Beauty Boosting: Chilli Chocolate Truffles For Radiant Skin

You’re not alone - the arrival of the colder season in the UK brings with it a deep-set fear of dull and dehydrated skin to many.

I adore the Autumn and Winter months. Lighting candles, wrapping up in lots of layers, and finally cracking out the Christmas pyjamas. But if like me, you strive for a positively radiant and blemish-free complexion that screams ‘I just got married and it was the best day of my life!!’, it seems like an unachievable goal that no amount of moisturiser can rescue. And well, I’m not getting married, so I can't even pray that I’ll get that magical ‘I just got married’ face of pure happiness.

But one thing that does bring me a lot of happiness (and I don’t say that lightly) is chocolate and I feel like these months really are a reason to indulge. Luckily, it’s as great for the skin as it is delicious. Yes, you heard that right, so the arrival of Autumn needn’t be a fear anymore.

Now I’m not suggesting you go out a buy Mars Bar everyday, I’m talking about dark chocolate and raw chocolate. Cacao contains high levels of antioxidant flavanols that protect the skin from free-radicals, that can lead to premature ageing, skin diseases, as well as helping to keep the skin hydrated, soft and youthful. It’s also a well-known mood-booster too, keeping hormone in-balances at bay that can lead to angry breakouts.

The combination of the chilli in these truffles, which is high in capsaicin, also helps to fight any inflammation. But don't fear the medjool dates and the cinnamon help to give these melt-in-the-mouth truffles a sweet, caramel taste.

Ingredients

Makes 24 Truffles

2 Cups Medjool Dates (pitted)

1/2 Cup Walnuts

2 TBSP Coconut Oil (melted)

2 TBSP Cacao Powder

1/4 TSP Salt

1/4 TSP Cinnamon

1/4 TSP Chilli Powder

To Top (optional):

Dark Chocolate (melted)

Chilli Flakes

Blend down your medjool dates until they form a smooth paste.

In a high powered blender or food processor, pulse the chopped walnuts with the coconut oil, cacao powder, salt, cinnamon and chilli powder.

Then add in the date paste and blend together until combined. There will still be little chunks of date and walnut, but thats okay.

Simply roll the mixture into even balls about the size of a grape and leave to set in the freezer for 5 minutes.

Optional:

I then melted down some dark chocolate and topped with chilli flakes before letting them be devoured.

Kay's Kitchen Playlist:

Ariana Grande - Breakfree (It's a guilty pleasure)

Morning Skincare Routine

When it comes to skincare, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.When I started working in skincare and beauty, I was overwhelmed with the amount of products I could try, but ended up overloading my skin and had a couple nasty allergic reactions. So now I start every morning with my firm favourite, the Liz Earle Hot Cloth Cleanser (£14/100ml). This beautifully creamy cleanser has been a staple the past few years, as it's gentle enough on my eczema prone skin, but dissolves away every last scrap of dirt and make up. Full of naturally active ingredients like eucalyptus and cocoa butter it keeps skin soft and supple, unlike a lot of cleansers which were far too harsh and drying on my skin.

With the colder weather coming in, I'm finding my skin a lot more problematic and blemish-prone, so I've been using the Caudalie Vinosource S.O.S Thirst Quenching Serum (£29.00/30ml) every morning for the past month to combat dehydration. Although it sinks into the skin quickly, it provides long lasting hydration with the use of organic grape water and hyaluronic acid. And as always, the company promise zero parabens, mineral oils or animal ingredients (winner!). I follow this up with the Khiels Creamy Eye Treatment With Avocado (£20.00/14g), which is a fantastic product for younger skin that doesn’t need firming or anti-ageing. A little bit of this rich eye cream keeps my under eyes hydrated all day and makes concealer application an absolute dream.

Unlike my loyalty to my cleanser, I flirt with a lot of different moisturisers and sit on the fence with almost all of them: "yeah, they were okay, but they weren't amazing". I'm currently testing and loving this Liz Earle moisturiser, but I'm not ready to settle down just yet. It's of a more richer texture, which I like on my dry skin and absorbs really fast, so it doesn't feel like it's just sitting there. 

Lastly, I use my Clarasonic with the Delicate/Sensitive Brush once a week. My skin doesn’t react well with over-exfoliation, so I’m building up it’s tolerance slowly to the Clarasonic  and might increase it to twice a week soon.

What are you currently using on your face?

