Wednesday 27 July 2016

DAY THREE - Cheeky Bosvruchten Ice Cream



Hello there!
   God bless Europe and the -18 freezers! There’s certain things that for culture and for money, I didn’t get to know in Venezuela. There, the common way to freeze something is by a occupying a freezer that normally is combined with the normal fridge, and works on certain temperature that allows to freeze but not overreacting at all! Said that, is here in Belgium where I saw my first -18 monster and I fell in love at the first sight. I always knew that such a thing would be solving half of my life in any moment, but is for sure on these days of heat when I’m happier than ever by having it!





   Today I was preparing my daily post about our mentioned Challenge, for which one I have so many recipes to develop yet. But remember that I’m going soon to the beach and I can’t be eating more than one treat by day or else I wouldn’t be worst than before with so many nice things!! Therefore, every day, I carefully think and organize one sweet recipe for me and for you to enjoy and the one for today was an experiment with a marriage in between Chia Seeds and vanilla Pudding that on a first taste wasn’t too bad, but at the end of the counts, I decided that this blog is for good and I wasn’t completely convinced with the idea of frog eggs floating on a milky substance to be posted…


   Worried about making something up that I wasn’t planning and worst, looking at the fact that I already ate at fondum the failed Chia, I felt almost hopeless realizing that If I made something else I wouldn’t be able to eat it today.. But there’s where normally the magic happens, in those kind of moments where the light seems to go off. So I decided to combine another amazingly convenient food of this week and by using two of my favorite things at home I came out with Ice Cream. Yes, ‘Bosvruchten’ to be more specific, and what is that? Mmm… It’s just the Belgian way to say berries I guess, and also sounds kind of fancy for me. ;-)


   And why Cheeky? Well, just because of the very tricky way that I solved this mess I became on today. So Bushfruits Ice cream, let me say something about it, D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! I think is the best I ever ate, seeing that is made basically by fruits and the taste is so powerful that I only can remember the most famous Italian Creamery at home, with such an intensity of flavors and colors, all decorated that beautifully that you never could really choose for one. But my favorite back them always was the Berries Ice cream, intense and passionate always.


   The best of all was that it took me literally 5 minutes to make it before let it cool in my fabulous -18 a little while as the other reason why I love Europe so much is that the fruits you can purchase already frozen in the shop, so they are available for you the whole year around, isn’t it convenient? Because as you know, once you mix them being frozen, the ice cream is almost completely textured and ready to eat.


   As we are in the Losing-weight wave this week, I combined the fruits with yogurt that was already sweetened, but if you like the adrenaline, better go for same amount of Greek non sugared low fat yogurt and add honey before you pulse it. For a last note I want to say, YES!! I couldn’t resist to put it in a cone hehehehe, it was so pretty! but of course I won’t eat that cone, for that I have specialized teeths around that will appreciate that crunchy cookie dipped in the Ice Cream. But believe me, you won’t miss it at all, the rich flavor of this Bushberries version will keep you happy by eating it straight from the container.




Cheeky Bosvruchten Ice Cream

Ingredients

2 c Frozen Raspberries
2c Frozen Blueberries
2 c Frozen Strawberries
2c Yogurt*
2 tbsp. Raw Honey


Procedure

Place all the ingredients in the food processor and mix without mercy until the fruit pieces disappeared and you got an homogeneous sorbet.


Pour the sorbet into an airtight container and let it rest in the freezer until is hard, with -18 you will only need around one hour, but there’s cases of cases, I know about it very well, then is probably better to let it rest overnight... ;-)

Serve and use any delicious topping that has fiber enough, like toasted almonds for example or tossed peanuts.




** If the yogurt is sweetened like mine, with the honey of the recipe is enough for my taste. If you had time to get Greek Unsweetened Yogurt, then you can add from ‘4 to 6 tbsp of honey to power up the sweetness.

Note for myself: Come on Patricia! It’s about time to get an ice cream scoop!... -.-’


Tot ziens! (Until Tomorrow…)


...

Tuesday 26 July 2016

DAY TWO Dessert Challenge - Chocolate/Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies




Hey, hey, hey dear fellows!
(Yeh, sounds weird but it reminds me the movie The Clockwork Orange xD)

This is the day two of the Dessert Challenge, but for me is the fourth day of eating low carb, Low sugar and Low fat and I’m already starting to see the progress! It’s magical, and delicious too! I swear that from the struggle of the first day I haven’t been suffering anymore by re-discovering ingredients that I always knew about but didn’t have an idea of how good they were and that many options I had to use them on a healthy way.




But you didn’t think I would be posting tea the whole week, didn’t you? Of course not!!!


So, a question that must be killing many of you… What am I actually eating? Well I’m not a salty food blogger but if you also want to follow this challenge for your own belly to be flat, then don’t worry, I won’t let you alone. Beside of my daily dessert recipe I will guide you with your normal meals for you to stop worrying about that too. For example today I followed this plan that I made out myself:


  1. Detox Morning Tea
  2. Brekfast: Yogurt with Musli
  3. Lunch: Microwave Grated Aubergine (that looks like this) the difference is that I use the Microwave on the Grill setting and takes me literally 10 minutes before they are deliciously in my plate.
  4. 4pm: At this time I needed something nice and before falling into temptation I made one of my tricky sweet recipes, which I could eat with 0 Guiltiness, for example the cookies from today.
  5. Dinner: I took Chicken-Guacamole wraps that probably looked like this ones and got me full for the rest of the night.


