Valentine's Day turkish delight and fairy floss cupcakes

These cupcakes are the epitome of romance flavoured with rose petal and sugary fairy floss. I made mine gluten-free and with soy milk; they turned out perfectly. I've been told it's one of my best efforts - and a great flavour for a girly party. In saying that, the boys love them too!

Low-fat creamy pasta for a romantic Valentine's dinner

Creamy pastas are often the way to a man's heart and this dish definitely fits the bill for a romantic dinner for two. This recipe has had a comfort food makeover to become diet friendly, without sacrificing any of the flavour.

Low-fat Creamy Bacon and Mushroom Pasta

Ingredients: (serves 2, of course)

* 200g fettuccine pasta
* 1 1/2 teaspoons cornflour
* 1/2 cup Carnation Light & Creamy Evaporated Milk
* 1/4 cup salt-reduced chicken stock
* 75g of 97% fat-free bacon or lean ham works well too, chopped
* 1 garlic clove, crushed
* 1/2 brown onion, finely chopped
* olive oil cooking spray
* 80g button mushrooms, sliced
* 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Method:

1. Cook pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water, following packet directions, until just tender.
2. Blend cornflour and 1 tablespoon of milk to a smooth paste. Add remaining milk, stock, and salt and pepper.
3. Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Add bacon, garlic and onion. Spray with oil. Cook, stirring, for 6 minutes or until golden. Add mushrooms. Cover. Cook, stirring every minute, for 4 minutes or until mushrooms are tender.
4. Drain pasta. Set aside. Return saucepan to stovetop over medium heat. Add milk mixture. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until sauce just comes to the boil. Add pasta, bacon mixture and parsley. Reduce heat to low. Toss until heated through.
5. Season with pepper. Serve with a little more parsley sprinkled on top.

Valentine's Day raspberry cupcakes

I love the way these cupcakes look with their red bottoms and pastel pink tops. They are inspired by Shirley Temple pink lemonades, with a raspberry vanilla flavour. I made my cakes sugar, dairy and gluten free but did ice them with old-fashioned buttercream icing - I just made sure to spread a fairly thin layer so as to make them a little less decadent.

I used a special cake mix to make these (which had all the dietary requirements I needed already sorted) but you could use any cake mix you like or make a simple vanilla cupcake recipe.

Valentine's Day Raspberry Cupcakes

Ingredients:

* 1 vanilla cake mix - make according to requirements, mine required 2 eggs, 700 ml of soy milk and 80 grams of butter.
* 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
* 1 tablespoon of flour (or gluten-free flour)
* red food colouring
* 1 tablespoon of red cordial
* 1/2 stick of butter (room temperature)
* powdered sugar
* raspberry lollies

Method:

1. Grease a 12-capacity muffin tin and preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Make the cake mix according to packet instructions and add the vanilla extract.
3. Take out 1/4 cup of the cake batter and put into a smaller bowl.
4. To the smaller bowl of cake batter, add a dash of red food colouring and a tablespoon of red cordial. Add the tablespoon of flour and mix until combined.
5. Fill each muffin hole with a tablespoon of the red cake mix until evenly divided amongst the tin.
6. Top up the muffin holes with the other cake batter until evenly divided although don't fill them more than 3/4 of the way up otherwise they will overflow when cooking.
7. Bake in a moderate oven for 20 minutes until risen and golden brown.
8. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
9. To make the icing, beat the butter and gradually sift in icing sugar tablespoons at a time until you reach a nice smooth consistency. Add in a dash of red food colouring and beat through. You may need to add a little more icing sugar if the food colouring made the icing a little runny but I didn't need to for mine.
10. Ice each cake with a smooth even layer of pink icing.
11. Top with raspberry lolly to finish.

Store in an airtight container, which will keey them fresh for a couple of days.

Contains 152 calories per cupcake.

Pink Valentine's Day Heart Cookies

The perfect sweet gift for Valentines Day, these heart cookies are covered in decadent Lindt white chocolate and hundreds and thousands. Read this article for the quick and easy, delicious recipe.

Nina Dobrev shares her fitness secrets in Seventeen Magazine Fitness Edition

Nina credits her fitness largely to religiously practicing yoga, which she declares she is 'obsessed with'. If you haven't tried yoga yet, you have to give it a go. I have just started practising yoga myself and it works muscles I have never felt before. It's an amazing workout and shaped my arms and abs in literally two weeks.

I like to do Bethenny's (from real housewives of NYC) yoga DVD, see a video clip here. It's good to try a video at home if you don't have the confidence to go to a gym class or you need to build up the confidence to start going to one.

Nina also loves to cook and like me, she loves to bake! To read more about Nina, here in an extract from an interview with Seventeen Magazine:

17: How did you learn to cook?

ND: I learned by watching and helping my mother in the kitchen. I also learned by trial and error. Even though I'm big on recipes, I love to make up my own dishes and when you take a risk in the kitchen, you learn a lot about food!

17: What is your "go to" comfort food?

ND: My favorite is Peanut-Butter Puffins with unsweetened vanilla almond milk!

17: Do you have a favorite cooking memory?

ND: Over the holidays is when I have the most occasions to cook and bake. My mom and I went to several holiday parties. One of my favorites was an ugly Christmas sweater party! I took my mom to a vintage store and we bought the most ridiculous, yet amazing sweaters. After that, we spent the entire day baking! I'm not kidding, like 6 hours. I have a giant baking book, so I close my eyes and pick a random page. Whatever it is, I try to bake it! So my mom and I did that together. The kitchen was such a mess, but we laughed so hard and listened to enough Christmas songs to last me a lifetime.

17:Being so busy filming Vampire Diaries memories?

ND: There have been a million. This is a very special group of people and together we've experienced some pretty amazing things. In the last three years, I feel like we've gone through everything. On set as our characters we've gone through every emotion and experience. We've laughed, we've cried, lost family and friends, and gotten dressed up for the many Mystic Falls lavish events. In real life, we've done big things like go on trips together — for my 21st birthday we all went to Vegas — and really simple, little things like dinners and watch movies. The girls and I go on annual Labor Day weekend trips — I don't think I've ever laughed harder. We're really lucky.

Ashley Tisdale's diet plan and work out tips

Miss Tisdale has always been naturally thin but in the past few years, she has become more aware of the importance of good nutrition and fitness. After hurting her back during filming, Ashley realised she needed to strengthen her core and watch her diet.

Now Ashley's diet consists of six meals per day and she avoids refined carbohydrates. She favours apples, hummus, celery, almond butter, fish, steak or turkey. Six times a week, she practices kick boxing and weight lifting during one-hour-sessions with her personal trainer, and she often hits the gym or dance studio.

“Kick boxing is great for cardio. It’s great for your abs and your whole body. Weight training is great for toning up and leaning up without bulking up. But the kickboxing is really amazing because it just works everything at once,” she explains.

The actress says that all her efforts are not about losing weight, but about being toned and feeling good about herself. "I always make time for it, because not only is it healthy for you, but it also relieves my stress," she has said. "I’m so busy doing stuff and I get stressed a lot that working out takes me away from that."

The High School Musical star also eats a high protein, low carb diet but tries not to limit herself too much. "Sunday’s my day off, where I eat whatever I want," she has said. "I don’t not let myself have something. I do love French fries and bread."

Gwyneth Paltrow's detox chicken teriyaki

This sauce is detox-friendly because it doesn’t use sugar or soy, but it has a great depth of flavor and is the perfect consistency. It's a great alternative to traditional teriyaki sauces, which are laden with sugar and salt.