colour pot – CLARE HOPKINS

Banana and Almond Muffins? Yes pleaaassee

September 12, 2017April 23, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, FOOD, HEALTHTagged almond, baking, banana, blogging, colour pot, Colourpot, craving, dessert, filling, FOOD, fun, HEALTH, healthy, healthy eating, healthy recipes, healthy snack, muffin, recipe, snack, treat, vegan, weight loss, wordpress1 Comment

You know when you have that sudden craving to bake? Well, I experienced this at about 11pm last night and stayed up until midnight baking & feasting away.

I usually head straight for the cacao and dates to make something super chocolatey, fudgy and sweet, but for some reason today my eye caught the two overripe bananas that were sitting on the kitchen ledge.

So, I preheated the oven to 180˚C and gathered together what I could find in the pantry for my banana and almond muffins. These can be vegan and are gluten free.

I used almond meal instead of ordinary flour, as it is high in protein and vitamin E – providing essential nutrients whilst filling you up (read more here). The bananas are the perfect natural sweetener, and they provide a sweet note as well as potassium and fibre.

Dry Ingredients:

1 cup almond meal
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
Sprinkle of salt

Wet Ingredients:

2 eggs (use an egg replacer for the vegan option)
2 bananas
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp almond milk (or any milk of your choosing)

I popped the dry ingredients into a blender, whisked them together (make sure the oats are ground into a fine powder) and poured them into a bowl. Then I blended the wet ingredients to form a runny mixture, which I combined in the bowl with the dry ingredients.

I placed about 2 heaped spoonfuls of mixture into 8 lined cupcake tins. All they needed was 30 minutes in the oven (check with a skewer – no mixture residue should be on it when you poke it through the middle of a muffin), and they were done. Voila!

Nutritional Breakdown (per serve):

137 calories/572 kilojoules
5.0g Protein
8.5g Fat (0.8g Saturated)
9.0g Carbs
43mg Sodium

The Ultimate Homemade Freakshake

March 12, 2017April 17, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, FOODTagged beginning blogger, cheat day, chocolate dessert, colour pot, dessert, dessert recipe, donut, freakshake, fun, guides, journal, kit kat, photography, treat day, wordpress, writingLeave a comment

Okay find your stretchy pants and prepare yourself for the treat of the year.

I ~~love~~ am obsessed with chocolate, and recently I’ve been wanting to devise the perfect dessert that will satisfy my cravings. For this dessert, I’m diverging from my usual healthy desserts and going all out. However, it still has a couple of substitutions from a traditional Freakshake for some extra nutrition benefits!

Credit to Pinterest for helping me discover the original Freakshake.

You will need:

3 of your favourite chocolate bars – I chose Kit Kat, Twix Bar and Mini Toblerone
Plain regular donuts – try Noshu Donuts (they are 97% sugar free, low carb, high fibre and gluten free).
3 scoops of Halo Top (DF options) or FroPro icecream
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup coconut cream
2 tbsp Cocoa powder
2 drops MyProtein Chocolate FlavDrops
You could even add a spoon of peanut butter to the shake if you are craving some nuttiness

Method:

Pop three generous scoops of ice cream, coconut cream, the milk, peanut butter and the cocoa powder into a blender, and whip together. You can add bits more of different ingredients to get the best flavour for you!
Pour the shake mixture into the milkshake glass.
Decorate away! Go crazy poking the choccies into the creamy shake.
Slide the donuts onto the straws and pop in (make sure to do this before the straws are in the shake, or as you fiddle, it may overflow).
Enjoy!

And it’s as easy as that. Your perfect dessert for a cheeky treat.

Flourless Banana Pancake Recipe

January 22, 2017April 16, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, FOOD, HEALTHTagged banana, breakfast, breakfast ideas, breakfast in bed, breakfast recipes, colour pot, healthy, healthy pancake, pancake, recipeLeave a comment

There is nothing better than waking up to warm, fluffy pancakes.

Of course, that requires someone to make them for you, but I’m always happy to do the hard work if it means I get the largest one. This week, I was having pancake cravings so I used my recipe for simple, healthy, flourless recipe for pancakes. I like to substitute white flour for oatmeal because oats are full of fibre, very nutritious, and filling, meaning that the pancakes are sure to keep me full until lunchtime.

The banana also acts as a sweetener instead of cane sugar, whilst providing the fluffy texture

I’ve come up with oatmeal-banana pancakes – the banana acts as the perfect healthy sweetener, whilst adding a creamy texture to the batter.

You only need 4 ingredients and this recipe makes around 3 medium sized pancakes. Each pancake is very filling, which saves you from snacking for the rest of the day.

