Healthy Blending!

Hello!

Firstly, many apologies for my recent absence, can't believe how long it's been since I last posted!! I came down with a flu type virus, then children got ill etc etc...we're all better now though so hopefully I can get my eating and my blogging back on track!! :)

To try to get out of the habit of grabbing whatever junk is lying around, last night I decided to get out my as yet un-used blender (donated to me by my Grandma when she upgraded!) and blitz up some healthy snacks! Inspiration for these came from Laura at Keeping Slim Getting Stylish, thanks Laura!

Last night, as I had an avocado that needed using, I decided to make her frozen chocolate avocado cups, albeit adapted slightly. I used 220g avocado flesh, 25g cocoa powder, 30g agave nectar and 20g pecans as that was all the nuts I had in. Blitz the first three ingredients in the blender and then mix in the chopped nuts. Before going in the freezer...

Laura says to freeze them for at least 2 hours but as I made them quite late last night I didn't get to try one til this evening. Had a taste of the batter pre-freezing though, yum!

And when frozen and ready to eat...

apologies for the appalling photo, the lighting in my sitting room is rubbish! You can see much better pictures of them in Laura's post! These tasted ok but I'm not sure I'll make them again to be honest. They would definitely have benefitted from more nuts, and perhaps I should have put more cocoa and agave in them too...they didn't really taste of anything, not offensive in any way but a bit disappointing. Sure the original recipe would taste lovely - I think my downfall was lack of planning - I didn't have enough nuts and my agave nectar ran out too, nightmare!

Not to be deterred, I got out my blender again tonight. Inspired by Keeping Slim Getting Stylish again, although this time it wasn't her recipe...yes, tonight I made... [drum roll please!]... Mama Pea's (light) chocolate chip cookie dough balls. First I blended 60g cashews and 60g almonds until powder-like...

then I removed the nuts into a bowl, blended 6 pitted medjool dates with a tsp vanilla extract, then added the nuts back in...

blended again to form a dough...

before adding 30g chocolate chips and forming into dough balls. I made 17 mini ones out of my batch...

Again, apologies for the photo quality, I can't believe how poor the photos look...I definitely "need" a new camera!!

I tried one of these before popping the rest in the fridge to chill...I think I'm in love!!! :-D These taste amazing, like little sweeties...the problem will be stopping myself from eating them all at once...definitely something I will be making again, and again...delish! :)

That's it from me today, I have so many photos to wade through that I've randomly taken while I've not been blogging...will try to do a catch-up post tomorrow, but if not I will definitely get back into the swing of blogging what I eat...if nothing else it encourages me to make more interesting food choices rather than just mindlessly grabbing something from the fridge! I've really missed reading other people's blogs too...it's good to be back! :)