the awfulness of the Bad Karma Cheesecake.

Moral of the story: even if you didn’t win the magazine giveaway, you won because you didn’t eat the awful cheesecake.

Now then. Don’t you feel better?

Baked and Delicious Subscription Giveaway!

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Baked and DeliciousSource

Do you remember the time I showed you the Lebkuchen cookies that I baked from a Baked and Delicious magazine?

I’m sure you do remember. Because you are all very, very clever and amazing, and the cookies were delicious.

Well, thanks to the folks over at Baked and Delicious, I now have a giveaway for you. A giveaway for an entire subscription to Baked and Delicious, which involves 60 issues,  four subscriber-only gifts to the value of $75, and countless recipes from across the globe to play around with in your kitchen.

It’s a fun magazine, and I can say with confidence that the silicone bakeware that comes with each issue works a treat. I recently made a batch of Mixed Berry Maple Syrup Muffins in the silicone muffin cases I received with the first Baked and Delicious issue, and the muffins popped right out of their cases without a care in the world. (Because muffins normally have cares and worries in this world… yep.) I’ll tell you the muffin recipe later but, for now, it’s all about the magazine.

Maple Syrup Berry MuffinsTo enter, simply leave a comment on this post answering the question “What is your favourite flavour of muffin?”

For extra entries, follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook, leaving a separate comment to tell me that you’ve done so. (If you already do follow me (thank you!), simply leave a comment to that effect.)

This competition is open to Australian readers, and entries will close on the 11th of October. Of course, if you don’t want to wait for the outcome of the giveaway to get your hands on Baked and Delicious, you can subscribe directly here.

Good luck!

Mixed Berry Maple Syrup Muffins

CSN Giveaway (For Some) and Smoothies (For All)

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Hiya folks! I was planning to show you the brownies I made for a friend today, but instead the opportunity arose for me to offer those of you living in the US or Canada the chance to win a $50 gift voucher for any of CSN’s 200+ online stores. I’m guessing that many of you will be interested in the kitchen appliances that CSN sells, but you could also buy yourself some swing sets. You know, in case you’d like to have the feeling in your tummy of swinging up, up, up, higher, higher, higher, instead of the feeling in your tummy of having eaten eight peanut butter cookies in a row. Your call.

Here is how you can enter (each of the following actions counts as a separate entry): 

  • Leave a comment on this post telling me what you might buy from CSN if you win.
  • Follow me on twitter (my username is wayfaringchoc), and leave a comment here telling me that you did so.
  • Link to this giveaway on twitter or your blog (if you have one), and leave a comment here telling me that you did so.

As I mentioned, this giveaway is (sadly) open only to US and Canadian residents. I hope to one day host a giveaway open to absolutely everyone, but that might have to wait until I have a teensy bit more disposable income and can host it myself. Until then, CSN has your American and Canadian backs.

Entries close midnight March 7th, Australian Eastern Standard Time. US and Canadian peeps, I’m going to trust in your ability to google when that is for you, as there are so many different time zones in your respective countries that my mind goes ZAP-SQUISH-PING when I try to work it out.

*     *     *

Now, on an entirely unrelated note, I thought I’d share my favourite recent smoothie creations because everyone in the world has an equal opportunity to like, loathe, or recreate them, regardless of geographic location.

I dub this one The Charcoal Smoothie.

Charcoal Green Smoothie

Frozen banana, frozen blueberries, spinach, non-dairy milk, agave, vanilla extract, ice, cinnamon, and (sometimes) vanilla protein powder. This smoothie is pretty much the awesome.

Raspberry Pear Vanilla smoothie

This one I call Pinky And The Brain. It’s made of pear, frozen raspberries, vanilla extract, chocolate protein powder, and ice. I’ve also made this one with the addition of raw carrot. Vita-Mix, I love you.

Weet-Bix Bites Golden Crumble

This Weet-Bix Golden Crumble cereal, on the other hand, did not emerge from my blender. However, the “bites” smell deliciously like Anzac biscuits, and work well as mini sandwiches when squished together with sunflower seed butter.

I just thought you needed to know that.