K

Beauty Boosting: Anti-inflammatory Raspberry & Coconut Chia Seed Pudding

Sally can’t comprehend my stress. She doesn’t get how I can easily freak out and lose all will to continue, or how I can bottle everything up and allow a violent explosion. She just doesn’t get stressed out like I do. We all react to things differently, which makes stress hard to understand and sympathise with. But when Sally suggests that I simply ‘stress less’, it makes me want to LOL in her face. 

Whilst I breakdown, feeling totally out-of-control (often) over minor things, Sally could stand there watching her house burn down without even a glitch in her calm exterior. So no Sally, I can’t simply ‘stress less’ because that’s just not how I deal with things (and clearly flailing about like a headless chicken is far too much fun).

Now these bouts of stress can appear uninvited and really out-stay their welcome. And those lucky Sally’s of the world may just never understand, but to all those who suffer, it can be a real problem that makes everyday life hard to deal with - it can affect our relationships, our jobs/education and most importantly our health.

Stress sends our hormones flying all about the place. This in-balance can lead to increased anxiety, weight gain/loss, little to no motivation, fatigue, digestive issues amongst many other problems. And for me, wherever the root of my stress may lie, it always blossoms into something that makes my stress so much more stressful: spots. 

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot we can do to prevent this, as often stress in unavoidable (and we can’t just ‘stress less’), but by eating foods rich with anti-oxidants, anti-inflammatories and essential fatty acids, we can help to support and sooth our skin whilst attempting to calm our stress.

This Raspberry & Coconut Chia Seed Pudding is packed full of Omega 3 fatty acids that are essential for our bodies. An omega deficiency can lead to depression, anxiety and fatigue. Chia seeds are packed full of omega 3 fatty acids that help to balance out our hormones. Raspberries and chia seeds both contain a lot of antioxidants which combat inflammation and b-vitamins that fight stress. The copper and magnesium found within the coconut support healthy collagen production, keeping our connective tissues strong and also the potassium provides the skin with loads of hydration.

This recipe is anti-inflammatory, stress-busting and mood-lifting. 

Serves 1

Ingredients:

8g Desiccated Coconut 

20g Chia Seeds

40ml Almond Milk

60ml Coconut Water

1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract (optional)

30g Raspberries, crushed.

1. In a bowl combine the desiccated coconut and chia seeds with the almond milk, coconut water and vanilla extract.
2. Cover and leave in the fridge to set (preferably overnight).
3. In the morning, top with the crushed raspberries.

Tip: Add heart-healthy chopped walnuts or antioxidant rich cacao nibs when serving. Alternatively add sliced banana to make this a great pre-workout snack/meal! 

When I’m stressed, I love to exercise and have long warm baths. What do you do in times of stress?

Kay's Kitchen Playlist

Youth - Daughter
T-Shirt Weather - Circa Waves

Borough Market, London

A rainy day in London is anything but unusual. It leaves us Britons praying for just that sliver of a Summer. Just a promise that we're not heading into 40 days and nights of rain. But we've come to accept that packing an umbrella in the middle of August is a must. And quite frankly, what's a British Summer without embracing a few soggy-sandwiched picnics?  

So we started off our drizzly afternoon in one of London's most bustling spots, Borough Market, where the vibrant stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables had offset the drab weather outside. The market is possibly every Foodie's dream. Whether you're gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian or none of the above, you would find it hard not to find something that looked and smelt incredible. And the sheer scale of the market provided shelter from the rain for a good few hours.

We then jumped on a clammy tube over to Buckingham Palace to escape the rain on a tour around the State Rooms. In the Palace Gardens we finished our afternoon with afternoon tea, just so one could say they've had tea at the Palace - ha ha ha, never gets old.

(Side note: I'm not ashamed to say I've never been more attracted to a peach in my life).

Where are your favourite rainy-day London spots?

K

Planet Organic Haul

Shopping is both my greatest devotion and weakness in life. Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you of the inner peace I find within buying a shiny new pair of shoes. But most recently, this passion is being challenged with a love of trailing round health food stores like Whole Foods Market. Now if you don't get excited over buying nut butters and seeds then I'm sorry, it's just not going to work out between us. 

Heels and baobab powder don't quite go hand in hand, but they do share one common ground - one simply has no time to shop for either. So I placed an online order - and maybe an ASOS one alongside too - to have some unusual and interesting healthy foods delivered straight to my door. 

