French Macarons: Baking Like a Pro

December 10, 2014

I teased you all about my French macaron class last Sunday over at this post, so now I will finally reveal my fabulous morning of french macarons and baking like a pro!

Something you may not know is that I absolutely love baking, and that includes both healthy and not quite so healthy baked goods. The healthy stuff is usually just for me whereas the more indulgent baked goods are usually for my boyfriend and friends. My favorite healthy baked goods are my grain-free and refined sugar-free fudge brownies (SO GOOD), my blueberry coconut muffins, and my sugar free muffins.

I became obsessed with french macarons a few months ago because my former housemate, Alisa, started baking them, which in turn led to my boyfriend becoming obsessed with them! For those of you who do not know what french macarons are, they are a delicious ‘cookie’ made out of almond flour. Not to be confused with coconut macaroons. Anyway, although most of Alisa’s batches turned out well, it was really a 50:50 sort of thing and I knew it was annoying the heck out of her because she is a massive perfectionist (in a good way) 🙂 So when I saw that Macaronage Macarons bakery in Stockton were holding a class on how to bake french macarons I knew that we both had to attend!

Macaronage Macarons

Macaronage Macarons is an adorable bakery that specializes in macarons. It is located in Stockton, CA (where my boyfriend did his undergraduate) and is about an hour and a half drive from San Francisco.

French Macarons: Baking Like A Pro

Alisa and I were lucky enough to attend their newly launched macaron baking classes last sunday. The class was 2 and a half hours long and taught by the lovely Grace, the owner of Macaronage Macarons and macaron expert.

The class started off with some short introductions and then got straight into baking! Grace provided us all with a cheat sheet with recipes of macarons, various fillings, and the secret to how Macaronage Macarons make such amazing macarons (hint hint, it’s all to do with the type of method you use). We all practiced piping the macaron batter first before we actually made our ow macarons. I am so glad we got to practice because my first attempt was honestly horrendous. But my second attempt was pretty good for a first-time macaron baker (yeah, tooting my own horn).

We all got to choose our own food dye and so I chose a cute fuchsia color and clever Alisa made this gorgeous Tiffany blue color (she is obsessed lol) by mixing two food dyes together. We later learned how to make 4 different kinds of fillings and filled our macarons. The fillings were chocolate, buttercream, salted caramel and mint chocolate. I used all 4 fillings of course haha, got to have that variety 🙂

The class was $35 and was such a fantastic price considering that you are paying for both Grace’s time and for the ingredients that were provided to us. Most places in the Bay Area (and Salt Lake City, I checked) start at $85 for a 2 or 3 hour class which is just ridiculous. It was quite a drive out to Stockton but definitely worth it. Wish I didn’t have to rush back and study right after though!

The finished product!

Who else here loves baking? What is your favorite healthy (or non-healthy) thing you like to bake?

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness, Kayla Itsines

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 10

December 7, 2014

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a lovely weekend and that your first week of December was a good one. This week has been a busy one as I am nearing the end of the semester (i.e. lots of assignments are now due). Let’s start off with my usual talk about my week’s workouts and nutrition before I end the post with a short recap of my week.

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 10

You know, for some reason I had gotten the impression that week 10 of Kayla Itsines (read more about her bikini body guide by clicking here) wasn’t that bad. Why I got that impression, I do not know as it was so much harder than I imagined!!! I could only just about make it through one round of each circuit (for all 3 workouts this week; legs, arms, and abs). I had honestly though that I had gotten better at snap jumps but when I saw I had to do 50 of them for the abs workout, it almost killed me. I think I find it so hard because every part of your body is being used; arms, abs and legs. I am definitely miles stronger at doing commandos however, as those really did not scare me quite as much as they used to. How do you guys find snap jumps and commandos?

Oh gosh, I just started thinking about tomorrow and the legs workout I have to do. I wish I had a workout buddy who was also doing the Kayla Itsines bikini body guide!

Nutrition

The cold weather is really making me crave warm soups and SWEETS! I had an awful beef stew from campus during the week that I highly regretted and about a million mocha lattes although I did order just an espresso today to try and stop that trend. I have been making my baked zucchini fritters a lot as they are delicious, healthy and filling, and tried my hand at making a roasted cauliflower soup with cumin which was absolutely delicious. In terms of sweeties, I’ve been nibbling a lot on cookies that I had baked for one of my classes and macarons … you will find out how I got these macarons in my weekly recap 🙂 I think that perhaps I should revisit my article on how to kick swee t tooth and take my own advice!