As you saw, the most difficult part for me is the craving issue… Yes, I’m a person that is used to take a bite everywhere, in any moment, and following diets never has been really my thing. But if I wanted to be success I needed to control myself, the question is 'how did I suppose to do this when I really neeeed a Gooey to chew??. I really got surprised about the power of certain combinations that I will be showing you and that you will also love, at the time that with only one bite your lion hungriness for unnecessary foods will go away without hypnosis but by actually eating something really nice.


Here is see a list of my favorite ingredients that I have Re-Discovered this week

  • Peanut butter
  • Avocado
  • Cocoa Powder
  • Chia Seeds
  • Honey
  • Oats
  • Coconut
  • Cinnamon
  • Almonds
  • Olive Oil

It’s incredible how you can transform this ingredients to fit in wonderful desserts as a avocado-chocolate mousse or a Chia Seeds Pudding, or even This delicious Chocolate-Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies that are the best for the craving, don’t have any butter, flour or sugar and the best, the peanut butter is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, Is full of protein, vitamins and fiber and it taste so good! Seriously, I will tell you that when I found out that if I want to eat something overnight and I don’t have anything healthy around, you can perfectly take a spoon of Peanut Butter and lick it, I was the happier woman in the planet. Peanut butter changed my life hehehe...

Once you make this cookies, you will have a source of happiness stored in your pantry, and better, it will help you to burn the fat and with only ONE bite you will feel truly satisfied. So let’s jump to the recipe right now please!









Chocolate-Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies
For 30 halfs - 15 Sandwiches



Ingredients

1 c Almond flour
1/2 c Oats
1/3 c Cocoa Powder
6 tbsp. Raw Honey
5 tbsp. Olive Oil
1/2 tsp. Baking powder
Pinch of salt
Pinch of Cinnamon
Peanut Butter to fill up


Procedure

Preheat the oven to 170 C°

Combine the almond flour and the oats on the food processor and give it a few pulses until the oats is finer.




Add this mix in a bowl and pour over the powders all the rest of the ingredients and combine with a spatula.

Scoop the mix with a teaspoon (remember they are bites and will be eaten from two to two). You should end up with around 30 cookies. Give them round and flat shape, as they don’t have any butter to be melted in the oven, they will keep the shape you give them.




Bake for around 8 minutes and let cool into the oven for more crispiness.

Assambling

You know, this doesn’t have science. Take the peanut butter with a spatula and spread it in one half, then take another half and complete the sandwich. If you want to get technical, you also can use a pastry bag to pipe the peanut butter on the cookie.

Take a bite and burn that fat on the most delicious way…

Last Details

Make sure you don’t eat the whole batch of cookies in one hour, share it with your kids and your hubby or storage them in a airtight container, better if is glass.


Note: Is important to mention that taking a challenge like this is not signing a contract to a whole new rabbit life without other option. What I’m trying to get with this is to open my mind to a whole new world full with possibilities. It doesn't mean I wont ever make a cake again, but certainly, if I already was getting sick of eating the same bread roll all the time, now I will think on it better and I will have many other ideas that will make me feel as good or even better. I also do this in support to many friends that live with allergies or diseases that conditions them to stay in the margin as the options for them are sometimes limited. So it doesn’t have anything to do with the cakes, ok? As you know, I am a cake lover and a Classic cake with flour, butter, sugar and milk always will be my love…

Monday 25 July 2016

Seven Days Dessert Challenge - Low Carb, Low Sugar, Low Fat...


Hi there everyone!

I have been absent a little while but now I’m SO back and loaded for sure! The reason I haven't write anything is mainly because the kitties are in holidays as you would know and I really need to be up to everything to keep them busy and happy… I also have been researching a lot about so many things for this blog and recently without expecting I discovered a whole new world to jump into and I’m pretty excited about sharing it with you.


Handling a brand new blog is not such a simple thing, I surely thought it would take me much less time to produce it all myself but here we are, going for it! Something is true, I don’t like to leave things semi done, if i really want this I will take it seriously! Through the past weeks I have been almost to the top with “if you write a post with 1000 words is good for this but if you do it with 600 is good for that…” followed by some of “to get more Instagram followers you have to do this, make it look like that” and pinched with a little bit of “this recipe has to be photographed like this but if you don’t have natural light, you have to do it from that angle over there”...

Fruits salad For a hot day with Kiwi, Melon and Frozen Berries

Sometimes I feel my mind blows off in between new ways to promote this and new recipes that come to my mind, and I just archive all the things that I actually want to write for another day, and another day and keep going. Meanwhile my life also keeps going with the flow to start over every morning without realizing that the time is passing by and that soon me and my family have planned to take our annual holidays in which ones we are going to travel to Spain. Yes Spain, the capital of the bath suits in Europe, the beach, the sun and the heat, did I say the heat?. So everyone will be dressed up lightly to say it that way.


