Maintaining a healthy lifestyle takes dedication, but without it, it is too easy to fall into bad habits. Ensuring there is clean food to eat, making time to fit exercise into your hectic schedule and taking the appropriate supplements, means you are making your health a real priority.
So, how can you let yourself actually indulge?
First, put a system in place to look after your body. For example, set up a delivery service for fresh fruits and vegetables. Schedule days when you can meet a friend to walk, run or do a yoga session together. Take a look at websites like www.authorityreports.com to see a list of available supplements, what they do and which ones are right for you.
Next, let yourself indulge. Once you are in a real routine, it will be easier to return to it after a walk on the sweet side.
When it’s time to indulge, don’t waste it on store bought cake. Instead, bake one up on your own. When is the last time you looked at the ingredients on a package of cookies? Buying processed cakes and cookies contain a plethora of additives and preservatives that are not even recognizable as food items. Take a look and use this guide from the Mayo Clinic to decode nutrition labels.
Need help to bake up something delicious? We have insider baking tips just for you.
Tricks to Baking Up The Perfect Chocolate Cake
- Find a tried and tested recipe – Starting with a quality recipe is key. We love this one which is based on the Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Cake recipe. It bakes up moist and delicious. If you don’t have espresso powder, you can dissolve instant coffee into the boiling water.
- Healthy substitutions – Feel free to tinker with this incredibly versatile recipe to include your own personal substitutions. Replace the white flour with whole wheat flour and use brown sugar instead of white.
- Temperature of your Oven – Don’t assume that your oven is calibrated correctly. It could be that the reason your cakes always burn is because of the wrong temperature. Check the internal temperature of your oven with an inexpensive oven thermometer.
- Place cake pan in the center of the oven – Cake pans that are placed on the sides of oven racks tend to bake unevenly with one side being higher than the other. Avoid this problem by placing your pan in the center of your oven.
- Toothpick with crumbs attached – You may have heard the advice of testing the doneness of a cake by sticking a toothpick in the center and checking it afterwards. If it’s clean and free of crumbs, the cake is done. However, for a moister cake, take it out of the oven while there are still a few crumbs attached to the toothpick. You will ensure that you haven’t overbaked the cake and the taste and texture of your cake will be phenomenal.
- Practice, practice, practice – The more you practice with the same recipe, the quicker and better your baking will be.
Conclusion
With the proper lifestyle plan in place, you can indulge your sweet tooth in a delicious and guilt-free way.
