The Darling Life is now live!

Hello, darlings! 

We're super excited to share our new blog with you! Darling Disposition is now The Darling Life! 

Head over THERE to check us out! 

Can't wait to see you there! 

DIY Healthy: Fudge-y Chocolate Brownies (with black beans!)

Okay, darlings, let's be real.Who doesn't LOVE chocolate? We've all had those  days, when after a long day full of work, all we want is to crash on our couch and enjoy chocolate. But after getting our fill (and then some), we inevitably feel bad. With this recipe you can enjoy all the goodness without the guilt! These brownies are a snap to whip up and they are primary made of black beans! Yes, black beans. BLACK. BEANS. We were a little skeptical at first too, but with the rich brown color, mixed with cocoa, coconut oil, and chocolate chips (don't leave these out!)- we got a batch of unbelievable, tastes-just-like-the-real-thing brownies! Instead gushing about these for longer, we're just going to go right ahead and cook up another batch. And we suggest you do too!

Ingredients (recipe adapted from here):

1. Black beans (1 can)

2. Quick cooking oats (1/2 cup)

3. Chocolate chips (1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp)

4. Coconut oil (1/4 cup)

5. Almond milk (1 Tbsp)

6. Cocoa powder (2 Tbsp)

7. Maple Syrup (1/4 cup)

8. Stevia packets (3-4)

9. Vanilla extract (2 tsp)

10. Baking powder (1/2 tsp)

11. Salt (1/4 tsp)

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 8x8 pan.

2. Wash and drain the black beans.

3. Put all the ingredients, EXCEPT the chocolate chips, into your food processor. Process until smooth.

4. Fold in chocolate chips.

5. Pour batter into pan and sprinkle 2 Tbsp of chocolate chips on top.

6. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

7. Let brownies cool for at least 10 minutes.

8. ENJOY these scrumptious brownies!

DIY Eats: Two-Ingredient Strawberry Fudge

It's almost Valentine's Day, darlings! Or in our case, Galentine's Day! Whether you're spending it with your sweetie or with your bestie, V-day is always the perfect occasion to indulge your sweet tooth! You might just need a break from all that decadent milk chocolate (a very short break, in our case!), and this quick fudge is the perfect sweet treat for that. It's just two ingredients (yes, two!), and you can be creative with your presentation. Be careful, this fudge is pretty darn sweet!

What are your V-day plans? We'll be spending our night in our silky pjs, surrounded by chocolate and watching our favorite hollywood heartthrobs! Follow along on Instagram and Facebook to see how we're enjoying our night.

DIY Eats: Banana Nut Oatmeal Bake

Today was a self-assigned snow day (if our local high school as a two-hour delay, we count that as one for us, too!), so we wanted to go full-on cozy with a Banana Nut Oatmeal Bake. It was delicious and gooey and added a warmth to our lazy breakfast, which we had looking out over the snow-- some quality AM infomercial watching may have been involved, too.

How was your snow day? Did you get buried? Nothing? Go sledding? Let us know in the comments!

Bonus: While it was in the oven, it made our whole house smell like Banana bread, so, you know, if you like the scent of vanilla and cinnamon: it's free air freshener!

DIY Eats: Easy Strawberry-Banana Oatmeal Smoothie

Let's talk about breakfast, baby! Yes, it's easy to skip when you have already skipped three-point-five alarms and only half-straightened your hair and are still two minutes late. But another few minutes and you can have yourself a complete, nutritious, metabolism-boosting breakfast to-go! 

This smoothie is sweet and creamy (but can be vegan!), and will give you the energy to power through to lunch without feeling that mid-morning lull. Or the loud, embarrassing grumbles that make your intriguing new coworker have to avoid eye contact. 

DIY Eats: Oatmeal Burrito Bowl

Want to hop on the breakfast-for-dinner trend, but sick of pancakes and waffles? (That was a trick question, no one gets sick of waffles. Ever.) But mix up your oatmeal by doing a savory version: Mexican oats in a burrito bowl! 

