Featured Friend Interview: Lola Berry
23 Aug

Featured Friend Interview: Lola Berry

When it comes to getting the world excited about health and good food, one name probably comes to mind … Lola Berry! Lola is a social media rockstar, an author, business woman, nutritionist and a healthy & happy living inspiration.

With a Bachelor of Health Science (majoring in Nutritional Medicine at Endeavour College of Natural Health), Lola Berry knows what she’s talking about. She has got a secret: the most nutritious, healthy food is also the tastiest! Whether through her TV appearances, radio spots or her popular web series, Lola is reaching out to people all over the globe…and people are listening!

Once you see Lola Berry, you’ll remember both her and her message! She has a whole heap of fresh ideas and a talent for presenting them in a way that inspires people to actually use them to better their everyday lives. We couldn’t be more excited to have Lola as our August Featured Friend and we know you will love her just as much as we do!

Lola Quote 1

Lola, you radiate happiness and clearly have a passion for living life to the fullest. What does creating ‘A Healthy Mix for Life’ mean to you?

You’re probably expecting me to say it means eating loads of healthy food, juicing and doing yoga, which is all part of being healthy; but to be honest, ‘a healthy mix for life’ to me really means to live real and from the heart. I think humans crave authentisity but at the end of the day I reckon realness is so rare, so that to me is the ulitmate health, putting you first, being the best YOU.

I don’t think we could of said it better! You are best known for your healthy recipes and your expert nutritional advise, so what does your day on a plate look like and why do you eat the way you do?

It changes all the time because I’m often on the road, but brekkie is either eggs of some description (today I made brekkie egg wraps using sweet potato wraps, then I added green leaffies, avo and this delish dill cashew cheese), but often its a green smoothie or even a paleo granols (the recipe from the happy cookbook is my favourite). Lunch is usually a superfood salad of kinds, think quinoa and lots of colour and for dinner, my favourite thing to cook is crispy salmon in coconut oil. As a treat I love raw vegan chocolate or any of the raw vegan salted caramel creations, then I usually end the day with tea.

lola quote 3

Yum … your day on a plate sounds delicious. With all that delicious food what would be ONE Super Hero Food that you could NOT live without?

Berries, I love them and have them pretty much every day. I love popping them on top of a smoothie bowl, they are like sweet pops of flavour and of course full of healthy antioxidants too!

Berries! It makes sense … Lola we all know that living a healthy life doesn’t mean just eating well, so how do you keep your mind and body healthy?

Yoga is my thing, I love it. I say when I practice, Its the gift I give myself and when I teach it’s the gift I share with others. I love to teach and practice vinyasa and yin yoga. I dive into meditation a bit but feel so good when I do it that I know I need to be doing more of it. My favourite is probably “biophilia” which is the healing power of mother nature, It’s just being out in nature and connecting with yourself and all that’s around you. I love taking my shoes off and really connecting to the earth, they call this “grounding” or “earthing”, pretty special stuff and super simple.

lola yoga

You are an inspiration to so many people out there but do you have someone who inspires you?

I have two gurus or heros. One is my dad who always says “kick goals girl”, and he has always believed in me, even when I’m the only one who can see my dreams. The other is Steve Irwin, I love his authentic passion. He didn’t try to be anybody else but himself. I love that. If I ever have a bad day I come home and watch Steve Irwin docos!

Having someone believe in you is a very powerful thing, combine that with authenticity and passion and we can see that is how you live your life. With all of this in mind, what advise or words of wisdom would you give to the Raw Blend family?

Believe in you, that’s the key, and when you do everything changes for the better. But until that moment it’s an uphill battle. You’re the only person who can get you to where you want to be and the only person who can stop you, so go after that dream no matter how big it is!

Lola quote 2

Lola, you have some amazing cook books with some of the most delicious recipes and we are lucky enough to have you share one of your favourite recipes with us today. Why do you love this recipe?

This paleo chocolate cake steals the show and looks so pretty when you top it with edible blooms. You wouldn’t even know it’s healthy it tastes so good! The perfect treat!!

So this is the showstopper, it looks epic, it tastes epic and it’s the perfect paleo cake, that actually looks like a layered chocolate ganache next-level birthday cake! It’s a bit of a masterpiece! I love surprising people with amazing creations they don’t event look healthy! This looks like an oozy chocolate flavour bomb!

paleo Ganache cake

Paleo Birthday Chocolate Ganache Cake

Makes: 1 Epic Cake

Equipment

  • 2 x mixing bowls
  • cake tin

Ingredients

For the cake:

  • 1 Tpsb of coconut oil, for greasing the tin
  • 3 cups of almond meal (I like to use the one with the skin on but both work perfect)
  • 1/4 cup of coconut flour
  • 3/4 cup of cacao powder
  • Scrapings from the inside of one fresh vanilla pod
  • 1 cup of coconut sugar
  • 2 tsp of baking soda
  • 1/2 cup of coconut oil, melted
  • 3 large organic eggies
  • 1 cup of coconut milk, full cream

Middle layer ganache and chocolate frosting ganache:

  • 1 and 1/2 cups of coconut milk, full cream
  • 4 Tpsb of maple syrup (or honey works real well too)
  • 1/2 cup of raw cacao powder
  • 1/2 the scrapings of a vanilla pod (or just a pinch of vanilla powder)

Topping:

  • 1 bar of 250g of raw chocolate, grated
  • 1/2 a punnet of strawbs, for the top

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
  2. Grease the bottom and side of a 7-inch spring cake tin which coconut oil.
  3. In a bowl, mix together your dry ingredients; almond meal, coconut flour, cacao, vanilla and coconut sugar.
  4. Then in another bowl whisk together your coconut oil (you don’t want the coconut oil to be too hot cos it can scramble the eggies), eggies and coconut milk.
  5. Slowly add your wet ingredients to the dry and mix together really well; you want a nice smooth mixture.
  6. Pour into the cake tine and bake for 40-45 minuets or until a skewer comes out clean. It could need a little longer, and if it does then cover with foil to prevent it burning at the end.
  7. Let it sit and cool. Once it’s cool cut the cake horizontally in half.

Now for the epic ganache…

  1. In a medium saucepan heat your coconut milk, maple syrup. This takes a bit of time and love. So heat slowly and gently, now just stir it every now and then and you really want this to get thick so give it time, it could take about an hour to really thicken up.
  2. Once it’s super thick then add raw cacao and the scrapings of a vanilla pod and stir through for a another few minuets.
  3. Pop aside in the fridge to cool and thicken some more for 20 mins.
  4. Now it’s time to cover the bottom part of the cake with the ganache, and then place the top layer of cake on top and coat it all in ganache!
  5. Top it all off with a block of your favo raw chocolate grated over the top and fresh strawbs! EPIC!

To be inspired EVERYDAY follow Lola on:
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube

To check out Lola’s amazing cookbooks click here.

Happy Blending!

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