You will need:

1/2 a very ripe banana
1 egg (vegan option: 1 chia egg)
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 tsp baking powder

Place all the ingredients in a blender and pulse together until smooth and runny. Add a dribble of milk (I use almond) if the mixture is too dry. Sometimes I also like to add powdered peanut butter for some nutty flavour.

Grease pan with coconut oil, and pour batter into pancake shapes over medium heat. Wait for them to bubble before you flip!

For toppings I usually go for a compotee of mixed berries: mix 1 cup of mixed berries, 1/2 tbsp maple syrup and cinnamon together. Microwave for 30 seconds and then stir shaved almonds or coconut shavings through.

This is a perfect fix for breakfast in bed, and it’s filling and contains nutritious ingredients!

Enjoy!

My Travel Work Out Routine

January 15, 2017April 16, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, HEALTH, TRAVELTagged colour pot, fit, fitness, fuschia, gym, keeping fit, motivation, personal trainer, routine, travel, travel fitness, travel guide, travel tips, workout, workout from home, workout routineLeave a comment

Having the motivation to workout every day is tough and it’s even harder when traveling. Usually, when I’m on holiday all I want to do after a day of sight-seeing is crash on the hotel bed.

However, exercise makes me feel so good AFTER that I try to squeeze in 3-4 sessions per travelling week. Of course, there’s the excuse of not having a gym. If I don’t have a hotel gym or a gym nearby I use YouTube workouts or, if I feel like a lighter workout to get my body moving I do Tabata training.

Tabata training is a Japanese workout method that involves high intensity interval training for short periods of time, with shorter rest. There are lots of different Tabata workouts, so I created one that works my whole body:

For each set (each number), there are 5 repetitions, 20 seconds each with 10 seconds rest.

Star jumps
Push ups
Sit ups
Tricep dips
Lunges
Jumps (getting your knees to your chest)

The workout itself if quite short, which keeps me motivated to do it. It means that I can boost my heart rate and activate my muscles so that they are not complete jelly when I return home. If you want to work out for longer, you can do more reps or do the whole workout twice through.

If I am feeling like a more intense workout or I need a source of motivation I use a video I have downloaded onto my phone from Youtube.

Again this workout doesn’t require any equipment, which is essential because who wants to fill up their suitcase with 10kg of weights.

I know that sometimes it does get really tough to exercise on holiday but once you get into a rhythm you’ll feel so good!

Christmas: the Ultimate Treat Day

December 26, 2016April 16, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, CHRISTMASTagged bread pudding, cheat day, christmas day, christmas diary, christmas dinner, christmas lunch, Christmas meal, colour pot, delicious, delicious food, desert, eating disorder, enjoy food, festive meal, food coma, fun christmas, healthy, journal, love food, lunch, mindset, perspective, treat day, treat yourselfLeave a comment

I don’t believe in ‘cheat days’ but rather ‘treat days’.

Sounds like a small difference to most, however, in order to foster a healthy relationship with food it has been important for me to redefine what eating junk food means. This meant a slight change in perspective: rather than unhealthy meals being ‘bad’ and a ‘cheat’, I see them as a treat that provides balance amongst my healthier food choices.

Of course, Christmas is all about treats and enjoying lots of wonderful flavours.

I started off the day with a candy cane cookie (Vegan Shortbread recipe, shaped in a candy cane – my friend made them for me) and a T2 Choc Chip Chai.

Then I busied myself making a Bread & Butter Pudding. And of course, I ate half the batter as I was making it. I used Taste’s recipe for it. Despite my affinity for anything with chocolate, B&B Pudding is still my favourite dessert.

To make the B&B pudding a little more nutritious, I added two eggs (six eggs total), took out the pure cream, and substituted the cows milk for almond milk. If you want a dairy free recipe you could try coconut cream, coconut milk and Nuttelex as your cream, milk and butter substitutes.

I find it’s fun to ‘healthy-fy’ recipes where I can – it was still just as delicious, and reduced the richness of the pudding so I could enjoy other things!

Just before lunch, we had assorted cheeses (Camembert, Brie, Cheddar) with biscuits, salami slices, bread sticks, chopped veggies with avocado dip and tomato relish. These were savoured with mulled wine and champagne.

For the main meal, there was an array of dishes but I chose smoked ham, roast chicken and prawns, with a side of a quinoa, kale and roast beetroot salad that I tossed together.

What’s important with Christmas is your mindset. Don’t go crazy all day on Dec 25 and then try to restrict calories for the rest of the week – you’ll just end up having a crap holiday. Rather, listen to your body and eat until you are full, enjoy the treats you wouldn’t normally enjoy, and eat intuitively for the days after. Your body will naturally crave fewer calories after a full day of Christmas eating!

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone had a lovely day, whether you celebrate Christmas or not.