Quiz time! What will having these delicious oats for dinner save you? a. the walk to Chipotle, b. the delivery cost to get Chipotle delivered (does Chipotle deliver?), c. the carbs from eating rice or a tortilla at Chipotle, d. cash money. 

Another trick question. The answer is all of the above! 

Add some avocado slices and shredded lettuce for a fresh mix of textures, and refrigerate your leftovers for a quick and easy breakfast tomorrow! 

DIY Eats: Oatmeal Cinnamon Roll with Frosting

Remember the gooey, sticky sweetness of biting into a Cinnabon? Or, rather, remember yesterday at the mall when you walked by Cinnabon and almost caved but didn't? (Or, you know, did?) 

Today's oatmeal recipe is the solution to any guilt, nostalgia, or sticky fingers you may have experienced: cinnamon bun oatmeal-- with icing! 

This recipe mixes healthy ingredients like whole grains from the oatmeal, metabolism-revving cinnamon, and protein-filled tofu (yes, tofu). 

The best news of all? You can have cinnamon buns for breakfast without actually having cinnamon buns for breakfast. 

DIY Eats: Tropical Sunrise Overnight Oats

It's Day 3 of Oatmeal Week! And we have a quite the recipe for you today.

Are you suffering through a cold winter this year? We sure are! An easy way to escape the cold is to add a bit of the tropics to your meals. The combination of mangoes, pineapple, orange, citrus- you name it- will transport you right to the sunny and warm beaches of world (even though you're sitting at your kitchen table bundled up in sweaters). 

We're HUGE fans of Overnight Oats! Anything that we can prep the night before (so we can sleep in those extra few minutes), we love. But you'll be so excited to open up this delicious tropical oatmeal recipe that you're gonna jump right out of bed. 

DIY Eats: Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Oats

We're going a little indulgent for  Day 2 of our Oatmeal Week.  Who doesn't adore chocolate covered strawberries? Seriously! What better way to start off our day with a delicious breakfast that is equally parts nutritious and delicious! You're getting all the healthy benefits of steel cut oats plus the antioxidants and vitamins of strawberries, all while tricking your mind because we promise you'll think you're biting into a juicy chocolate covered strawberry. Try it out and tell us what you think! This also makes a perfect breakfast for Valentine's Day (hence these adorable napkins we got for $1 from Target).

DIY Eats: DD's Oatmeal Week Starts Today!

Hello, darlings!

How many made their new year's resolution a few weeks ago to become healthier, eating clean, or working out? We did! We've stayed on track (for the first time! and we'll share our workout and eating tips soon), but even if you haven't, it's never too late to get BACK on track! One of the easiest changes for us was to start eating a super healthy breakfast: it tastes delicious, puts you in a good mood, and fuels you up for the rest of the day. The biggest diet changes for us was OATMEAL. We absolutely adore oatmeal!

Oatmeal is a whole grain that helps reduce the risk of many diseases. Just remember to try and avoid the prepackaged instant oatmeal that is full of sugar and may not have whole grain oats. It's very heart healthy and can even help with weight loss. You can't go wrong with oatmeal.

Today is the start of our Oatmeal Week! We'll share one of our favorite (and taste-tested) oatmeal recipes every day this week, so keep  checking in. Today we're starting with Blueberry Muffin Oats- the blueberries and cinnamon combo packs in a delicious bakery-fresh taste without the sugar, fat, and flour. We promise it tastes just as delicious!

DIY Eats: Butter Pecan Cheesecake

The holidays get a little crazy and hectic, so you need all the help you can get. This quick and easy, no bake dessert is perfect to whip up and your guests will have NO idea that it's so simple. We just discovered the pretty ingenious use of coffee creamer to add almost any flavor to your cheesecake. It's pretty concentrated, so your dessert will be so flavorful. We can't wait to try a peppermint mocha or pumpkin spice! These cute little pedestal dessert cups are the perfect size and style to amp up the presentation of your treat.

