Molten Chocolate Cakes and 2025 Annual (Food) Planning
Plus more on sugars, heavy metals in chocolates, genetic testing, and organ meats.
Colorful chefs - new and old, welcome to the last issue of 2024! I’m sending today’s issue a little early because I’m heading to New Zealand (for my honeymoon!!) tonight (10/25) and I arrive on Friday (10/27) so I’ll miss my usual Thursday newsletter send date entirely and I’m old school and like to press the send button myself 🙃
On this week’s menu:
Note this issue is a little long (aka packed with info!) so you might need to click “read in app” to view the entire thing pending your email provider.
2024 Reflection and 2025 Annual Planning (for FOOD!): Last week I shared a little Cooking in Color Reflection + Planning Template, and this week I’m sharing my answers to all of the questions, and what I’m prioritizing when it come to food and cooking in 2025.
Molten Chocolate Cakes (Color Club recipe): A very simple chocolate dessert recipe with minimal ingredients. It feels fancy and fun (great for NYE!), and in the recipe notes I include my take on sugars + heavy metals in chocolate.
Gift the Color Club to your friends and fam!: It’s not too late to gift someone an annual subscription to the Color Club! There is no way to do a gift card on my website (Squarespace), but you could Venmo your BFF and then send them this cute little gift card via text and make a plan to cook with them in 2025 💛
The purpose of these questions is to help you think about what worked really well for you this year when it came to your cooking, food and nutrition habits, and what you want to consider going into next year. If you missed them last week, see below 👇🏼
I had more fun than I thought doing this - see my answers below and lmk what resonates with you!
Step 1: Reflect on 2024
1. What were some of your favorite meals or cooking moments this year?
Ok, I thought this question specifically was going to be fun, but it was WAY MORE FUN than I anticipated. I don’t recommend doing this on an empty stomach. I surprised even myself how many food photos I have on my phone.
When doing this, I realized the MOST FUN I had recipe developing or eating was when it was with other people…I think this means in 2025 I need to prioritize more collabs! Lmk if anyone has a personal connection to any of my food muses including Jose Andres, Melissa Clark, Ina Garten, Molly Baz, Alison Roman, Meredith Hayden or Caro Chambers…only half joking.
Since I launched Cooking in Color a few months ago, I have loved working on a full Thanksgiving Menu (now available for FREE!) with Beth Bollinger and a full Holiday Menu with Ali Rose!
Dr. Casey Means and I also had a blast making a number of Good Energy approved recipes together this year, and many of them are available for free:
Spinach-Chickpea Wraps (they turned out SO good and did not break when we piled stuff on them)
Homemade healthy hot dog buns (this took MANY tests to get right but we nailed it)
The meals that brought me the most joy and made me feel the best after were the ones that:
Had a high quality protein (e.g., grass-fed and finished beef, Seatopia salmon, Primal Pastures chicken, lamb or pork, Maui Nui venison, pasture-raised eggs, etc.)
Included multiple colors (aka vegetables!)
Were blood sugar balanced
Had some zhuzh like a fun sauce or ferment on top
I’m realizing as I write this out that these are basically my Cooking in Color principles, so glad that all lined up 🤣
Some of my personal faves from this year include:
Turkey & Chickpea Minestrone (Color Club)
Unstuffed Delicata Squash + Pork Bowls with Dukkah and Balsamic Tahini (Color Club)
Mediterranean Oven Fried Eggs with Crispy Halloumi (Color Club)
And here’s a sampling of some of the photos on my phone 😍
2. What habits or routines around food worked really well for you this year?
I do a daily 13-hour overnight fast (sometimes more pending where I’m at in my cycle), and as you guys know our pantry is already DIALED, but there were two new habits that worked really well for me this year:
Prioritizing protein for breakfast - I realized I was sometimes only eating 10-15g of protein at breakfast (2 eggs is only 12g — that’s not enough!!) and while it made me feel full for a few hours, I would be starving at lunch and ravenous in the afternoon after a workout. Getting closer to 30g of protein at breakfast has helped me feel better, snack less, and have stronger workouts. My go-to super quick but high protein breakfasts are 1) 3 eggs, chicken sausage, avocado, and sauerkraut, 2) protein packed smoothies and 3) greek yogurt with berries, my nut and seed granola (free), nut butter, cinnamon and raw unfiltered honey.
