Archive for Desserts
Peanut Butter Chocolate Granola
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I’m guessing that many of the greatest recipe ”inventions” have happened by accident. Asa (our 15 year old) really didn’t mean to create this wonderful Peanut Butter Chocolate Granola. His real intent was to make No-Bake Cookies for a mission trip fund-raising meal last Sunday. But somehow the liquid ingredients got slightly overcooked, the oats made the mixture way too dry, and no way no how was a cookie going to be formed once it was all said and done. I told him to press his mixture into a 9×13 inch pan and that we’d try cutting them into bars later. While that was a brilliant idea, it didn’t work any better than forming the mixture into cookies. We ended up with peanut butter chocolate oat crumbles instead. Peanut butter chocolate oat crumbles that tasted really, really good. :)
And so – we all just grabbed a bowl and a spoon and had at it. (While planning a different dessert to take to the fund-raising meal.)
I’m calling this “granola” because that’s what it looks and feels like. But I do have a hard time calling this a healthy breakfast or snack. While it is made with real food ingredients, it is still more dessert-like, for sure. In an effort to make this a little less sugary, and a bit more diverse for “stir-in” options, I’ve tweaked the ingredients from the original cookie recipe Asa used. I’m pretty sure it will still taste awesome with less sugar than originally called for in the cookie recipe!
By the way – depending on how you make this, it can be completely dairy free if you wish. :)
Peanut Butter Chocolate Granola
1/2 cup butter or coconut oil
1/2 cup milk or coconut milk
1/2 cup natural peanut butter (we use homemade peanut butter)
1 cup sucanat or 1/2 cup honey
4 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup coconut flakes (optional)
Put butter, milk, peanut butter, sucanat, and cocoa into a medium sized saucepan. Cook over medium heat until butter is melted and mixture is smooth. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Allow the mixture to boil for one minute. Remove from heat. Add vanila, oats, and coconut flakes. If the mixture is too liquidy add a few more oats or coconut flakes until you reach desired consistency.
Or shucks. If you “mess up” this recipe and the mixture turns out to be nice and smooth instead of crumbly – go ahead and spoon it onto wax paper and make No-Bake Cookies. ;)
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Homemade Healthy(er) Twinkies
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Have a recipe you’d like me to try and make over?
Submit your recipes on this Real Food Recipe Makeover Submission Page.
Twinkies bring up a very special memory for me. The only time we ever got Twinkies when I was little was when we needed to pack a lunch on school field trip days. Therefore, about two days each year, my mom bought my brother and I a Twinkie, and packed it in our sack lunch – along with a cold grape soda wrapped in tin foil to keep it cold. Such fun memories!! (And the only real reason I liked field trips.) :)
So here we are, over thirty years later, and about three years after the first healthier Twinkie recipe request I received. Obviously, this recipe make-over really had me stumped. While I had an idea about how to make a whole wheat spongy cake, I had no idea how to make a healthier cream filling. So when one reader, Stacy, left a comment a couple of weeks ago on the Redless Velvet Cake post, sharing a recipe that she said tasted “like Twinkie filling” – I tried it right away.
Unbelievable. It really does taste like the Twinkie filling I remember from back in the day. Upon tasting it, I suddenly had the urge to get a grape soda, climb onto a loud school bus, and take a trip to a museum. (But not really.)
I will admit that it was harder than I thought it would be to duplicate the airy, empty-calorie cake part of a Twinkie. Regardless, these “Twinkies” taste delicious and were a fun treat for my family. My kids devoured them!
Homemade Healthy(er) Twinkies
2 eggs
1 cup sucanat
1 cup whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground flour from hard white wheat)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
2 Tablespoons butter
In a bowl, beat the eggs with an electric mixer for about four minutes or until thick. Gradually add sucanat, beating for an additional 4 minutes. (Yes, I know, lots of beating. That’s how it becomes spongy, light, and airy.)
Add flour and baking powder, beating until just combined. Heat milk and butter on the stove until butter melts. Add milk mixture to batter, beating until combined.
Pour batter into baking pan, and bake in a 350° oven for 20 minutes. (I used a cool Flexipan that I’d gotten from Demarle. Muffin tins would work great, or small loaf pans.) Allow cakes to cool completely before filling.
Twinkie Filling
3 Tablespoons whole wheat flour
1 cup milk
1 cup sucanat
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup Palm Shortening or softened butter
Cook milk and flour, stirring constantly until mixture is very thick. Set aside to cool. Whip milk mixture with sucanat until sucanat has dissolved.
Add palm shortening and vanilla and whip until light and fluffy.
Check it out! Stick your finger in and taste it…just like Twinkie Filling! (Except better. Of course.)
To fill your Twinkies:
Slide a long knife through each cake – just to make an opening.
Put Twinkie Filling into a frosting bag with a large, open tip. Place the tip into the slit in the cake and squeeze to fill. (I found that putting some in each end of the Twinkie worked best to fill the Twinkie evenly.
When I called the boys in for the treat, it is a fact that my two youngest asked, “Twinkies? What are Twinkies?” I guess they’ll never know – except for what they’ve experienced with this healthified version. :)
Once I explained “Twinkies” to the boys, Malachi said, “Oh! Is this that treat Grammy used to give you on trips?” Yes indeed. {sniff} I’m so glad he remembered that I had told him the Twinkie story.
