It’s been a good week in terms of yumminess. I started my detox on Monday morning and was
religious when it came to drinking 2 litres of water a day, having my lemon and
hot water in the morning and having my green tea with jasmine at lunch (they
sell it now in Aldi!!) I had no mid-
week alcoholic of fizzy drinks, ate only brown carbs (brown bread, brown rice,
brown pasta) and no refined sugar. I even left out my sugar free cake versions
too. The result? I dropped 4lb which put me back onto my 11
stone 3lb happy weight. I had been
exactly 11 and a half stone before I did my 5 day detox which lasted from
Monday morning to Friday evening- when I enjoyed a pizza, a cocktail, and some
chocolate at the cinema!
I’m convinced my
detox worked (or at least got rid of any bloating) and I only got to the gym
once last week as well. I felt much
better, less bloated and psychologically, I felt guilt free because I knew I
had cut only cut out the bad food and just feeding myself on the good. Even if I hadn’t have lost the weight that I
did, I still felt good because I was only putting good things into my body. 4lb might not be significant to some and a
lot less than what you would lose on the Juice Plus nonsense diet or any other
fad diet, but I lost this weight by eating well, including plenty of carbs, and
just eliminating the crap we don’t need- mainly refined sugar. A lot of these fad diets want you to cut out
food, surviving on juice and that’s why you pile the weight back on as soon as
you look at a piece of toast! Slow,
steady and eliminating white, refined sugar and substituting white carbs for
brown really is the way to keep the weight off and not lead you to the brink of
starvation.
Since I’m loving ditching the nasty white stuff and instead
using unrefined sugars, I decided to adapt a recipe for carrot cake
cupcakes. This recipe is one of my all
time favourites and the cakes are amazing- even if you do make the recipe with
sugar, the sunflower oil makes the cakes a lot lower in cholesterol as well. They’ve just had the taste test from my man
and his kids and they went down a treat!
Carrot Cupcakes
Ingredients:
For the
cakes:
58g stevia
(natural sugar alternative, £5 for a tub of Trivia by Silverspoon at Sainsbury’s)
175ml
sunflower oil
3 large eggs
150g plain
flour
1 and ½ tsp
of baking soda
1 and ½ tsp
of baking powder
1tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp ground
nutmeg
A pinch of
ground sea salt
225g of
grated carrot
(If you want
to make the regular version of this recipe, just substitute the stevia for 175g
of soft, brown sugar)
For the
frosting:
300g full
fat cream cheese (either Philadelphia or shop own-brands work well. Must be
full fat rather than reduced fat though and at room temperature)
1 and ½ tablespoons
of runny honey
The zest of
1 orange.
(If you want to make the regular version, ditch the honey and orange zest and mix 150g of icing sugar with the cheese, until fluffy)
Method:
1.
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees. When the cakes
are cooking, check on them regularly and move to a lower shelf/ lower the
temperature of the oven if needed- they tend to burn easily before they have
even cooked through if you don’t keep an eye on them.
2.
Line a muffin tray with 10-12 paper cases.
3.
Mix the oil and sugar together in a bowl, then
at the eggs and beat well.
4.
Stir in all the dry ingredients. Beat everything
together before stirring in the carrot.
5.
Transfer to a jug and pour into your paper cases. Place in the oven for around 20 minutes.
6.
For the frosting, beat the cream cheese. Add the first tablespoon of honey and the
orange zest and test the flavour. Add
another ½ a tablespoon of honey (or more) if needed- or keep sweetening the
mixture with a little extra until you are happy with it. I find the 1 and a ½ tablespoons does the
job- the orange gives the frosting a really nice taste as well.
7.
Spread on your cakes once cooled and store them
in the fridge.
Happy
eating!
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