But the best part of this recipe? The bowl you get you lick at the end! :-)

DIY Eats: Wheat-free Cranberry-Orange Scones + Cranberry-infused butter

Hello Darlings! We made our first fall flavor recipe today with one of our favorite ingredients: cranberries! With it sweet smell and tangy taste, it makes your dishes so flavorful as well as festive. We recently discovered a new flavor combination: cranberry and orange. We don't know what about this combo is so delicious, but trust us, it is. You'll just have to try for yourself! As you know, Darling Disposition loves tea! And nothing goes better with tea than scones. But these are not your ordinary buttermilk scones, they are completely grain free! Using a mixture of coconut and almond flours, you can get the perfect moist scone texture without the carbs.

DIY Halloween: Pumpkin Spice Truffles

Today's DIY kind of gives us the heebie jeebies, but in the best possible way-- bloody pumpkin spice truffles! They're the perfect treat for your guests to finish off a festive Halloween night: a blend of spicy, sweet, and shocking! Can we just talk about how eerie the red looks against the white candy coating? It's like something straight out of Hitchcock! And, the best part, they're deceptively easy to make! 

Have fun, darlings, and enjoy! These truffles are bloody delicious! (We couldn't resist!)

Tomorrow... drumroll, please... we reveal our Halloween costumes! (There's a hint in this post-- can you figure it out?)

DIY Eats: Maple Pumpkin Spice Latte

We're one week away from Halloween and we're so excited! We are going to be posting one Halloween-themed DIY every day until the 31st, so follow along! Check us out on Instagram with #DDloveshalloween, too. 

We're starting with a fall favorite! Can you believe that neither one of us had tried Starbucks' famous Pumpkin Spice Latte up until a few weeks ago? Crazy! But then on that fateful day, we became PSL converts. It's full of such rich fall flavor that the hot drink just puts you in the perfect mood. We experimented at home and came up with this great recipe that cuts the price and calories of the Sbux version but adds freshness and hint of maple. This is our new GO-TO drink and we're expecting to be whipping this latte up way into the winter. 

DIY Eats: Jalapeno Cheddar Cheese Ball

We just adore anything that has cheese as the main ingredient. Or any ingredient. And our love extends to all kinds of cheese. Our current faves are aged cheddar, brie, and pepper jack. Yum!  During the holidays last year, we discovered cheese balls! They are so easy to whip up and taste inexplicably gourmet. Totally perfect for that last minute get-together. 

We made our cream cheese based cheese ball with cheddar and jalapeno (since our parents LOVE spicy food)- and these flavors mixed just delightfully! 

DIY Eats: Lightened-Up PB Frosting

Our first experiment in frosting was surprisingly delicious! Most frosting, though delicious, are  filled with things that are really not good for you. But not this one! With simple ingredients from your pantry, you can whip up this frosting/icing/dessert all by itself in just a few minutes. The cream cheese gives it a very rich quality with almost no harm to your beautiful figure. We ate our batch right up- on our fave low-guilt brownies from Trader Joe's, our favorite healthy oatmeal cookies, and then with a spoon right out of the bowl. 

We can't wait to make it again! 

Let us know how you like it!

DIY Eats: Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's Friday afternoon and we're planning a quiet sisters evening in!  So, we whipped up a batch of these health-ified chocolate chip cookies. They're made with only healthy ingredients that all clean eaters have in their kitchens and my, my, they taste just divine! With flavors that we all love, like chocolate and peanut butter, these oatmeal based cookie is just what any Friday night needs. The recipe is taken from the fabulous Watching What I Eat blog, and she says this is a breakfast cookie- so we say, GO FOR IT!

Favorite Healthier Dressings

Here at Darling Disposition, we love our salads. But what we love even more is our salad dressing. Summer is here and we want to look fab in our summer dresses and cut-off shorts. And that means a little extra eating healthy. We shared our favorite salad recipe here. 