I was thinking on my holiday life in the beach with the sand and the palm trees around me when suddenly I stopped. Oh my God! This is my first winter ever and the Summer clothes reveals that my body is not the same as the one I brought from Venezuela. No, no, no Sr.! I took at least 6 kg in my first 6 months in Belgium. I definitely need to do something about it! So I started looking up, how to lose weight in the shorter time and I found so many Ideas, from food to exercises, passing by the weirdest of the body wraps… And yeeeees, I know this is not a fitness blog but then we come to what I wanted to talk about, and noooo, I am not talking about wrapping meat in a Mexican tortilla!.


One of the things that called my attention the most was a challenge which tries to take you away from the most common unhealthy meals, as bring you closer to good habits. But wait a minute, hat means not bread at all, I mean AT ALL? Well, it doesn’t really sound so impossible when you see this on Pinterest…


Taken from Pinterest during the search 'Weight Loosing Challenge'


But next morning when I decide myself to start, I realize that I don’t have a gram of an idea of what to eat beside of bread or anything flour-less beside of oatmeal or rabbit food. How is this possible? What do I suppose to eat now? I already had a touch of this experience with a few friends that commented me that their sons were allergic to flour, milk, eggs, soybeans, pork, (why do I keep mentioning, they allergic to everything, I honestly don’t know what those kids eat!) so I proposed myself to find out about it a little bit to help them with some ideas of recipes for nice desserts that they could enjoy but the idea wasn’t strong enough for me and even when I did find some handy information about it, I didn’t get to do a real Research with ‘R’ for the cause.

This was my first meal, it was DELICIOUS! but I didn't have idea of what else could I come out with...

I have to say that after having pass my first day hungry as hell and about to freak out by thinking on my breakfast the next morning, I did get the strength to look well and learn as much as I could about this kind of life. For me, it can be always a choice of ingredients to substitute as I don’t have any condition or disease, so I decided that in the most of the recipes I would just look for low carb recipes, low fat, low sugar and low everything that could be stored in my bum… But full with vitamins, full with favor, and full with proteins and fiber. Sounds good, right?


My first Smoothie (Berries and Cucumber Smoothie)


The research has been successful and I gain something that I wasn’t expecting at all, I got so excited about this subject that I have been thinking on my own recipes, I realized that I created a few ones in the past without even thinking on this and better, I want to scream to the world what I have been learning. So compensating for being away so long and running with the idea of the ‘7 days Challenge’, I will post a recipe every day where you can be free of guilty, full of energy and closer to a nice beach body to show off this Summer. Don’t miss it out. Let’s do this!



DAY ONE - Morning Detox Tea


Morning Detox Tea




For the day one I want to go start for the basic, adding a boost of Detox ingredients to our mornings that will help us to get over any toxins that could be ruining our Summer happiness. This is a very good Detox Tea that you can make totally from scratch and that will vitalize your whole day at the same time that taste very nice.


Ingredients

1 c Warm Water
1 tbsp. Honey
1 Tbsp. Grated Ginger
1 Bag of Green Tea
A pinch of Cinnamon
Juice from half a Lemon
A few mint leaves


Procedure

There’s not ‘Procedure for this’. Feel free to combine everything together, only make sure that you leave it rest for a minute for the ingredients to release their substance in the water.

Drink it every morning when your belly is still empty. It cleans you up and boost your metabolism, it’s great!


Tomorrow I’ll show you more about this kind of diet and some Low Carb ideas...



Summer Vibes!




...

Saturday 9 July 2016

Making Flowers without cutters - Tutorial And Gumpaste Recipe

What’s more beautiful than a flower on a Cake. From Weddings to Birthdays and even in your daily life, flowers can play a very important roll on making a day shine, on putting a smile on your face and creating a whole different environment around you and the people you love.

Make Gumpaste flower without cutters! and Gumpaste recipe...

There are many ways to put flowers on any kind of desserts, as you saw in my last post, a cake with real fresh flowers can be beautiful and easy to decorate. But there’s other ways to create the effect by making them on your own.

Thursday 7 July 2016

Mini Summer Cakes with Strawberry Buttercream - How to decorate a cake with fresh flowers.



How to decorate a cake with fresh flowers. How to make Strawberry Buttercream.

The last day of the school took me by surprise, but I couldn’t let the summer start without showing my appreciation for three special women that got my respect, I would say without reservations that more than anything else, they were angels that passed by to make everything easier for me and my daughters during our first year in Belgium, some kind of persons that walked next to us without saying much but helping a lot. I’m talking about

Tuesday 21 June 2016

Vanilla Cupcakes in THREE Ways

Try these delicious Vanilla Cupcakes, you are going to love them!

    After so many succesfull proyects this weekend, the leftover mood is a mix in between being too tired and too relieved. I like to call it the Cake Hangover, to explain a little bit better, I fall into a coma for a few days until I recover my normal life again. The day of my recovering is like the sun start shinning again on my face, I can get out of bed and start