Friday Fare – Coconut Whipped Cream

January 31, 2014

Coconut Whipped Cream Recipe

I am so excited to share this weeks edition of Friday Fare with you and teach you all how to make Coconut Whipped Cream!! My post on ‘How to Kick your Sweet Tooth‘ got a huge amount of hits, so I am excited to share this healthy dessert that is sweet, delicious, and not something to feel bad about eating. Again, it is all about balance so don’t go nuts and eat the whole bowl! But if you do …. hey, it won’t be that bad 😉 This coconut whipped cream recipe was taught to me by my boyfriends aunt, who happens to be sugar-free and gluten-free. It took me a while to understand how to make it, what to make it with, but I finally cracked it! It took me a while because you need to specifically get coconut cream, plus you need to chill it overnight.

Here are the ingredients.

As I previously said, you need Coconut Cream (NOT coconut milk, or light coconut cream, you need the hard full fat stuff), liquid stevia, and vanilla essence. I want to add that it is really worth it to buy a more expensive vanilla essence and liquid stevia as they really make a difference to the taste of the coconut whipped cream. Optional ingredients are unsweetened cocoa powder (I used this as the coconut taste was too strong for my liking), or another flavoring. You will also need an electric hand mixer. These are very cheap, I got mine at Target for only $6! It is not the best, but it does the job (a little bit more slowly though).

1. This first step is CRUCIAL. You must refrigerate your can of coconut cream overnight so that it stiffens up. This is what it should look like when you scoop it out of a can (if it looks more solid that is fine too).

2. Once your coconut cream has been chilled overnight, open it up and scoop out the contents into a big bowl. make sure there is no liquid remaining because then this recipe will not work.

3. Start whisking away with your hand mixer for about 3-5 minutes until it takes on a thicker and more whipped consistency

4. Add a teaspoon of vanilla essence and 10 drops of liquid stevia. Continue whisking for another minute or so. Continually taste it and adjust it to how sweet you want it.

Ta-da! And there you have it! A delicious and easy way to make a healthy whipped cream 🙂 As you can see in the photo below, I added 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa because the coconut taste was a little too strong.

The nutritional content is variable upon the type of coconut cream you use and if you use unsweetened cocoa. The following nutritional values are for the whole bowl of coconut whipped cream, so don’t be alarmed at the numbers … just try not to eat the whole bowl 😉

Calories: 700
Carbohydrates: 9g
Sugar: 0g (sugar free, yay!)
Fat: 71g
Protein: 6.5g
Fiber: 0g

Let me know what you think of my coconut whipped cream recipe! For next week I am thinking of making something like a sugarfree (but delicious) cookie or cupcake to put the whipped cream on top of … mmmmmm.

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness

Elevate Fitness: Ele_Sculpt

January 30, 2014

Last week, I tried out a new workout class called Ele_sculpt at a workout studio called Elevate Group Fitness. Although I love the gym and all of the workouts I do, I walk past this place on my way to the gym and it made me wonder what it was. There are two locations, one in Hayes Valley and one on Ocean Avenue; I walk past the one on Ocean Avenue. I was really curious about what they had to offer (yoga? pilates?) and I like to try new things to shake things up and keep my body challenged. Wonderfully enough, if you have never been to a class there, your first class is free!

Elevate Fitness

It was really sunny that day so apologies for the shadows .. isn’t the exterior cute though? So friendly and welcoming.

Anyway, I decided to go to an Ele_sculpt class although there are a total of three classes to go to: Ele_sculpt, Ele_barre and Ele_yoga. I was told is that Ele_sculpt is a more all over body workout so you hit your arms, core and legs. Ele_barre is more focused on giving you long and lean dancers legs (you can’t elongate your legs by the way folks, but you can give the illusion of length). Ele_yoga is a yoga practice but incorporating elements of aerial yoga (something I really, really want to try)!

I walked into the studio and … I saw the amazing pieces of equipment that you are seeing above!! I absolutely love using bands to workout with so by this point I was about to die at how excited I was. The demographic was definitely older than I thought. I don’t know why but I thought everyone would be 20 year olds or something. Everyone was very nice and friendly though, they all obviously knew each other and there was a great sense of community.