One unfortunate revelation that we had to have was that most of the creamy, yummy dressings are pretty catastrophically unhealthy. And do not mesh well with rocking that new crop top this season. Most of the really good ones have over 20 grams of fat and 300 mg of sodium! No thanks! We'd rather take the crop top. We've been on the hunt for satisfying alternatives all summer and we want to share them with you! This is a growing list, so check back as we find new dressings! For now, this is what we have:

Trader Joes' Cranberry, Walnut, Gorgonzola Dressing

We've been Ranch girls all our lives, but this more gourmet dressing has an amazing flavor! It's tangy and sweet, but with just the right amount of of richness from the cheese. It will liven up any lunch salad and is also might fancy for your dinner parties. And look at that color! 

Nutrition: 4.5 g of fat, 140 mg sodium, 7 g carbs

Pick it up at TJ's for $3.49 a bottle. 

Wegmans' Caesar Yogurt Dressing

This is absolutely the best vegetarian caesar dressing out there! It has a light but bold flavor and is so so creamy. The yogurt gives it a great and satisfying thickness but without feeling all the fat and oils. This is a perfect match for any salad green. It turns any leaf into a delicious caesar- even spinach and kale!

Nutrition: 5 g fat, 210 mg sodium, 3 g carbs 

Pick it up at Wegmans (Shout out to all those PA residents!) for less than $4 a bottle. 

DIY Eats: Healthy three-ingreient cookies (great workout snack!)

It's almost summer, and we're getting ready for beach season! And that includes some crazy workouts to get ready to show off that beach bunny body. We're relatively new to the concept of working out (this summer marks our first anniversary :-)), but we are loving it. We're the kind of girls who can't stick to one thing- so we try out EVERYTHING. Our recent workout faves have been rebounding (that insane trampoline workout where you will be stuck in giggle fits as you're sweating bullets) and pilates (the "Hollywood" workout that promises to transform your body and for us, is doing just that). We'll tell you more about that soon (We have a ton of online workout recommendations to share as well, so look out for those).

But no workout is complete without a pre or post-workout snack! We have been seeing  versions of this recipe floating around the Internet for a while, and after a couple of failed attempts, we think we've got it! These healthy cookies are fabulous! They're made with three simple and healthy ingredients that will keep you full during the day and fuel you though your most intense workout sessions. The best part is that the base stays they same, but you can get as creative as you want with the mix-ins. 

Ingredients (makes about 10 small cookies)

1. Old-fashioned oats (1 cup) 

2. Ripe bananas, mashed (2)

3. One scoop protein powder (We LOVE Trader Joe's Designer Whey protein in French Vanilla- it is so easy to add a scoop to almost any breakfast and smoothie!) *For us the protein  powder made the difference between our success and failure batches. 

4. Mix-ins! (We added shredded coconut, walnuts, chia seeds and a little granola to the tops for this batch, about 1/4 cup each), but you can get really creative here: raisins, cranberries, almonds, peanuts, peanut butter, cinnamon, honey, vanilla-- you get the idea)

Steps:

1. Preheat your over to 350 degrees

2. Mash up bananas really well (you can do this with a fork, but if you dont' mind getting a little down and dirty, there's nothing better than your hands)

3. Add in protein powder. Mix banana and powder together. 

4. Mix in the oats and your other goodies! 

5. Make for 15-20 minutes and ENJOY! 

DIY Eats: Citrus Detox Water

We found this fantastic recipe on our new favorite workout web site! This is totally natural detox water that is perfect for getting that bikini-ready body in just a couple months. We are replacing half of our daily intake of water with this detox water, and we've actually already seen results. 

Head over here to see why it works (the recipe is adapted from there)! 

Mix up your own and enjoy a delicious way to that gorgeous body! 

Ingredients

1. 2 liters water

2. 1/2 cucumber

3. 1 orange

4. 1 lemon

5. about 10 mint leaves

6. Ice

Slice up the fruit and veggies and put into the water! You can refill the water three times before you should cut up a new batch of fruit and veggies.