Recipe/grocery/meal planning on Sunday morning - I spend 30 minutes to an hour every Sunday morning mapping out what I’m going to cook for what meals, so then I can go to the farmers market and the store with a loose list. This doesn’t feel like a chore, it feels like a fun privilege that I get to pick from countless whole foods to put in my body each week. Even though I have a list, I’ll still let the seasonal produce at the farmers market inspire me because I might write something like “sheet pan chicken + TBD” on my list and then purchase whatever TBD squash or veggie inspires me. However, I go in with a framework. This leads to less food waste, and less very random kitchen sink meals (although those sometimes end up being the best meals, so no shame there). Alex and I have two shared notes on our iPhone - one that’s “Meal Plans” where I’ll outline loosely what I’m thinking for each day for lunch + dinner, and one that is “Grocery List” so we can check things off as we go. On the “Grocery List” note we also have a list of our “every week staples” that we always get. 👇🏼
3. Were there times when food felt challenging or stressful?
If I’m honest here, sometimes I found it challenging or stressful when I was filming or photographing something “for the newsletter” vs. just for a meal or “for myself.”
I only create recipes that I love and would want to eat myself, but then I also test each recipe at least once (often two or three times) to ensure it’s delicious, easy, and blood-sugar friendly before sharing it with you. To make the recipe look its best, I often prepare it for the newsletter during mid-morning or late afternoon, when the lighting is ideal.
Throughout the last year, I’ve also been running my own consulting business and working full-time+ on a ton of projects. I’m realizing that in order to actually share more recipes with you, and for me to enjoy it (even more than I already do!), I might need to fully embrace the reality of being a home chef, and just film or cook my recipes at meal times (which means the lighting might not be quite as perfect🫣😬!).
My ultimate mission is to help other home chefs learn to love cooking healthy, nourishing, nutrient dense meals, so I’m realizing it might be necessary for me to lean into realities of being a home chef vs. an Instagram chef…
If you’ve got thoughts on this, I’d love to hear it.
4. Is there a specific food, ingredient, or habit you relied on that didn’t fully serve your health or well-being?
I honestly feel free of intense cravings for any processed food or sugar-y treats! It doesn’t even sound appealing to me. However, it took me quite some time of eating only whole, unprocessed foods and learning how to balance my blood sugar to get here! If you need a swap for any refined grain free snack or sugar-y treat, let me know. I love being the swap fairy.
5. What did you learn about your body and how it responds to certain foods?
A few months ago, I did the 3x4 Genetics Testing with my Functional Medicine Doctor (I work with Parsley Health). The test analyzes a large set of your genes to provide insights into how your body responds (or doesn’t!) to diet, exercise, and lifestyle factors. The insights from this test highlight your risk factors for certain things based on your genes. It essentially tells you how you are wired from the genes you inherited.
I gained a number of insights, but I’m going to focus on two of the nutrition ones below. In the image below, the colors correspond to an impact level, so purple means my genetic results for that nutrient will have a higher impact vs. green means a lower impact.
So for example, for vitamin B12 and C, I learned that I don’t have any issues transporting and absorbing vitamin B12, and I don’t have an increased demand for vitamin C. Good news!
For vitamin D, I learned that I may have a higher requirement than the average person, so it’s important for me to continue to prioritize sun exposure and vitamin D-rich foods.
Two of the cellular pathways that were interesting to note were:
Gluten: I have a high likelihood of developing celiac disease, and am sensitive to gluten. Now, I already knew this from food sensitivity testing, but it’s very interesting to confirm it on a genetic level as well. The test shows that I could develop adult onset Celiac disease if I am not mindful. This means that even the lovely Hasi fermented sourdough bread I’ve been sharing a lot this year needs to be something I minimize. Luckily other than that, I eat an entirely gluten free diet, so I don’t need to make any major changes. This testing just confirms that I’ll continue to eat gluten free for the rest of my life.
Choline: I have an increased requirement for dietary choline, this means I need to ensure I am getting choline from eggs, organ meets (new fave way to get them is Lineage Provisions Meat Sticks - SONJA10), broccoli, and cauliflower. Choline is super important as it regulates memory, mood, energy production, DNA health, and it’s important in pregnancy and menopause, so I’m going to continue to be mindful of this and also explore choline supplementation in 2025.
Should I walk through my entire 3x4 genetic testing results and share more insights? If this would be interesting to you, comment below or lmk in the chat!
Step 2: Set Intentions for 2025
6. If you could describe your dream relationship with food in 2025 in one word or phrase, what would it be?
My word is free. I wrote about my definition of food freedom here, but ultimately in 2025, I want to continue focusing on learning about, synthesizing, cooking, and sharing food in a way that feels empowering, nourishing, delicious, intuitive, and freeing.
