Our dietary habits combine essential nutrients, upbringing, and personal taste. We live in a world where the options for food and drink have radically changed over the years, thanks to new culinary innovations.
Unfortunately, not every addition to the world menu has been positive, thanks to fast food industries saturating the market (in more ways than one). This has made ensuring you can enjoy a healthy and nutritious diet something of a challenge. Fortunately, maintaining a proper diet is not impossible, and this is made simpler through supplementary vitamins.
Among these supplements is collagen, an extremely important protein our bodies need to manufacture cells like hair and nails. While our bodies produce collagen independently, the efficiency of the process deteriorates with age. When our natural collagen production gets too low, it becomes necessary to supplement to ensure our bodies have enough to use.
The problem is collagen can be boring to consume. It's most often found as a relatively flavorless powder or with simple artificial flavors like chocolate or vanilla. None of these are particularly exciting. Luckily, collagen can be used as an ingredient in many recipes, allowing you to create simple treats instead of swallowing capsules.
#1: Blueberry Collagen Muffins
There are not many better ways to start the day than enjoying a warm muffin for breakfast. Muffins are a tasty, beloved pastry that has become a staple of the American breakfast portrayed in media. Among the most beloved muffins is the simple blueberry muffin, which is commonly available at any bakery or grocery store. As delicious and beloved as muffins are, it is possible to improve them with collagen powder to increase the amount of collagen in our bodies. With a little research, we have found a recipe for such muffins that you could easily make with your preferred supplement.
Baking muffins might not be something you are overly familiar with if you have never baked before. Fortunately, baking muffins is little more than gathering the correct ingredients and following basic instructions.
To that end, if you want to make these muffins, you are going to need to gather the following ingredients:
- ½ cup blueberries
- ⅔ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup collagen powder
- 2 ½ tablespoons granulated sugar
- 6 packets Stevia in the Raw
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup unsweetened almond milk
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- ½ tablespoon vanilla extract
Once you have your ingredients, you are ready to get cooking. Fortunately, the instructions for making these muffins are fairly simple.
- Preheat your oven to 375° Fahrenheit. Then line a 6-cup muffin tin with paper liners and spray them with a non-stick spray.
- Combine the flour, collagen powder, sugar, Stevia, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Then whisk them all together to form a mixture.
- Find a separate, medium-sized bowl and use it to whisk the milk, egg, olive oil, and vanilla extract. Continue whisking until the mixture is smooth.
- Once both mixtures are complete, place them in the same bowl and mix them with a large spoon until they are incorporated without overmixing. Once the mixing is complete, add the blueberries to the batter.
- Distribute the batter evenly in the muffin tray, preferably with a cookie scoop or similar utensil.
- Place the tray in the oven and bake for 16-19 minutes.
- Once the baking is complete, remove the tray and allow the muffins to cool for 3-4 minutes. After the initial cooldown, remove the muffins from the tin and let them completely cool and settle for an hour or so.
These muffins might be somewhat time-consuming to bake, but they will surely provide a sweet treat for introducing collagen to your system. Muffins are also an easy tool to ensure your collagen intake takes place in the morning. However, muffins are not everyone's preferred medium. Strange as it might seem, some people simply do not like muffins or find them too heavy for the sake of introducing supplements to your body. Some people prefer a lighter touch or something you drink rather than eat.
#2: Collagen Banana Berry Smoothie
For some people, the best way to take a supplement is with a beverage rather than a snack, even snacks as tasty as a muffin. Fortunately, smoothies are almost as popular as the beloved pastry and far lighter in terms of calories. Smoothies have become a very popular option as a tasty and refreshing drink in the modern era.
Though a little thicker than a glass of water or soda, smoothies allow you to introduce a healthy dose of dairy and fruit to your daily routine. This is not to say you should have a smoothie too often but use it as a potential medium for introducing collagen supplements to your system.
One of the most popular smoothies is those with bananas as one of the primary ingredients.
Fortunately, your collagen smoothie does not have to be any different if you gather the following ingredients:
- ½ small, frozen banana
- ¾ cup frozen mixed berries
- 1 handful spinach
- 1 tablespoon almond butter
- ¼ avocado
- 1 teaspoon chia seeds
- 2 scoops collagen powder
- ½-1 cup unsweetened almond milk
- ½ cup ice
- ½ cup Greek yogurt
While some of these ingredients might not seem like a perfect fit, such as avocado and banana, you would be shocked to learn they cooperate quite well. Even more appealing to those on the go is that preparing this smoothie is significantly easier than baking a tray of muffins. The instruction for this smoothie is as simple as putting all the ingredients into a high-powered blender. Once the smoothie is smooth, you are ready to pour a glass and enjoy your daily dose of collagen with a fruity twist.
