Tag Archives: chocolate

The Fourth

I hope everyone enjoyed their Fourth of July holiday! I sure did. :)

On Tuesday after work, I drove to the small town of Hickory, North Carolina to visit one of my friends who is interning here through the summer. The hour drive was thankfully traffic free, and I took the opportunity to turn up the music and belt out some of my favorite songs. While I am not a fan of driving in the city, I love being on the open highway and just spending a little alone time in the car.

After I arrived, Ashley gave me a little tour of the downtown area. It was so cute and rustic!

We went to a local place for dinner and Ashley had the brilliant idea of making the most delicious dessert ever (that Kath had apparently made over the weekend). These little muffin-shaped desserts and ridiculously decadent, and full of sugar and (most importantly) chocolate. I craved something sweet and celebratory, so I decided to go for it and we made literally the most unhealthy dessert ever.

And it was so good.

I don’t usually eat sugar-filled, fat-packed, artery-clogging food, but when I do, I don’t mess around ;) .

It looks innocuous upon first glance, but these babies are a layered combo of cookie dough, a reese’s cup, and brownie batter.

so freakin delicious

These might have been the highlight of my holiday break (other than seeing Ashley, of course).

As I waited for my blood sugar levels to recover, I read a book, blogged, laid out by the pool, and did some stuff for work. All in all, a great (indulgent) day :)

Any fun stories or crazy delicious food?

Foodie Pen Pals: May

My trip to Charlotte yesterday was very successful. I met with my future boss and coworkers AND signed my lease for my new apartment. It still feels like I am playing dress-up when I put on professional clothes, but soon I think the reality will sink in (I start work in mid June, so maybe by July?). On the downside, my company has a fairly strict dress code and does not allow open toe shoes, which is sad because I love wedge sandals. Also it is just so hard to find comfortable pumps!

It’s time for another Foodie Pen Pals post!

Lindsay at The Lean Green Bean organizes this every month, and I just keep coming back for more :) . Check out her blog for more information on how to sign up for June-it is open for both bloggers and readers!. Here are the links to my posts from March and April.

One of the best thins about this program is getting to try different healthy treats that I might never buy for myself. Brittany from beermeamartini sent me a crazy delicious package filled with cool foods that were mostly new to me. I love trying new things, so I was really excited to break open her package!

The whole spread

As you know from my need to organize tea bags, I love tea! So I am so excited to add peppermint to my collection. I have heard some people drink a glass at night to combat the urge to snack, which is something I definitely need to try. The granola was super crunchy and chock full of chocolate :) definitely a win.

Other treats included:

These Good Bean granola bars were actually quite delicious! I don’t think I would have ever ventured to try them on my own.

These raw lemon cookies were a great find as well! The cookies were super crisp and just sweet enough.

I also devoured the toffee chocolate bar. yum :)

You can check out the treats I sent Anna this month

Midnight Banana Muffins

Last week I bought way too many bananas (like 12), and they have been browning on my table over the past few days.

As much as I love a banana breakfast bowl, I knew I could not eat one every day for the next week(s). All yesterday, I mulled over several banana recipes but did not latch on to a specific idea that sounded both delicious and healthy.

Last night when I returned home around 11:30, I walked in the door and saw the bananas again. I was struck with a desire to eat them in some type of baked good immediately inspiration to make banana bread and searched around some of my favoriate blogs to find a good recipe.

I wanted to bake something on the healthy side, without sacrificing taste. These muffins definitely achieve the balance of (mostly) good for you ingredients and supreme deliciousness. You will not even know they are vegan/pretty healthy! That being said, if you do not include the chocolate chips (shame on you) I would recommend adding a bit more sweetener.

In an attempt to save as much time as possible, and get to bed before 1am, I made muffins instead of bread, but this recipe will work with either. Bread will have a longer baking time, probably around 45-50 minutes. This recipe probably makes enough for 16ish normal size muffins, but I refused to do any more dishes than necessary, so I managed to cram most of the batter into my 12 muffin tins (and eat the rest raw-hurrah for vegan baking!). These ginormous babies are the result.

Vegan Banana Nut Muffins

adapted from Hill’s Healthy Banana Bread

makes 12 really large muffins

Ingredients:

dry

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup white flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

wet

3 ripe bananas, mashed

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup almond milk

1/2 cup agave

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

fold-ins

1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts

1/2 cup dark chocolate morsels (use vegan if that is important to you-I didn’t)

Preheat oven to 350. Combine wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Add the wet to the dry. Fold in walnuts and chocolate chips. Scoop into muffin tins (I sprayed mine with a bit of oil first). Bake for 18-22 minutes.

The muffins proved to be a perfect midnight (literally) snack, and I was in bed by 1:10.

Perfect.

A Chocolate Crazed Weekend

Pretty much since the day I gave up chocolate for Lent, I have been looking forward to stuffing myself full of chocolate on Easter. I daydreamed about chocolate and thought about how much better food would taste once I could flavor everything with cocoa powder. I even moved my cocoa powder into a cabinet that I rarely open to stave off temptation.

