Welcome to Beauty Is Wellness, a column about the link between nutrition, lifestyle and beauty based on my health coaching practice of the same name. I’m thrilled to share information about my favorite beauty foods, original recipes for beautiful skin, hair and nails and nutritional tips for beautifying from the inside out in the months to come. If you have specific questions about the beauty and nutrition connection that you’d like to have answered in this column, contact me at jolene@beautyiswellness.com.
Afternoon tea. Sounds so much more relaxing than crack-of-dawn coffee, doesn’t it? But few of us take a quiet moment to give our body and beauty a tea break.
Today’s post gives you an excuse to savor the anti-aging benefits of tea, along with something sweet (that won’t sabotage your skin) to pair with it. Together, this duo offers a moment to breathe, de-stress, and, of course, eat for beauty!
When we talk about tea, we mean freshly brewed, since the bottled teas (sweetened or unsweetened) sitting on store shelves have lost almost all of their anti-aging benefits. If you really want the total body benefits of tea, you must brew it fresh.
And since I realize that sometimes tea just begs a sweet accompaniment, I created these Gluten-Free Banana Buckwheat Carob Muffins. They won’t spoil the beauty benefits of your anti-aging brew. And they pack in quite a bit of skin-supporting nutrition themselves. Buckwheat has high levels of protein and beauty minerals, while banana contains silicon for strong collagen. Cutting the gluten and refined sugar (and keeping the coconut sugar to a minimum) means that you’ll create a smaller glycemic load for your body, which puts less stress on your skin. You definitely don’t want to pair a powerfully anti-aging brew with a load of processed desserts that speed up visible aging in your body.
I suggest pairing these muffins with green, white or rooibos tea, to complement the nutty taste of buckwheat and the bitterness of carob. Green tea is a great source of anti-aging catechins like EGCG, which can actually revive dying skin cells! White tea protects healthy collagen, while rooibos contains the phytochemial quercetin that helps block UVB damage.
Hope you enjoy your afternoon tea break.
Gluten-Free Banana Buckwheat Carob Muffins
The riper the bananas, the more concentrated their nutritional benefits (and the more natural sweetness they contain).
Makes 12 muffins
3 large ripe bananas
2 pastured eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp unsweetened almond milk
2 tbsp softened coconut oil
1/4 cup coconut sugar
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 cup all-purpose gluten-free flour blend, such as Cup 4 Cup
1 1/2 tsp gluten-free baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup carob chips
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Lightly grease a muffin tin with coconut oil and set aside.
In a large bowl, mash two of the ripened bananas. Cut the third into small chunks and set aside. Add eggs to the mashed bananas, and beat to incorporate. Stir in vanilla extract, almond milk, coconut oil and coconut sugar until well combined.
In a medium bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and stir until completely combined. Fold in the carob chips and the banana chunks.
Divide batter among 12 muffin cups, and bake for about 25 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
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Text, images and recipes ©2013 Jolene Hart. All rights reserved.
BIO:
Jolene Hart, CHC, AADP is a Philadelphia-based writer and founder of Beauty Is Wellness, a natural beauty and health coaching practice. She teaches women to use nutrition and lifestyle choices to look and feel their best from the inside out.