Recovery snacks.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my awesome student trainer is actually encouraging me to eat cupcakes post-work out. His reasoning is based on the role that carbohydrates play in replacing muscle glycogen levels, thereby reducing the fatigued feeling. If you're interested, you can read here, particularly p. 38-9.

Simple carbohydrates are the best recovery food, within 30 minutes of training, because the sugars are quickly broken down. If they contain a bit of protein and some fat, then they are even better. Surprisingly, though, fructose is only half as good as other kinds of sugars at replacing glycogen levels, so while a piece of fruit is better than nothing, it isn't the ideal post-training snack.

My first week of training I followed up with muffins--The Best Pumpkin Muffins, from Vegan with a Vengeance.

Then last weekend I decided to try out two new recipes from The Joy of Vegan Baking: raspberry-oat squares and chocolate peanut butter cupcakes.

The slice was really easy, just a matter of mixing the base up and spreading it with jam. It is also really yummy. It isn't very fruity, though. I think next time I'll make more of a raspberry sauce, a la raspberry choc blondie bars from VwaV and use that for the fruit layer.

The choc-PB cupcakes were actually a bit of a letdown. I cut the recipe in half, and possibly did something wrong. My batter was really dry, almost cookie dough-ish. I added a weensy bit more soy milk, so that it was spoon-able, before putting it into the cupcake tin. While they baked, they didn't actually get much lift. Look how puny this one is.

The other thing is that the chocolate and peanut butter flavours are actually underwhelming. The flavour which comes through the most is actually banana, which isn't bad, just not what I was expecting.