Clearspring Snack Organic Roasted Seeds and Soya with Goji Berry and Tamari Roasted Pumpkin Seeds. Inspiral Smokin' Coconut Pecks and Raspberry Coconut Pecks. Superfruit Cacao + Mint Raw Protein Bar. Biona Organic Spelt Pizza Bases. Buckwheat Cakes. EatReal Sundried Tomato & Roasted Garlic Quinoa Chips and Chilli & Lime Quinoa Chips. Sassy's Blondie and Red Velvet. Raw Health Organic Blissed Chocada Truffles. Raw 46 Crunchy Coconut Almond Butter and Crunchy Coconut Hazelnut Butter. Meridian Organic Strawberry Fruit Spread. Mr Organic Authentic Italian Arrabbiata. 

K

Food For Friends, Brighton

With darker nights approaching, I get this horrible sense of the Summer running away from me. I'm left in a sheer panic, realising I haven't done half the stuff I planned to when I watched the long break spread out in front of me. It turns out it's August, and between work, my days are diminishing. So with the sun finally shining again, Mum and I had spent the morning doing a spot of shopping down the Lanes in Brighton, to make the most of the fleeting Summer (or at least the very British version of it).

I have a list the length of my forearm of the most rave about places to grab food or eat in the city, but I suggested we sat down for lunch at Food For Friends, a vegetarian restaurant I had spent many a blogpost drooling over. We took advantage of the weather and their perfect people watching location and sat outside. Now with a great reputation for their flavoursome, home cooked food, with a menu that caters for a whole host of special dietary requirements (but don't be fooled - many a meat-eater has raved about this restaurant), our expectations were: 11/10.

And I can't say we were left disappointed. The food was delicious and the generous portions sizes were spot on. The staff were lovely and couldn't have been more helpful. 

Now Mum's a bit of a self-confessed haloumi addict, she's also not willing to much about it, and after catching a glimpse of their haloumi and portobello burger her decision was final. It came stacked in a brioche bun on top of fresh tomato, baby gem lettuce, gerkins and a red onion marmalade, served with triple cooked chips and a honey mustard mayo.

I went for one of their - many -  vegan options, the tahini marinated roast aubergine, stuffed with a delicious smoky chipotle pepper and tomato ragout, served with pan-fried saffron potatoes and courgette drizzled with a sweet pekmez dressing.

And even though we had all but demolished our food, we ordered two espresso shots with their homemade dark chocolate truffles to share, because we just couldn't resist. Now oh my goodness, these were the best things ever. So rich, but not too sickly, and they melted in your mouth like a lindt ball would, but I swear they tasted 10x better. I suggested that they start selling these immediately as it's sent me on a vegan chocolate truffle quest.

I also picked up this "I am SKINNY GREEN" juice from another Brighton health haunt, 42 Juice, to fuel my spin workout later in the day. 

And here's hoping I can fit in a few more days as lovely as this before the Summer is over.

K

July Top 5

And here are my July Top 5...

1. Peaky Blinders, Season 1 (available to watch on Netflix).

For those who haven't heard about this show, it's a period drama set in 1919, following the infamous Birmingham gang, the Peaky Blinders. Although I cover my eyes when the gory fight scenes come on, I became absolutely obsessed and finished season 1 in a week. Also give props to whoever created the soundtrack, because it's awesome. Eagerly awaiting season 2 to come to Netflix.

2. Sweaty Betty, Shorts & Sports Bra Co-ord. 

I picked this cool running co-ord up in the Sweaty Betty sale and haven't wanted to run in anything else since. Usually with shorts I find there's too much material and they come up a little big, but these are lightweight and there's no riding up-or-down or needing to readjust (and of course, you can't not get the matching bra). The sale is now over but their new season collection is now in stores. I’m currently obsessed with this print here.

3. Clinique, Liquid Facial Wash Mild (£16.50) and Clinique Mild Clarifying Lotion (£16.50).

These were my absolute skin saviours. A combination of stress and then laziness on the skincare front (listen to your Mother when she tells you to take your make up off after a night out) made my skin erupt in July. These Clinque Mild products were recommended by a friend who has amazing skin, so I didn't need much convincing, and are great on sensitive skin. I use the facial wash in the morning, and then the mild clarifying lotion, which is an alcohol-free acid toner, after cleansing to gently exfoliate the face without irritating break-outs. 

4. L’oreal Paris Color Riche Lipliner (£3.99) and Lipstick (£8.19) in 302 ‘Bois De Rose’.

Usually I like to rock more of a statement lip, but I've been loving this duo for a beautiful everyday pinky nude.

5. Raw Vegan Carrot Cake.

And lastly this month, I've been reminiscing this raw vegan carrot cake. It was my first attempt at a raw cake but it went down a storm with my whole family, including my Dad who gladly swapped a Saturday afternoon slice of chocolate cake for this instead. It was more of a cheesecake consistency so we all agreed it would be a great dessert. Find the recipe here.

K