Healthy Banana Cake Recipe

For Amy's 15 Week Challenge, she's asked us to re-create one of our favorite sinful recipes and making them figure friendly. I absolutely love banana bread, but due to the detox I'm currently on, I can't have it. I decided to make it healthier to suit my diet and it came out really really good.

This is what my usual Banana Bread looks like:














And how the finished NEW Banana Cake will turn out to look like:














To start off, here are the ingredients you will be needing for this recipe:














*4 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
*240 ml (8 fl oz) Rice Milk
*285 g (10 oz) Wholemeal Flour
*3 tsp Baking Powder
*170 g (6 oz) Maple Syrup
*Pinch of Sea Salt
*2 tsp Vanilla Extract
*1-2 Banana's (Depending on how much banana flavor you want. I prefer 2 Banana's)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F)
2. Lightly dust a 23 cm (9 inch) cake tin with flour.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.
4. In a different bowl combine the other ingredients and whisk them together until smooth.
5. Gently add in the wet ingredients into the flour, mixing until combined. Don't over mix, as this will cause the mixture to get too thick!
6. Add the mixture into your cake tin and add to the center of your oven for 40 minutes.

It taste extremely good, and it's much healthier for you then most Banana Bread's that I have found. I highly recommend this recipe if your a banana lover like me! You can add anything to the top of your cake as you desire. I prefer it by itself, and sometimes adding a little butter to the top of it.














Enjoy! :)

Horrible day!

I started off my morning with having the same thing as yesterday. The Cinnamon Oatmeal Pudding which, just like yesterday, was great :)

I woke up at 5 AM this morning as I was planning on going to work with my boyfriend very early this morning. He had to drive 2-3 hours to a city called Essex in England for a job he had to do. I offered to come along with our dog to keep him company. When we finally got to the house he was working at (He's a drainage engineer) I was completely AMAZED at this house. It was MASSIVE and had the BIGGEST BACKYARD I've ever seen in my life. We were at this place for about an hour and I spent the entire hour wandering around the backyard with my dog Miley. When you first walk out to their backyard, this is what you see:














A giant Pond with a really cool Bridge going over it with nice trees surrounding it.

When you looked to the right of that pond, there was a small lake:














Those two pictures don't even show how big the backyard really was, but it was absolutely amazing.

Picture of the house:














I wish I could say that this house was mine. It was so huge! The back of the house goes really far back. The owner of the house had 2 Bentley's sitting outside the house. Wow. Amazing.

When we were heading back near where we lived, I pulled out some lunch I had made to bring with us. I had left over falafel from yesterday and a side salad. I had also brought with me some banana cake that I made last night. I love love love this cake so much! It's the easiest cake to make, and it's actually very healthy! One slice for me, and one slice for the boyfriend :) Yum!














Once we had been driving for a bit something went wrong with my boyfriends van and the Gears stopped working. It was really scary!! We had to pull over on the side of the freeway and call a tow truck. It took the tow truck 2 hours to get to us! It was BOILING outside today, and I had no water to drink (I had given the last of my water to my dog) and I felt like I was dying just being out for those 2 hours. Since I had nothing to do for those 2 hours my boyfriend and I spent most of our time playing Monopoly on my phone. As well as took a few pictures. Finally have a picture of Miley and myself. I look a bit grumpy though, but I was very hot and in a bad mood:














The tow truck finally came 2 hours later, but the tow truck was overheating so the guy had to have the HEAT turned on FULL BLAST the entire 2 hour drive back. Those 4 hours were complete hell! Once we finally got back to where we were dropping off the van, we still had an hour drive to do to actually get home. We borrowed my boyfriend's dad's van to get home, and I've never been so happy to lay in my bed! We don't have AC at the house I'm currently living at, so I'm drinking as much water as possible right now.

Oh, when the tow truck came to pick us up (boyfriend knew the guy) he offered to take us to the gas station to get some water and I was starving like crazy, but they didn't have anything healthy that I wanted. I ended up getting a sandwich that consisted of egg, oatmeal bread, seasoned mayonnaise and salad cress. The detox that I'm on right now, I can't have mayonnaise at all, and it made me feel really bad knowing I was eating it. When I start out on my detox I get very very into it and don't like to "cheat", but I had a bad day and needed to eat! It wasn't too bad though at least.

I'm not planning on really having anything for dinner tonight, as I've already had the falafel pita bread sandwich, a side salad, and another sandwich today and I'm really not hungry. I think I'll make myself a nice cold smoothie a bit later though! Hopefully tomorrow turns out better!

Mmmmm.. Falafel and Oatmeal Pudding!

I started of my morning by having Katie's Oatmeal Raisin Pudding. I unfortunately didn't have any Raisin's in the house, so I had to do without. It was very very good! It reminded me of a Danish Rice Pudding that is very common to have around Christmas time. Will definitely be making this again!














For lunch I had a bowl of the same Pasta that I had yesterday. I used to hate leftovers, but I absolutely love them now! Yum!

My dog Miley decided to get really dirty, yet again, so I had to give her another bath today.
Wet Dog!














Dry and pretty dog :)














Now lets hope she can stay out of trouble and not get dirty for at least a little while!!

For dinner I decided to make Falafel in Pita bread. It consisted of falafel, wholewheat pita bread, tomato's, red onion, Moroccan hummus and lettuce. I LOVE THESE!! They are simple to make, and so yummy!