I also went to try Kin Khao, a Thai restaurant, with my friends and that was great. The portions were a lot smaller than I thought they’d be so for once I left a restaurant without feeling completely stuffed! For anyone in San Francisco who is looking for a more upscale and unique Thai restaurant then I would highly recommend Kin Khao. And do me a favor, order the rabbit green curry! Oh and get this – the drink in the photo is blue limeade. The drink is served to you blue and turns pink when the lime juice is added.

Macarons!

The most exciting part of my week was definitely when I attended a FRENCH MACARON BAKING CLASS this morning!!! I am planning on writing a recap post so for now I will leave you with this photo …

Apart from attending Kin Khao, seeing the beautiful Christmas tree in Union Square, and the macaron baking class, my week was very busy and full of studying and work. I think that my goals for this next week will be to reduce the sugar I have been having and to make more soups, since my body is definitely starting to crave something other than my cold (albeit delicious) wraps and salads.

How were your weekends? What workouts are you currently doing?

Honestly yours
Alice

P.S. Featured cover image is courtesy of @befitsmoothies on Instagram.

Fitness

Keeping accountable over the holidays with Fitbit

December 3, 2014

“Fitbit? Like, that exercise tracker that celebrities like Ryan Reynolds and Kelly Ripa have?”

Umm, yes and no! Fitbit is actually the brand name of several products including the Fitbit Flex (that Ryan Reynolds has) and quite a few others. These products help people track a whole bunch of things such as their activity, sleep and calories burned. The product I’m going to be talking about today, however, is the Fitbit Aria and how I think it can help keep you accountable over the holidays.

To give you some background information, the Fitbit Aria is a “wi-fi smart scale” that helps track your weight, body fat and BMI (I don’t think BMI is particularly important though). Since it is a wi-fi scale, before you use it you have to set it up so that it can link to your home wi-fi so that it sends over your information to your Fitbit online account whenever you weigh yourself. It also recognizes up to eight people and helps keep you motivated by earning cute badges such as weight loss badges, sending you achievement alerts and a weekly email about your measurements. Sounds so cool right?!

I’m not going to lie; when I received my Fitbit Aria in the mail, I totally squealed. The packaging itself was beautiful and high-tech looking, so I couldn’t wait to open it up and see my beautiful new Fitbit Aria! I received a flashy black Fitbit Aria and yes, it is beautiful. Here’s a photo juuust in case you don’t believe me.

I have loved using it so much, especially since my former scale was getting pretty old and inaccurate. I normally don’t like weighing myself, but since the Fitbit Aria provides so much information, I actually look forward to stepping on the scale (except if I had a slice of pumpkin pie the night before, my weakness)! Although I think that keeping track of your progress through how you look is important, since I am already quite small, being able to keep track of my measurements is so important to keep myself accountable. Especially over the holiday season! Since I am a smaller girl, a lot of the time I’ll just be like “Ehh, I can totally pig out, it won’t affect me thaaat much.” And yes my dears, indulging here and there is perfectly healthy and balanced. But in America where you have Thanksgiving and then Christmas a month after, a whole month of indulgence can take its toll. And don’t even start on the holiday drinks at Starbucks and the holiday goodies that pop up EVERYWHERE …

“It keeps you accountable over the holidays”

The Fitbit Aria provides graphs and charts so that you can easily visualize your progress, which has been really useful in seeing when I have been indulging a bit too much. Sometimes it’s hard for us to tell ourselves to back off the pumpkin pie for a while, and I like that I have the Fitbit Aria to do this for me!

I wish I had the Fitbit Flex though as I think having the two products together is a perfect complement. Regardless, I do love my new Fitbit Aria and have found it really useful for making sure I stay accountable this holiday season. No one wants their hard work to go to waste, and I think the scale is a great way to ensure I maintain a balance between holiday indulgences, eating healthy foods and staying active.

With that said, I think I am going to go for a workout! How do you #findyourfit?

Honestly yours,
Alice

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Fitbit through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about Fitbit, all opinions are my own.