7. What is one habit or mindset shift you’d like to carry into the new year?
One thing I want to prioritize more in 2025 is getting more high-quality organ meats into my diet. I’ve known for a while that organs are very nutrient-dense and especially important for hormonal health, but in the last few months as I’ve been working with Lineage, I’ve learned even more from Paul Saladino and the team and am realizing this is an area I can up my game!
Two of the biggest organs I want to get more of are liver and heart.
Liver contains more B12 (one of the most essential vitamins, and the one most lacking in those on vegan and vegetarian diets) than any other food source: three times as much as kidney and 17 times the amount found in ground beef. Liver also has tons of vitamin A, which is a very essential vitamin. As outlined on the Force of Nature blog, “you’ve probably been told that you should eat carrots for their retinol and beta-carotine, both of which the body converts to vitamin A, but half a cup of raw carrots contains only 10,692 IU of retinol and .534 milligrams of beta-carotine. A single gram of beef liver, on the other hand, contains 53,000 IU of vitamin A. Red muscle meat, by the way, offers just 40 IU per gram.”
Heart on the other hand is rich in Riboflavin and CoQ10, which also super important for tons of things but also critical to egg + sperm quality! Here is a short reel from Paul explaining more about heart and about organs in general.
Next up: I’m going to get back to buying the Ancestral Blend from Force of Nature (with heart and liver) at Whole Foods, using the Lineage ABC Chocolate Protein, snacking on the meat sticks, and exploring where I can source some more organ products locally here in SoCal. I need to chat with some of the meat vendors at the farmers market when I get back to town!
8. Is there one habit around food you’d like to eliminate or replace in 2025?
The habit I want to change is about how fast I eat! There is actually tons of research that eating slower improves digestion AND some research that says when you eat slower, it can lead to increased release of satiety hormones like peptide YY (PYY) and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), promoting feelings of fullness. I spend probably just as much time taking photos of my food as I do eating it 🤣 and I want to invert that!
9. What foods or cooking styles do you want to explore or bring more of into your life?
Things on my list to learn how to do next year:
Make a killer homemade nut and seed bread
Start fermenting my own cabbage (maybe?)
Come up with 5 killer staple ways to prepare salmon, right now I just alternate between two methods, but I want to zhuzh it up
Become a grill master this summer (Alex usually does our grilling)
Find more creative ways to try and use all kitchens scraps (for example I made a great coffee ground granola with old coffee grounds, I want to do more of things like that)
Use kimchi in my dishes more, and experiment with Korean cooking generally
Take another knife skills class - I’ve done a few but feel like I learn something new every time!
What’s on your list? I want to know! Maybe I’ll add it to my list too!
10. How will you prioritize making cooking and eating a joyful, nourishing, and FUN experience?
I love cooking with Alex, but also engaging with YOU guys is what makes cooking fun! I love getting questions, comments, or hearing your spins on my recipes. Maybe I need to start doing some casual cooking IG lives so it feels like we are cooking together?
THIS WAS FUN! I’d love to hear one or all of your answers to these questions! Please please comment below!
This Chocolate Molten Cake is a simple dessert with minimal ingredients, but it feels so fancy and fun! Whenever I need a last minute dessert to serve or bring to a friend’s house, this is my go-to.
Let’s talk sugars
This recipe uses allulose instead of refined white sugar. You’ve probably heard me talk about allulose before, but if you are new here, let me explain! Allulose is a rare, naturally occurring sugar found in small amounts in foods like figs and raisins. Unlike traditional sugars, allulose is absorbed by the body but not metabolized, meaning it doesn’t spike blood glucose or insulin levels. It also has a smooth, sweet flavor and no aftertaste (unlike monk fruit!), so it’s my go-to sugar substitute for recipes. However, it’s about 70% less sweet as regular sugar, so you need to use about 25% more if you are modifying a recipe with white sugar for the same result.
The world of sugars can be very confusing, so I’m including a brief recap of the sugars out there from the Levels blog with my 2c on them:
Sugar: sucrose (table sugar, which is fructose + glucose), brown sugar, cane sugar (AVOID)
Sugar alcohol: xylitol, erythritol (AVOID)
Artificial sweeteners: saccharin, aspartame, sucralose (AVOID)
Natural sweeteners: allulose, monk fruit, stevia, yacón syrup
These are all plant-derived, making them distinct from artificial sugars. Since these sweeteners are either low in calories or calorie-free, they also differ from natural forms of sugar like honey, molasses, agave, and maple syrup. (MODERATION)
Natural sugars: maple syrup, honey, agave syrup (MODERATION)
Of the sugars on this list, my go-to is raw honey because of the antioxidant benefits, and then maple syrup and allulose. Ideally, you get the majority of your sugars from natural sources (i.e., fruit and the natural sugars in whole foods like sweet potatoes), but of course there are special occasions when we want to bring a molten chocolate cake or fun treat! That’s why I keep Allulose by RX Sugar or Wholesome Allulose stocked in my pantry.
