Over two years ago my now boyfriend flashed a picture to me on his mobile phone at work and this very picture changed my life. NO... it's not what you're probably thinking... it was picture of dark chocolate pancakes stacked like Jenga pieces, with shiny pretzel sticks slotted on top of each individual cake, and dripping in salted caramel sauce.
The magical thing was, these weren't just regular pancakes, they were healthy pancakes, made with protein powder. He then proceeded to show me a lady named Anna Sward, founder of Protein Pow.
Protein Pow is healthy food blog where all the food is made with protein powder. It started in 2011; back then the idea of using protein powder in cooking was outlandish and inane. But today, the site has over 1,000 recipes - from pizzas to cakes, to soups and ice cream -, Anna has two cookbooks and is on her way to releasing more, and on top of that, she travels around the globe teaching fitness enthusiasts and foodies how to master protein powder cooking. Now their are tons of people imitating her recipes and becoming protein chefs in their own right. Recently you'll even see how almost every protein supplement company - as well as health food products, like nut butters and coconut oil brands - have their own 'healthy chef' creating masterpieces from companies products in 'Recipe corners', brand blog pages and social media feeds.
Protein Pow led me to find tons of other 'healthy chefs' and amazing food blogs. I learned what ingredients you could use which were nutritions and healthy, and how you could turn a food considered 'bad' into something just as tasty, yet best of all, which was good for you. As I got into bodybuilding... and fell madly in love with fitness... my food, my 'diet' (and when I say diet I'm not talking about going on a 'diet' I mean diet as in my daily food intake), changed dramatically. The problem is most people think eating healthy is boring, and even I have been guilty of this, but healthy isn't boring, it's just you're being lazy! People like Anna, Kevin Curry, Deliciously Ella... to name a few... show how you can make all kinds of amazing food with a little imagination and prep.
I've been wanting to go to one of Anna's Protein Pow workshops for ageeees and luckily enough I received a ticket as birthday present this year - best birthday present ever!! Before I knew it I was heading to 52 Cookery School in Barbican. We all waited upstairs with mugs of coffee and tea until Anna came up. Before heading downstairs to get absolutely covered in protein powder (yes, this happened to me!), we all introduced ourselves and shared our experiences with cooking with protein; how you spend hours making an awesome cake only for it to turn out like a shiny, rubbery dense ball, to attempting to make cookies and ending up with cakes... someone even admitted to making cauliflower ice cream - yep, you totally just read that right! Also... Christmas vegetable cake; including brussels sprouts... But most of us all had the same common issue: texture. If you've made healthy versions of favourite treats before you probably will have experienced this too. A lot of us rarely, if ever, used other protein powders like pea, rice or hemp too. Anna had mountains of these alternative protein powders in the kitchen for us to try and experiment with.
We started off making protein bars and smothering them in melted dark chocolate to make them into candy bars. After that we split into groups to make protein cheesecakes, cupcakes, cakes, cookies and frosting (D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S). Finally we made the best thing ever; protein pizzas. Once we finished creating crazy concoctions we all sat down to eat it all. It's safe to say I probably ate my protein intake for the entire week.
The workshop was awesome and there was such a great mix of different people there; from people who love cooking, to fitness professionals and couples. I learned loads and left with ideas on how to make protein baking even more awesome. I also left with gewy protein batter in my hair haha.
Here's some pictures from the day and some links to foods that we made.
ENJOY!
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