So far, we have mostly discussed sweets you can use to add more collagen to your daily intake. But many people deeply prefer the taste of savory foods over sweets. To that end, finding a recipe for something savory to use as a medium for collagen is important.
#3: Collagen Guacamole
You will be hard-pressed to find someone who does not enjoy a fiesta once in a while, and what is better for a fiesta than some guacamole? Guacamole is perhaps one of the most beloved dips in the world, providing a little zest to your chips. Additionally, it introduces several vegetables to your body while maintaining the appeal of snack food. While guacamole is mostly enjoyed for its taste and the zest it provides for whatever you use it on, it does offer a lesser-known benefit. Like everything discussed here, guacamole can play host to collagen powder and easily improve your levels.
To produce collagen guacamole, you will need to gather these ingredients:
- 2 avocados
- 2 tablespoons sliced cherry tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons chopped bell peppers
- ½ a lime's worth of juice
- 2 scoops of collagen powder
- Salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste
Once you have gathered these ingredients, it is easy to proceed with the creation of your guacamole. You just need to follow these instructions:
- Wash all vegetables before beginning any other preparations.
- Remove the skin of the avocado.
- Pit, slice, and chop the avocado.
- Slice and chop the tomatoes.
- Slice and chop the bell pepper.
- Slice and chop half the lime.
- Add all the ingredients to a bowl, including the salt, cayenne, and pepper.
- Mix all the ingredients with a fork until they are thoroughly mixed.
Once your guacamole is mixed, you can serve it with chips and veggies or use it as a topping for sandwiches or tacos. Ultimately, guacamole is a highly adaptable dip or condiment that can suit your needs. By using collagen powder as one of the ingredients, it can become a powerful supplement to improve your collagen levels. Like most of this list, guacamole is a collagen host that requires time and ingredients to make. Sometimes, the effort into these collagen powder recipes is too time-consuming. Fortunately, collagen does not necessarily need that level of preparation.
#4: Add it to a Normal Drink
While creating meals and treats from scratch with collagen powder as an ingredient, sometimes the simplest way is the most effective. While collagen powder is malleable, it does not need to be baked or blended to be effective for your needs. You can easily combine collagen powder with simple beverages so you can take your daily dose with ease. Collagen powder is water soluble, dissolving easily in any liquid without losing its potency. This means you could take virtually any beverage you want and turn it into a collagen carrier to ensure you receive your proper dosage.
One of the most common methods for using collagen powder in your beverages is to add it to water. Specifically, add it to a cold glass of water like you would drink at any meal. All you need to do is take a bottle of water, either pre-bottled or a personal reusable bottle, add a scoop of collagen powder and shake it to mix. There are other options if you are not interested in using water as the host for your collagen supplement.
Your morning cup of coffee is just as viable a host for your collagen powder despite the radically different temperature. Like water, a single scoop of collagen powder is sufficient to turn your coffee into collagen coffee. However, you should not shake your coffee like you would a bottle of water unless you want to distort the aroma and taste of your coffee. Rather, gently stir the collagen into the coffee to preserve the flavor while effectively mixing the collagen. The same concept can be applied to tea, hot cocoa, or any other hot beverage you care to drink.
While it is true that collagen powder has a reputation for forming clumps when introduced to a liquid, this is not a problem if your product is of high quality. The easiest way to circumvent this issue is to go through a vendor you know has a reliable product. You can use several additional recipes to add more collagen to your diet. The recipes discussed here should be more than enough to get you started, making acquiring a quality supplement the only major concern.
Keep it All Natural!
As important as it is, collagen is not something our bodies can manufacture indefinitely. As our bodies age and we slowly lose our ability to produce essential compounds like collagen, supplementation becomes our only viable option. Unfortunately, this supplementation is often unpleasant, which can discourage consistent use.
However, with the right recipes, it is possible to overcome the unpleasant taste of collagen powder by mixing it into a baked treat or drink. Ultimately, the issue is less about finding ways to improve the taste of the collagen powder and more about finding a product that has less chance of clumping and does not have unnecessary adulterants.
To that end, we at Bella All Natural are here to help. Our mission is to provide health and beauty supplements with natural ingredients and no unnecessary additives. Among our assortment of products is a collagen powder you can easily add to your drinks or use as an ingredient in the recipes here or any other you care to try.
Collagen powder is so subtle you can reasonably add it to virtually any recipe. Collagen powder is a much-beloved supplement and one of our top-selling products for anyone looking to revitalize their hair, nails, or skin. So, if you want to boost your collagen levels, visit our website today and try our product for yourself. Regardless of your choice, just remember always to keep it All Natural!
Have you ever given any of these recipes a try? If so, what did you think? Were they absolutely delicious? Be sure to leave all your thoughts on the recipes down below! We'd love to hear what you think. Additionally, if you have any other recipes you think would be great additions to this list, please feel free to drop those in the comments as well!
