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lean eats

Friday Fare, Health

Friday Fare – Healthified ice-cream with toffee sauce

March 7, 2014

Woooow, it’s Friday already?? Umm, the weeks pass by too fast for me. And I have a lot of work due next week for uni, so that’s not necessarily a good thing lol.

Anyway, I thought I would show you all how to make a healthier and clean version of everyone’s favorite dessert: ice-cream! And since I loooove toffee, I thought I would show you how to make a healthy version of that, to drizzle on top of the ice-cream.

Healthified ice-cream with toffee sauce

Healthified ice-cream with toffee sauce

I was inspired to do this, because a) I freaking love ice cream, and b) I am in LOVE with banoffee pie. Read bananas and toffee in a pie. Together. Heaven in a pie. And because this ice cream is made out of bananas, I thought it would be delicious to pair it with a healthy and raw toffee sauce 🙂

This recipe was also inspired by recipes featured on Blogilates and The Detoxinista 🙂

And note, before you can do ANYTHING, make sure your bananas are ripe and sweet and then slice it up and freeze the banana slices overnight. This is a crucial first step, as the frozen banana slices is what gives you a deliciously sweet and creamy texture to the ‘ice-cream.’

Also PLEASE USE NATURAL PEANUT BUTTER and not just any old peanut butter 🙂

Alright, banana slices all frozen? Excellent, let us move on.

 

Healthified Ice-Cream with Toffee Sauce

Alice Williams
Healthy 'ice-cream' that literally tastes and has the exact same texture as ice-cream!
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Ingredients
  

  • For the Ice Cream
  • 2 bananas sliced and frozen
  • 1 tbsp Peanut Butter
  • For the Toffee Sauce
  • 12 pitted medjool dates
  • 3 tbsp milk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions
 

  • To make the ice cream
  • 1. Throw your banana slices (or you can gently guide them) into your blender, and whizz it until the consistency becomes smooth and creamy. This will be done very quickly if you have a Vitamix or Ninja blender and unfortunately will take longer with a less high powered one. I found that a food processor actually worked very well in getting a very ice-cream like texture, but perhaps that has more to do with the fact that my housemates food processor is perfect ..
  • 2. Then add your peanut butter to the mixture. Blend for another 30 seconds – 1 minute.
  • To make the toffee sauce
  • 1. Make sure you soften the dates by soaking them in hot water for a few minutes (3-5 is fine) first.
  • 2. Once the dates are soft, add the dates in first and blend them for a bit until adding in your milk and vanilla extract.
  • 3. Blend until your desired consistency (I wanted to leave mine a bit gritty and thick) and then either add to the ice-cream, on top or by swirling it in orrrrr just eat it. Hehe, it is really good.

Notes

Adapted from Blogilates and the Detoxinista
Healthified ice-cream with toffee sauce

Healthified ice-cream with toffee sauce

I hope you like this recipe as much as I do!! I normally like to add some unsweetened cocoa powder to my ice-cream mix, or I stir in some unsweetened coconut flakes and dark chocolate chips. Experiment, the possibilities are endless!

If you make this delicious dessert and post it on Instagram, Facebook, or any form of social media, please tag me and hashtag it with #fridayfare and #honestlyfitness so I can find you 🙂 My name on all social media outlets is just ‘Honestly Fitness’.

Love you all so much, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And remember to indulge once in a while! I had a ridiculously decadent little dessert last night and plan to go out for Indian food with my good friends tomorrow night. Although health and fitness is important, it is all about balance. Don’t deprive yourself, and don’t go too crazy 🙂

Honestly yours,
Alice

Friday Fare, Health

Friday Fare – Honey Lavender Oatmeal with Blueberries

March 2, 2014

Ahh, what could be more sweet than honey and lavender? I’ll tell you what … honey and lavender combined with hearty oatmeal and fresh blueberries!

Honey Lavender Oatmeal with Blueberries

After making the Green Post’s delicious Apple Butternut and Lavender pancakes a few weeks ago, I have been thinking of ways to use the lavender that I bought. It has such a beautiful smell and taste, and I knew there had to be a way to incorporate it in a novel way into a recipe. Et voila: my honey lavender oatmeal with blueberries was born!