Second day :)

I woke up at 11:30 AM this morning, but I felt really good. Did some work on Photoshop for my boyfriend for his work and wasn't sure what I wanted to make for breakfast. I remembered I had read Lynn's blog where she had posted a breakfast that she had the other day. It looked really delicious, so I thought I would have it for my breakfast. I changed what I had on mine just a little bit. It consisted of toast, Moroccan hummus, 1 tomato, 2 eggs, cheddar cheese, and salt and pepper. I really enjoyed it, and will be making it again except I wont be adding the cheese next time as I feel it's great without.














Today I had a roommate move in to the house that I'm currently living in. It was so refreshing to finally see a girl moving into this place! It's a 6 bedroom house, and I've never had another girl move in. At one point it was me and 7 guys living here (HORROR) so it was nice to see a girl walking through the door. It's typical though, because my boyfriend and I will be moving sometime before the 6th of July to a new place. So of course a girl moves in right when I'm moving out, but none the less it's nice!

For lunch today I had the same salad that I had yesterday, except I also added tomato's to it this time. Simple salad, but I really enjoy it. I also had a glass of Blossom Hill White Zinfandel with my lunch. Really wasn't planning on having it, but the new roommate offered me a glass so I just couldn't turn it down.

I spent all day with my new roommate at home, it was actually really nice.

For dinner I had a quick pasta which consisted of wheat noodles, canned tomato's, red onion, garlic, corn, green pepper, herbs, and cheddar cheese on top. It was very delicious :) I did have another glass of wine with my dinner as well, hehe.














Overall I think it was a good day! :)

First day!

Today is my official first day back on track with my eating! It feels so good to be able to say that. I had this huge schedule planned out for my first day, and it was all supposed to start by going to bed by at least 11PM last night. However, as I was about to go to bed the entire "Twitter World" were tweeting that Michael Jackson may have died, but that it wasn't confirmed yet. So, I of course couldn't head to bed! I didn't end up going to bed until 2AM. I am very sad that Michael Jackson passed away! I grew up with his music (As I'm sure most of you all did) and It brings back so many memories with listening to his music. Such a sad story! RIP Michael Jackson!

Anyway, because I didn't go to bed until so late I didn't end up waking up until 9:30 AM. Which isn't bad, but I wanted to be up by 7AM (Crazy!)

I started off my morning with a delicious smoothie! It had Orange, Pineapple, Mango and Passionfruit in it and I absolutely loved it! I've personally never liked Mango, and can't eat Mango on it's own but I've discovered that I like it mixed in a smoothie with other fruits.














For lunch I mixed up a very simple salad. We (Boyfriend and I) haven't had a chance to go grocery shopping yet for our Detox so I had to make do with what we had in the house. I added mixed greens, red apple, red onion, bacon bits, onion bits, balsamic vinegar and EVOO to my salad. It was delicious! It's been so long since I had a salad that I forgot how much I really do love them!














After lunch I took a shower and decided that my puppy named Miley (Pomeranian) needed a bath too. She tends to roll in her own pee sometimes, so it was definitely time for a bath! She looks so cute when she gets out of the bath all wet. She jumped onto my lap after running around like a maniac trying to get dry and fell asleep on my lap. Cutest thing ever! I managed to get a picture of her on my lap :)














I got really hungry at about 3PM so decided to have a snack. I cut up 1 whole wheat pita bread, 1 tomato, and a little cheese with some Moroccan style hummus on the side. I can never get enough of this hummus!! If you have never tried it Moroccan style, please do! It's the best!














My boyfriend came home from work and came in and surprised me with a smoothie he had made me. It consisted of strawberries, oranges, grapes, mango, pineapple and banana. PERFECT! :)














For dinner my boyfriend made me an Omelette. I wasn't very hungry so I just wanted something small. It had 2 eggs, cheddar cheese, ham, red onion, salt and pepper. Loved it!














I think I did pretty good today for my first day back. I'm not counting calories or anything like that, just eating when I'm hungry. I'd love anyone's input though on what they think of everything I'm eating. So feel free to leave comments :)

I've really been enjoying finding new blogs on here! So many amazing people who have lost so much weight and are making some really delicious looking foods. Will definitely be making some recipes I've found on blogs on here :)

Until tomorrow!

Lets begin!

I seem to have gone through many blogs throughout my life. So, here's another to add to my list. This is mainly going to be a Food Blog showing you the food that I eat. My boyfriend Ben and I are starting a Detox that we've done briefly before and loved it so much that we've decided to get back on it again. If anyone is interested in knowing what the Detox exactly consists of, I'll be more than happy to explain in another blog. I'm sure I'll do random blogs as well, maybe showing you my lovely pets or something interesting that happened a particular day.

I'm by no means a great photographer, so you will have to make do with my silly attempt at taking pictures of food and what not. But to begin my blog, here's what I had to eat today. I'll start out by saying that this is NOT allowed in my Detox, but we are starting it up tomorrow. We had a lot of left over food that needed to be eaten, and we can't afford to waste food. So - tomorrow will be a bright and new day with new and exciting foods!

Lunch:















Dinner:















And while I'm at it, here's just a little look into different foods I would eat in the past! Then you can get an idea to how I ate, and see the change I'll be going through with trying to eat healthier on my Detox. Not everything pictured is necessarily a bad food choice, but i still thought i should show different types of things i would eat: