Cocoa and banana porridge

Name: Cocoa and banana porridge
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 1 servings
Ingredients: Rolled oats 1/2 cup (40 g); Milk 1 cup (200 g); Unsweetened cocoa powder 2 tbsp (10 g); Banana 1 (120 g); Salt a pinch

Two tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa and you need no sugar. The banana does the sweetness.

1 servings10 min

Ingredients

Rolled oats1/2 cup (40 g)
Milk1 cup (200 g)
Unsweetened cocoa powder2 tbsp (10 g)
Banana1 (120 g)
Salta pinch

Method

Mash two thirds of the banana with a fork and slice the remaining third into rounds.
Pour the milk into a pan and whisk the cocoa in first. Added later it clumps.
Add the oats, the mashed banana and a pinch of salt, and cook six minutes over low heat, stirring.
Take it off the heat, cover, and leave two minutes for the oats to absorb what is left.
Top with the sliced banana. Do not add sugar — taste a spoonful before you decide.

Cooking note

Not adding sugar is the whole point of this bowl.

Unsweetened cocoa powder carries 1.75 g of sugar per 100 g. Commercial cocoa mix is mostly sugar and milk powder; made with that, this is a different recipe.

The sweetness comes from one banana, about 14 g of sugar. Mashing only two thirds has a reason: mashed and cooked, the sweetness spreads through the whole bowl, and the reserved slices bring it back on the bite. One banana doing two jobs.

Ten grams of cocoa brings 50 mg of magnesium, 3.7 g of fibre and 23 mg of caffeine. The impressive per-100 g figures — 499 mg of magnesium, 37 g of fibre — do not belong in this bowl. What you eat is 10 g.

23 mg of caffeine is under a quarter of a coffee, but 206 mg of theobromine comes with it. Morning suits this better than evening.

Whisking the cocoa into the milk first is partly about fat. Cocoa powder is 13.7% fat and disperses far better in milk than in water. A little hot milk worked into a paste, then the rest poured in, leaves no lumps.

Do not expect anything of your blood pressure. The Cochrane review's −2 mmHg came from a mean of 670 mg of flavanols a day, and shop cocoa does not state its flavanol content.

Ingredients used here

Tea & drinks

Moderate evidence

Cocoa

A Cochrane review pooled 35 randomised trials and 1,804 people. Systolic fell 1.76 mmHg. In people with normal blood pressure, there was no significant difference.