A Cocoa-Coated Vanilla Protein Fluff Dumplings, Julia Child, & Bruce Wayne

You may be wondering, what does a cocoa-coated vanilla protein fluff dumplings have to do with Julia Child and… Bruce Wayne!? Let me tell you, beginning with the legend that is Julia

Julia Child once said that “the only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking, you’ve GOT to have a what-the-hell attitude.” Now, I love that quote because it’s absolutely true! and because it extends beyond cooking and into the realms of life in general.

I mean, having a ‘what-the-hell-attitude’ is essential to stepping outside one’s comfort zone and breaking one’s own self-imposed boundaries, in a way. I don’t mean reckless what-the-helling, but calculated outside-the-box thinking. It’s what guides experimental cooking and what informs every decision that involves an uncertain outcome – this notion that “you know what, I’m going to GO for it!”

Which brings me to Bruce Wayne. You know, to the part in The Dark Knight Rises where Bruce Wayne is trying to make that jump and he can’t, and he can’t, and he can’t… UNTIL he takes off the security rope and just goes for it (here’s a clip of the scene I’m talking about). Sure, he could have died (and the movie would have sucked! haha) but he jumped anyways – unafraid, confident, and undaunted, BOOOM!

The same approach can – and should, I think – be used in cooking. It’s what guides most of my cooking and what informs recipes like this one. I just thought, “I’m going to give this idea a shot, what’s the worst that can happen? If it works, it’ll be amazing. If it doesn’t, what the hell, at least I tried and I’ll learn from it for next time!”

 Ingredients:

1/2 a frozen banana
1 scoop vanilla whey powder
1/8 cup milk
1 rice paper
Cocoa powder

Directions: 

1. Make some banana protein fluff by blending and then (electrically) whisking the banana + whey + milk for 4-5 minutes. You can use berries instead of banana if you want too and chocolate whey instead of vanilla. Actually, you can use any whey you want and any fruit – as long as the fruit is frozen before you blend it all together.

2. Get out some rice paper (I get ‘Blue Dragon Spring Roll Wrappers‘) and drown the paper in some hot water until it gets soft (after 15-20 seconds). Each rice paper is 37.7kcals with 8.7g or carbs and pretty much no protein or fat. It’s basically just… rice + tapioca flour 😉

3.  Fill the rice paper with the fluff and press the end together so it seals.

4.  Put some cocoa powder on a little bowl and dip the fluff-containing-dumpling on it.

5. DIG. IN.

Macros per Dumpling (out of 3):

127kcals
17g carbs (6g sugars)
10g protein
2g fat
0.7g fiber

Result?

Interesting! And delicious. You first get this warm rice-layer and then KAPOW! an explosion of cold, light, and smooth creaminess takes over.

It kind of reminded me of rice pudding. I know that sounds weird but, you know, the creamy vanillaness and rice really was reminiscent of rice pudding (albeit a wacked-out version of it).

And then the whole thing was so fun to eat! At first I didn’t know how to approach it. Should I slice it? Cut into it with a knife? With a spoon? or should I just… grab it and munch it whole like… a fig?

You can imagine what I did. I bit into it and literally BOOOOM! 😀

The rice paper is so cool. It’s basically just carbs but it’s gluten-free and you can do all sorts of stuff with it! Like fill it with fluff. Or savory things of course (this being, after all, what it was ‘designed’ for, hehe).

But I’m going to keep playing around with this rice paper + fluff idea. Maybe use a casein fluff next time for extra creamy fluff? Or add some chia seeds? Or make a lot of tiny dumplings and dump them on a bed of fluff? Or… ? I don’t know, I’m just going to continue having fun with it 🙂

Note: I’d like to now leave you with another Julia quote, to hopefully inspire you further to play more with your food!

“This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!” (from Julia’s My Life in France, 2006).