Of course it’s weekend recap time! After crashing hard friday night EARLY cause I’m an old fart, I woke up to a very chilly morning. I started the day off right with iChooseFit bootcamp. We were inside most of the time but we had some running and boxing outside in the drizzly dreary morning. Then because I’m super awesome I went home, put dry clothes on and headed out to the Boom Box for the Saturday Funday WOD and HELLO fun shoudn’t be the word for it but more like a beating. As you can see from the picture it was a 10 min AMRAP of insansity! I chose to do the 60 BFB, 20 Front Squats and 10 Ring Rows/10 Ring Dips. I barely got through one round and just for grins got that one burpee in before time was called.

I will tell you I had already done about 60 burpees at iChooseFit, then I had to do another 60 for the WOD!!!??!!! Those burpees were a beating and took up most of the 10 minutes in the WOD. I was spent!

Oh ya, and prior to that we had our 90 sec max rep Hand Release Push Ups! I ousted Coach Grants MOM (she’s a tough one to beat)! She had the wall record for 40 in 90 seconds and I barely scraped by with 43!!!! Woohoooo! I think with better pacing I could have pushed out 45. Maybe next time 🙂

The rest of Saturday consisted of one of my son’s football parties and lots of “rest” the rest of the day. As always Sundays are our shopping days. We gather up all that we need for the week, it just happened to be not as fun because it wouldn’t stop raining/drizzling. I did however buy some items to make for Christmas events for the kids, for work, for parties, etc. I hope to do some trial baking to see if it’s worthy to the NON PALEO folks out there.

My first trial was an almond flour chocolate cake. The batter tasted good so I was hopeful for a great outcome. And low and behold it was pretty tasty, I just overcooked it a tad bit 😦 While I was overcooking my cake I was whipping up a chocolate frosting to mix with the cake because my end goal was to make some paleo cake balls! For the past several years I turn into a cake ball machine in December. Well seeing as that I’ve changed my whole eating lifestyle cake balls just weren’t going to be my thing this year but if I can get this paleo style cake ball going it might be worth if for the holidays! So I used the cake that was still edible and mixed it with my frosting (that may be a little too bitter since the chocolate bar had zero sugar) and rolled out little balls. I set them in the freezer and hopefully tonight I’ll get them dipped in some dark chocolate and get my taste testing on! I’ll let you know how it goes. In the mean while I’ll share my PRE BAKED cake and the recipe. I forgot to do an after picture because I was so sad it was overdone. Trust me it would not have been a pretty picture.

Chocolate Cake (makes about 24 balls)
(From “the Gluten-free Almond Flour cookbook”)

2 cups almond flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup raw honey
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla
(I added grapeseed oil because the batter was thick, and to be honest I didn’t measure it out. I’ll modify this when I bake again, but I’d say I did at least 1/3 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease (with coconut oil!) and flour (with almond flour!) an 8 inch cake pan.
Combine the almond flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the honey, eggs and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake completely.

Courtesy of http://paleobrat.blogspot.com/2011/04/paleo-party-with-cake-pop-demo.html

I did not follow their cake ball directions but feel free to try your own thing. Below is the frosting I made that I mixed in with my crumbled up cake.

Chocolate Frosting:
1 cup of dark chocolate. I tried to use 75% cacao or higher, but only had this 60% one laying around, so I used that
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
2 tbs agave nectar
1 tbs vanilla extract
pinch sea salt

Chop dark chocolate up and place into a small saucepan
Pour out half cup of grapeseed oil and mix with chocolate in saucepan
Heat over low heat until melted and blended
Stir in agave, vanilla and salt

Once the chocolate is melted, place in mixing bowl to cool. When it is warm to the touch I put it in fridge to cool more quickly. This still wasn’t quick enough for me so I put in freezer for a little bit as well.

Once chilled, place in mixer and mix on a high speed until its rich, fluffy, and creamy. It will lighten up in color quite a bit and almost have a light buttercream consistency.

Courtesy of: http://www.instructables.com/id/Gluten-Free-Paleo-Friendly-Delicious-Vanilla-Cu/

I have not tried the cupcakes that went with the frosting yet but I’m sure they are yummy.

Once I taste test the cake balls I will be more detailed about making them and show you some pictures. Wish me luck! And if you have any questions or things to add about anything I’ve shared just leave a comment 🙂 Happy Monday