Let’s heavy metals in chocolate
Let’s also briefly talk about heavy metals in chocolate. Dark chocolate often contains trace amounts of heavy metals like lead and cadmium. Ugh, annoying to hear, I know. But why is this the case? I went down a research rabbit hole so you don’t have to.
Soil: Cacao trees absorb heavy metals like cadmium from the soil in which they grow. This is especially common in regions where the soil contains higher levels of cadmium, either from naturally occurring sources or contamination caused by pollution or fertilizers. Solving for eliminating cadmium is challenging because it’s naturally occurring, so this is one reason why most chocolate has traces of heavy metals. A ton of various techniques for cadmium removal have been explored, like breeding or genetically engineering plants to take up less of the heavy metal and replacing older cacao trees with younger ones, because cadmium levels tend to increase as the plants get older. Since cadmium can also be added from fertilizers, it’s more likely in places with industrial agriculture practices, so if you prioritize purchasing organic and direct-trade chocolate, that’s one step in the right direction.
Processing: Lead and cadmium can enter the drying places if the beans are dried near industrial areas (from lead-filled dust and dirt), as well as in the processing from the machinery or industrial processing environment that might have lead-based parts or soldering.
Heavy metals or other toxins can also enter during transport or storage, but the two biggest sources are the soil and processing.
So what brands should you prioritize?
Many organic chocolate bars have still tested positive for heavy metals (even my favorite, Hu Kitchen tested positive in the past😢). I still like and will buy Hu (on occasion) because it’s free of refined sugar, cane sugar, sugar alcohols, palm oil, lecithins, emulsifiers and other bad stuff. Similar to most chocolate brands, it does contain trace amounts of heavy metals. I recently emailed them to check the latest, and they confirmed their levels are all well below the standard limit.👇🏼
Another chocolate brand that I love is called Spring & Mulberry, and their products are marketed as containing no heavy metals, with their cacao beans being sourced through direct-trade and a single-origin estate in Ghana that is one of the country’s first-ever organic and regenerative farms. It’s also tested by a third party to ensure very low levels of heavy metals. Instead of sweetening with refined sugar, they use dates - so their only ingredients are: cacao beans, dates, cacao butter. 👏🏼
So what should you do about heavy metals in chocolate?
My 2c is 1) don’t overdo it with chocolate and consume it every single day, and 2) when you do consume chocolate, try to buy the best quality possible, and 3) enjoy it!
The last thing I’ll say on this topic (for now! ha!) is one way to better understand your toxin exposure is the Genova Metabolomix test. I did this test about 6 months ago and learned that my toxin exposure is very very low, so that gave me peace of mind that my dietary and lifestyle habits to reduce toxin exposure are working, and the occasional chocolate treat is okay!
If you want to learn more about heavy metals in chocolate, you might find this 2023 Consumer Reports study interesting. Warning, you might become disenchanted by some of your favorite brands after reading! However, many of these brands have made updates since their report came out.
This is from 2023, and a number of these brands have updated their practices since this came out, so it’s fair to check in with them to get the latest info!
Okay after all of that, hopefully you still want to make these molten chocolate cakes because they are divine and a CROWD PLEASER!
Yields: 4 servings
Total time: ~20-25 minutes
Prep time: 10-15 minutes
Cook time: 6-9 minutes
What you’ll need:
Mixing bowl (I love Duralex)
Double broiler or a small sauce pan + large bowl to make a make-shift double broiler
Get the full recipe + video here!
This recipe is for my paid Color Club members only! It’s $5/month or $50/year and you get (at least) 1 new colorful recipe each week, as well as access to a library of 50+ recipes (and growing!). Join here!
If you make this recipe (or ANY of my recipes!), I’d LOVE to hear how it turned out and any feedback you have! Give me your notes - big and small, and if you are on IG, tag me @sonjakmanning.
Chefs kisses and happy holidays!!
Sonja
So much in your post! Happy time in New Zealand! staying balanced with protein and not overloaded with carbs has been very challenging this holiday season. Cooking with/for my vegan daughter is fun but protein was lacking. Eating traditional Mexican foods with my husband’s family also too hard. Tamales, buñuelos, pozole…
Looking forward to all your new recipes including organ meats!!