Chocolate Chip Blondies

I have never made or eaten blondies that I know of in my life, but I have always been curious.  I've seen a lot of recipes for them through fitness accounts and such on Instagram.  Many of them were fairly similar, so I kind of made my own based on the recipes I saw.  There is one more different blondie recipe that uses dates that I want to try eventually as well, but this one was extremely delicious!  It actually reminded me of the Jazzythings Chocolate Chip PB cookies from a previous post.

Ingredients:
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/3 c natural peanut butter
1 egg
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
1/3 c sugar free maple syrup (I used Walden Farms pancake syrup.)
1/4 t baking powder
2 t vanilla extract
1 T Stevia, or more to taste
1/3 c dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  The first step of this recipe is to rinse and drain the chickpeas.  Be sure to dry them off pretty good as well, so there is not any extra moisture when it is put into the food processor.  I food processed the chickpeas pretty well first to get as smooth of a batter as possible.  Also, if you're making a double batch like I did, make sure to use the big bowl.  I started with the smaller food processor, and it got way too full.

Blend in all of the other ingredients except the chocolate chips.  I stirred in the chocolate chips; however, I would suggest sprinkling them on top.  When I poured the batter into the 8 x 8 greased pans, the chocolate chips kind of all sunk to the bottom, so I would sprinkle them on top instead!

My double batch made 2 8 x 8 pans.  Bake for 20 minutes.  Cut into 16 slices and enjoy!  I calculated these babies out to be about 73 calories a square and they were super delicious!

LiveFit Trainer Phase 2 Days 52 & 53

I am doing a two day combined post, since I will be making another post with the recipe for the dessert I made for the overnight I worked last night.  Overnight shifts make it super difficult for me to keep up on my diet and workouts.  Yesterday, I tried to sleep as late as possible and ended up waking up around my usual time.  Go figure!  My body is so used to waking up to go to the gym around 9 or 10 AM!  I busted through my chest workout and planned my meals accordingly so that I would have plenty of food to eat during the overnight, and I wouldn't be tempted with everyone else's delicious food.  I did fine food wise throughout the overnight.  My issues began when I woke up today.  After going to sleep at 6 AM, I woke up around 1 PM to eat "breakfast."  I had an absolutely delicious breakfast burrito, but then I was still hungry.  Therefore, I got out the jars of peanut butter!  I may or may not have eaten like half a jar of peanut butter, but all in all, I ended up eating 2300 calories total.  I was super depressed when it came time to go to the gym, and even though I was incredibly tired, I set my mind to working off all of the extra calories I ate, which meant that I needed to burn around 850 calories to bring my net calories back down to 1450.  I would not suggest this as a dieting technique, but I felt a lot better about eating those peanut butter sandwiches after my gym session.  Today was shoulder day by the way, which is my second favorite.  I am now sitting in my kitchen waiting for my chicken to finish baking so that I can cut it up and weigh it for this week's meals.  I got a really great deal on boneless skinless chicken breasts at Wal-Mart.  They were only $1.99 a pound, so let's just say I bought a lot!  Hope everyone's week is going well!  After this chicken cooks, I will be calling it an early bed time.

LiveFit Trainer Phase 2 Day 51

Today was a busy and exhausting day, but it was leg day, which makes everything better!!  I worked today from 10-5 and went straight to the gym after work.  I busted my ass (pardon my French, but I'm really excited!) at the gym with my leg workout.  It was legen...wait for it....dary!!!!

I squatted my BODY WEIGHT!!!!!  For two sets!  It was epic and awesome!  I also upped weights on the leg press too!  My quads were on fire for the whole workout.  I felt like my legs were going to give out!  Surprisingly though, I only burned 340 calories.

I had promised my mom that I would attend a Zumba class with her at the local food market downtown.  I burned another 350 calories during this workout session, so I'd call it a successful workout evening.

I will be working another overnight shift tomorrow night, so tomorrow will consist of sleeping as much as possible, grocery shopping for the family, baking blondies for my co-workers, and obviously going to the gym!

I guess tonight is going to be a short post, but I will be doing a double post on Thursday with the blondie recipe!

Chocolate PB Protein Cookies by Jazzythings

Let me start out by saying that my cookies did not turn out anything like Jazzythings described or pictured on her Instagram with her original post of the recipe.  They were quite dry, which I am thinking may have been caused by the type of protein powder I use.  My protein powder has an exceedingly large scoop, so I may have ended up using a lot more than necessary.  It could have been because I substituted oat flour for almond flour as well, but I didn't have enough almond flour and didn't want to spend $11 on another bag.  I also felt that I needed to add more peanut butter to mine.  Other than those two things, the flavor was really good.  I had one as a post workout snack today with my protein shake, and it was delicious with the almond milk.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c almond flour or I substituted oat flour
4 scoops chocolate whey protein powder
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t baking powder
1 egg
1 egg white
1 t vanilla extract
1/4 c honey
1/2 c unsweetened natural applesauce
Peanut butter

Blend all of the ingredients together in a food processor.  I used my Ninja.  Make sure you have a food processor bowl that is big enough.  I tried to use the smaller food processor inner bowl, but it didn't all fit.  So I had to transfer it to the XL food processor bowl.

Scoop out portions of batter onto a greased cookie sheet.  I used my scooper and put a whole scoop down for each cookie first with about 6 cookies on a sheet.