The next hour was intense .. I consider myself to be a pretty fit person but geez, I was disgustingly sweaty in the first 20 minutes .. We started out with some yoga, and a cute little motivational speech which was a nice touch and then we dove straight into it. Core work, cardio, leg work, arm work … it covered it all. We used the barre for the leg work and I was embarassed at how much I had to stop haha, but I was a lot better when it came to the arm work. My current goal for this year is to do 10 consecutive pull ups AND chin ups so I have been working my upper body a laaaht.

This is Amanda, the lovely and informative instructor who taught the class that day! Ignore me though lol. I loved her energy and the fact that she made sure to walk around and check everyone’s form.

All in all I really enjoyed the class! Although I am quite a gym junkie (I repeat, building upper body strength …) I would definitely go again and I recommend you all give it a go 🙂

Honestly yours,
Alice

Health

Carbs are not the devil

January 28, 2014

It seems like everyday I hear someone demonizing carbs; “Yeah, today I’m not gonna eat any carbs” or even worse “I am on a low carb diet.” But guys, carbs are not the devil!

With the rise of diets that claim you can ‘lose weight fast!’ by reducing your carbohydrate intake, or dropping this macronutrient entirely, it is no wonder people automatically assume that you will lose weight if you cut your carbohydrate intake. And to be honest it works at first, because when you reduce how many carbohydrates you eat, your body reduces the amount of insulin produced which in turn makes your body use protein or fat as its energy source.

The Problem With Low-Carb Diets

The problem with this however, is that you cannot be on a life long low carbohydrate diet. Sure, it may work in the short term, but the body, and especially the brain, requires carbohydrates for energy. The brain cells ONLY use glucose as an energy source and because it cannot store glucose, they depend on the bloodstream to deliver glucose to it. Carbohydrates get broken down into glucose, so if you remove carbohydrates from your diet, how is your brain supposed to function? Protein gets broken down into glycogen, and fats get broken down into glycerol and fatty acids, but they are nowhere near as efficient as glucose. I want a healthy and working brain thanks. There are many other dangers that can happen to you if you follow a low carb diet for you long such as

-feeling extremely tired all the time
-loss of muscle mass because you just don’t have the energy to workout
-constipation and bowel issues (from a reduction in fiber)
-dehydration
-longer term health issues such as your immune system becoming weaker

Carbs are not the devil

It is really not worth it. Seriously, I went on a verrry low carbohydrate diet last year and although I lost a lot of weight, I was tired all the time, and honestly it put me through a really hard time as I gained most of the weight back plus some (which thankfully I have lost through a HEALTHY and BALANCED diet!). I tried going back on my low carb diet at first, exercised like crazy but literally nothing worked because my body was so used to not having carbohydrates that even though I was eating completely healthy foods, I could not lose the weight. It seriously freaked me out because I have never had so much trouble losing weight in my life. My body had adapted to having such a low amount of carbs, that even eating a normal amount of carbohydrates would make me gain weight.

What We Should Be Focusing On

If anything we should really be more focused on cutting our sugar consumption, and not just the obvious things like chocolate and soft drinks like coke. You would be so surprised at how much added sugars are in such innocent products. An example would be ketchup, it is practically all sugar! And I am talking about sugars such as sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, beet sugar, cane sugar, and liquid fructose. Although fruits are very healthy, unfortunately a lot of companies have been adding fructose (fruit sugar) to products to make them sweeter. If you want a more in-depth explanation about how bad added sugar (not naturally occurring sugars, I am not trying to demonize anything natural) can be for you, click here.

My Advice?

Just be sensible everyone and realize that carbs are not the devil; nor is any other macronutrient. There is no need to completely cut out any food group. Balance is the key. And sure, you can still enjoy your guilty pleasures too, just make sure that they aren’t an everyday occurrence. And again, if you eat too many carbohydrates then you may gain weight. But quite frankly, if you eat too much of anything, there is a high chance you will gain weight. Calories are calories, although not all calories are created equal (give me 300 calories of shrimp over 300 calories of non-nutritious rice cakes any day).

Let Me Know What YOU Think

What diets have you heard about? I would love to hear what they are, as I am always discovering weirder and weirder ones .. someone told me about a 500 calorie diet a day and I just about died.

Honestly yours,
Alice

References
The Hidden Dangers of a Low Carbohydrate Diet
Low Carbohydrate Diets: Going Against The Grain