I don’t have oatmeal as often as I did when I was in England (I was SO cold in England, I needed all the warmth I could get) but I love it because it is a filling, delicious and healthy breakfast meal. Oatmeal is a funny one though because you have to be careful about what type of oats you buy. I recommend you buy traditional rolled oats, or steel cut oats. I would advise you to stay away from instant oatmeal, because apart from the fact that most are flavored (and thus have loads of sugar), instant oatmeal has been highly processed to make it quicker to cook so it is also broken down more quickly by your body resulting in a higher glycaemic index. It isn’t the end of the world if you buy PLAIN instant oatmeal, but if you can, try and buy traditional rolled oats or steel cut oats as they have a lower glycaemic index 🙂

Alright, let’s get down to business!

Honey Lavender Oatmeal

Alice Williams
Melt in your mouth oatmeal with sweet honey and notes of lavender
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Ingredients
  

  • 1/4-1/2 cup oatmeal
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 cup blueberries
  • 1 tbsp raw honey
  • 1 tsp dried lavender
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions
 

  • 1. Pour the milk and lavender into a pot. Heat the milk and the lavender on a low heat for 5 minutes to allow the lavender to infuse into the milk. Do NOT boil the milk. After 5 minutes is up, pour the milk back into the pot using a sieve to catch the lavender buds.
  • 2. Now add your oatmeal; as you can see I am using steel cut oats so the time I have to cook these for is longer than traditional rolled oats. Heat the lavender infused milk and oatmeal on a medium-high heat for 15-20 minutes.
  • 3. Once the oatmeal is cooked, transfer it to a bowl and then drizzle 1 tablespoon of honey onto it. I use Eco pollen's raw honey as it is one of the best honey's I have ever tasted.
  • 4. Wait about 5 minutes, or until your oatmeal has cooled slightly, and then add your blueberries.

Notes

Feel free to sub the milk for your preferred milk such as almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk and etc.

Honey Lavender Oatmeal with Blueberries

Honey Lavender Oatmeal with Blueberries

A super-easy and delicious way to enjoy breakfast 🙂

There are so many ways you can get creative with this. Make overnight oats, and add chia seeds, and coconut flakes!

Honey Lavender Oatmeal with Blueberries

NOTE

I am discontinuing the posting of the nutritional information because the numbers can vary so much depending on what brands you use.

Let me know what you think of this recipe, and whether you like the lavender infusion by leaving me a comment below!

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness, Health, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary

February 16, 2014

Congratulations on another successful week everyone! I hope you have all been mindful of what you have been eating (Valentine’s Day is of course an exception!) and making sure you are staying active throughout the week.

What did you all do for Valentine’s Day? My Valentine of 5 years was sweet enough to come and see visit me (he lives about an hour and a half away) and we went out for Japanese food. I had a delicious and hearty soup of soba noodles (soba noodles are made out of buckwheat) and we shared some gyoza (how can you not?) and some grilled lamb chops.

We went to Sushi Zen; have any of you San Franciscans ever been there?

Apart from the extremely decadent banoffee pie (recipe here) I made as a Valentine’s Day gift, this weekend has been surprisingly healthy. I for one always give myself a little more wiggle room during the weekends because I like to meet up for meals with friends and I know that it is unrealistic to expect to eat healthily 100% of the time. My boyfriend and I went to a great restaurant for lunch yesterday in the Castro area of San Francisco called Chow. They had many healthy options, and a lot of their offerings were organic which is always nice to see. I got a Chai BaBa Chai to drink (delishhhh), Arancini as a shared appetizer and an amazing Beet salad with greens, fennel, endive, grapefruit, goat cheese and avocado.

Jump rope is #bae

In fitness news, I have re-discovered my love for jump rope (a.k.a skipping for all my European readers)! I became inspired by seeing amazing jump rope videos by the likes of Michael Olajide, Jr. who trains various models including Adriana Lima, and bernapril20 from Instagram. Jump rope is also a great form of cardio and strength conditioning so I highly recommend you try it out. I recently reached out to Miss Galaxy Australia 2012, Danielle Johnson, and asked her what she did to keep her legs in amazing shape, and one of her pieces of advice was to jump rope! So just do it everyone, it’s cheap, can be done anywhere and portable.

Here is a little video I posted of me on Instagram doing criss-cross jumps. I was SO excited I could do these again … they are harder than they look everyone!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yxSXAEfTY&feature=youtu.be]

Hope everyone had a great weekend, and have a great fresh start to your week! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a message in the comment section below, email me or get in touch via my social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest).

Honestly yours,
Alice