When Easter weekend came around I went chocolate crazy. On Friday, I cataloged everything I wanted to eat, with corresponding grocery and baking dish lists. Even though I ignored all serving size information, most of these desserts kept me guilt free as well. I got the below three recipes from Chocolate Covered Katie, one of the best dessert blogs ever! All of her recipes are vegan, and she also includes a lot of options for gluten-free folks as well.

1. Deep Dish Cookie Pie: Hands down my favorite. It was more of the consistency of cookie dough than a cookie, but I loved every bite.

Nothing illustrates how delicious this was better than a comment that Perry made when he first tasted the pie. I had given him a sample platter of all the pies and he after biting into this one he said, “Wow, this is amazing, too bad it’s unhealthy and you can’t put this recipe on your blog.” And because I am mature, I laughed maniacally and told him it was “full of beans-so there, yeah desserts can be healthy and delicious! what now?”.

2. Chocolate Bar Pie: Although nothing can compare to the cookie dough pie, I really loved this pie as well. It was more of an “adult” dessert because of its richness and flavors. I did not use a pie crust so the result was more of a mousse, but it was deliciously chocolately and creamy. Out of all the recipes, this was was the easiest to prepare and I could probably make it using the Bullet instead of a food processor. Claire served as my outside seal of approval on this recipe and went back for seconds-usually she is a bit skeptical of my healthy foods.

3. Chocolate Strawberry Truffle Pie

The above picture pretty much sums up my feelings on this recipe. I just kept blending and blending and blending… While the consistency never reached perfect smoothness, the flavor of the pie was great! I subbed cherries for strawberries, and thought that both the cherries and chocolate were highlighted and neither was overpowering.

4. Reese’s Eggs: Ok, I really should not count these…but I have to because they are so delicious and I think they have a superior chocolate to peanut butter ratio than the regular Reese’s.

Did you make any fun Easter desserts this weekend? Or just any great healthy-ish desserts? What are your favorite Easter candies?

Thirsty Thursday: Mint Chocolate Smoothie

Happy Thursday!!

The weekend is sooo close, which means that Spring Break Slimdown is also starting soon! I have been working like a crazy person (who doesn’t know anything about technology) to get three printable workouts ready, and I am really excited to have them finally published. :) I am planning on doing individual sets of exercises for abs, arm, and legs. I might try and do a HIIT workout after week two as well.

Today I am sharing a recipe for my first green smoothie!! I have been really nervous to put spinach in my smoothies, because it seemed weird-like drinking a salad :/. Over break I tried to put frozen spinach in a smoothie, but it didn’t blend all the way so there were chunks of spinach in my drink. bleh. But today’s smoothie uses some fresh spinach I picked up from Trader Joe’s and it turned out amazing. You can’t even taste the spinach! What you can taste is mint chocolate deliciousness!!

Green Mint Chocolate Smoothie

Ingredients

3 handfuls spinach

5 drops of peppermint extract-this stuff is potent!

1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 frozen banana

1 scoop Sun Warrior protein powder

1 cup water

Ingredients

Blend up and enjoy

yum!

NOTES: I tried the measure the amount of spinach but it got complicated because I didn’t want to totally smush down the leaves, and my bag was only 6 oz. total anyway. I would say I used about 1/3rd of the bag

Have a great Thirsty Thursday ;)

Confessions of a Chocoholic

This weekend Perry and I enjoyed a delicious dinner.

Kale salad, tilapia, and brown rice

The kitchen was occupied, so we ate on the bed

After dinner I really wanted something sweet. Since I did all this research on coconut oil, I was excited to make something delicious with it! I read Chocolate Covered Katie’s post about three ingredient chocolate bars a couple weeks ago, and they sounded delicious.

mmm...coconut oil, cocoa powder, and agave

I didn’t take a picture of the end result because I ate them all before remembering that I would probably want a picture for the blog. Needless to say, they were a total success! The recipe is super simple and I am excited to try different varieties by adding some mix-ins.

While I snacked on that chocolate, I attempted to make some fudge balls (still a work in progress). I was mid-bite of testing some fudgey goodness, and Perry turned to me and remarked, “Wow, you eat a lot of chocolate”.

So true.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this yet or not, but I eat chocolate everyday. Literally every single day. I dump spoonfuls sprinkle cocoa powder in my oatmeal, smoothies, almond milk, or just microwave the powder with almond butter and eat it with a spoon. Trader Joe’s dark chocolate is always in my fridge. Every time I shop there, I pick up a bar for the next week or two. Their dark chocolate is so rich that I only need a little nibble to satisfy my chocolate craving. I honestly think that my chocolate consumption is fine. Cocoa powder in and of itself is not “bad” for you, and I just love the rich flavor it brings to food.

What’s your favorite way to eat chocolate?

I think mine is cocoa powder microwaved with almond butter. Mmmm so rich!