Jazzythings describes the next step as making little bird's nests in the cookie batter for the peanut butter, but I just kind of scooped it on top.  My batter was sticky, but it was not thick enough to make a bird's nest of sorts.  I measured out about 1 t of peanut butter per cookie, but they definitely needed more.

Next, add more cookie batter on top to cover the peanut butter so that the peanut butter becomes like a filling in the cookie.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 8-10 minutes.  Each new sheet I baked for less time to try to avoid the dryness, but it didn't help.  So I'm guessing it's an ingredient problem rather than a baking time problem.  The batter tasted amazing though too, and it could have definitely been used as an ice cream topping of some sort.

Now go give these cookies a whirl!

Soft Coconut Choco-Cookies by VMFitness

This was another Instagram recipe find, and it turned out to be absolutely delicious!  These are right up there with the Jazzythings chickpea cookies!  So good!  @VMFitness has so many delicious recipes, and she is a Quest bar lover like myself!  I brought these as one of the goodies for my overnight on Saturday, and they seemed to be the crowd favorite of the two.

Ingredients for a double batch of 24 cookies:
2 large ripe bananas
2 eggs
2 T almond flour
6 T coconut flour
4 T unsweetened almond milk
2 T melted coconut oil
2 t baking powder
1/2 c chocolate chips

I started out by blending up the bananas in my Ninja, so that they were mashed up to a smooth consistency.  Then, I added each ingredient following in order and pulsing the Ninja to mix it up.  Once it was all blended together, I mixed in the chocolate chips.

Since VMFitness said that a single batch of the recipe would make 12 cookies, I did not use my scooper like I normally do.  Instead I just spooned them out until I had 24 cookies.

Bake at 360 degrees Fahrenheit for 8-10 minutes.  I baked mine for 10-12 though, because I felt like they were too mushy after only 8 minutes.

If you love banana and chocolate chips, these are a must try.  They don't taste like your average chocolate chip cookie.  They are very moist, but they have a lot of flavor too!

LiveFit Trainer Phase 2 Days 48, 49, & 50

One more week left in phase 2!!!  I'm super excited yet also scared to death to start phase 3, because it's going to be intense.  I am combing Saturday, Sunday, and Monday's posts, because I will be making separate posts for the two recipes I tried out for my overnight Saturday night.  Therefore this post will be a teaser for these delicious creations.

I also still need to detail Saturday's workout.  Saturday was Back and Cardio as follows:

• Barbell Deadlift: 4 sets of 8
• T-Bar Row: 4 sets of 8
• Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown: 4 sets of 8
• Seated Cable Rows: 4 sets of 8
• Straight Arm Pulldown: 4 sets of 8
• Reverse Flyes: 4 sets of 8
• Seated Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise: 4 sets of 8
• 30 minutes steady state moderate intensity cardio--elliptical

This workout was my first time ever doing deadlifts, and I have to say I kind of liked them!  My back was definitely sore after this workout.  I was still even a little sore this morning!

Sunday was a rest day as usual, and I ended up making it an unplanned cheat day as well.  My good friend is having twins, and her baby shower was Sunday.  After working the overnight, I woke up after roughly 5 hours of sleep and went to her shower without eating.  The last time I ate was a cookie at 4 am.  The shower started at 2, and I began to get dizzy.  I was still dizzy after eating just the sloppy joe meat, some veggies, Chex Mix, and some fruit, so I had a couple cupcakes and chocolate covered pretzels.  After that, I felt fine!
Today was just like last Monday with workout, and I got right back on track with my diet!  Alright I know you all really just want the recipes so stay tuned and read on in my next two posts!

LiveFit Trainer Phase 2 Day 47

This post is probably going to be fairly brief, but this weekend's post will include two new cookie recipes that I will be trying out for my overnight shift at work.  So I promise I will make up for it.  Today was a 1750 calorie day as it was leg day number 2, but despite going out for dinner, I didn't make it to 1750.  Here's what was on the menu:
Breakfast:

• 2 cups of Hazelnut coffee from one K-cup sweetened with unsweetened almond milk and Stevia
• 1 La Tortilla Factory Low Carb High Fiber Wrap
• 8 T liquid egg whites
• 1/4 c. Hunt's fire roasted tomatoes (because I ran out of salsa!)

Lunch:

• 1 can Chunk Light Tuna in water
• 2/3 c. whole green beans
• 1/2 c brown rice
• Walden Farms Alfredo sauce
• Frank's red hot sauce
• No Sugar Added Bread and Butter pickle chips

Dinner:

• Longhorn Flavorful Under 500 meal-6 oz. Renegade sirloin with steamed mixed vegetables and a side salad with no croutons and Raspberry Vinaigrette on the side
• Quest bar Chocolate Brownie (that I brought with me in my purse)

Snack:

• Lemon Cream Pie Quest bar

In total this was about 1386 calories according to myfitnesspal tracker, and I burned about 350 today in the gym doing legs and an extra 20 minutes of light cardio on the elliptical.
Leg Workout Number 2 is as follows:

• Leg Extensions: 2 warm-up sets of 30 reps
• Wide Stance Barbell Squat: 6 sets of 8
• Seated Leg Curl: 4 sets of 8, last set to failure
• One Leg Barbell Squat: 4 sets of 8
• Barbell Glute Bridge: 4 sets of 8
• Leg Press Calf Raises: 3 sets of 20
• Seated Calf Raises: 3 sets of 20
• Standing Calf Raises: 3 sets of 20

Tomorrow is the last day of working out before a much needed rest day and get excited for cookie recipes coming tomorrow or Sunday!!