In case you didn’t already figure this out by reading through the above instructions, Homemade Healthy(er) Twinkies are a little bit of a “high maintenance” recipe. This type of recipe did not make it into my Oh, For Real book. Only recipes that can be made quickly and easily made that book! But hey, this Twinkie recipe is still a keeper. It’s lots of fun and a very special treat to make!
Think you’ll give these a try? Have any fun Twinkie memories to share?
Whole Wheat Quick Mix Fruit Pizza
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This Fruit Pizza is so yummy - you’ll feel like you are eating something naughty. But in fact, because it is made with whole wheat, honey, and fruit, I believe you could serve it for breakfast. Since figuring out this recipe, I may have done that a time or two at our house. ;)
You will love how easy this is to make!
Fruit Pizza Crust
1 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Quick Mix
1/2 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
Mix ingredients together. Press (or pour) dough into an 8×8 inch baking dish. Bake in a 350° oven for 10-15 minutes or until it is slightly golden. Allow crust to cool.
Cream Cheese Layer
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 Tablespoons real maple syrup
Mix well and spread over cooled crust. Top with fresh fruit. (Berries, bananas, and kiwi work best.)
Serves 4-6. I typically double this recipe for my family and spread the crust into my large baking stone.
I’d love to know – have you made the Whole Wheat Quick Mix yet?! More sneak peeks into our upcoming Oh, For Real book still to come!
I have to say thank you for giving my younger two boys a bit of educational entertainment this evening. I called them in to help me count the “votes” to determine which Whole Wheat Quick Mix recipe I would share with you first. They made a list of the options, and then made tally marks as I called out “cookies”, “fruit pizza”, “pancakes”, etc.
You know boys. Everything is a competition. As we went through each of your comments, the excitement grew. Who knew that counting recipe votes would be so much fun? At one point early on, Malachi shouted, “Muffins are in the lead!!” And so it went.
Ah, it’s the simple things in life that are the most fun, right?
Malachi and Elias are excited to share that Very Vanilla Cookies won the vote, with Fruit Pizza and Pancakes trailing in very close behind. They personally each wanted to vote for Fruit Pizza. I think they thought I was going to drop everything and immediately make the recipe that won the vote. Sorry boys. Cute as you are, your vote doesn’t count this time. Besides, I don’t have any fresh strawberries on hand. ;)
So here you go – a very easy and delicious cookie recipe that you can stir together in no time using your Whole Wheat Quick Mix. If you happen to have homemade vanilla extract to use in this recipe, yay! But even if you don’t, I bet you’ll still be able to choke these down. :)
Very Vanilla Cookies
3 cups Whole Wheat Quick Mix
1 1/4 cup sucanat
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Mix all ingredients together. Scoop 1 ½ teaspoons of dough onto a cookie sheet, about 3 inches apart. Bake in a 375° oven for 12-15 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.
More of our new Oh, For Real recipes coming soon – in particular, recipes that use this Whole Wheat Quick Mix.
I’m curious (and this has nothing to do with cookies, books, or quick mixes): Is it snowing where you are? We’re getting several inches right now. Fun!
Red(less) Velvet Cake
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Submit your recipes on this Real Food Recipe Makeover Submission Page.
Looking for a special treat for Valentine’s Day? How about a Red Velvet Cake? Without the red. While the red food coloring is pretty, it doesn’t add anything to the cake (except for freakish fake color that I don’t really want in my gut).
This cake experiment became a treat that is super moist and delicious, with a mild chocolate flavor. And hey, if you squint and look through pretend red colored glasses, the light brown color of this cake really does have a reddish tint. It’s true. Can you see it?
Red(less) Velvet Cake
1 cup butter
1/2 cup cocoa powder
4 Tablespoons water
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (I recommend using flour made from hard or soft white wheat)
1/2 cup organic cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups sucanat, made into “powdered sugar”
3 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Cream Cheese Frosting
Place butter, water, and cocoa powder in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat until butter is melted and ingredients are well combined. In a large mixing bowl stir together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and powdered sucanat. Pour in butter mixture, and the eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Beat the ingredients together until smooth.
Pour batter into two well-buttered 9 inch round cake pans. Bake in a 375° oven for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Be careful not to overbake these cakes or they will become dry. Allow cakes to cool for a few minutes, then carefully turn them out onto two separate plates. Allow them to cool completely.
Frost with Cream Cheese Frosting, beginning with a layer in the middle of the cakes, then on the top and around the sides.
See how pretty?
See the red?
Okay, fine. It really is red(less). But it is crazy delicous. :)
Homemade Nutella ~ Real Food Recipe Makeover
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Have a recipe you’d like me to try and make over?
Submit your recipes on this Real Food Recipe Makeover Submission Page.
“Homemade Nutella” is a recipe request I’ve had over and over. I never got around to making it (and I have excuses). But do you remember how I told you that my friend Anne and I exchange Christmas stockings each year? Well this year, one of the items she put in my stocking was Homemade Nutella! I begged her for the recipe – and here it is.
You really don’t want to know all of this, but just in case you do, even though you really don’t, here is the background information on how I managed to get this recipe from Anne:
- I emailed Anne after I got back from California to thank her for the lovely stocking and to tell her that later that day when Matt came to pick up our milk, I would send over some of the fresh oranges we’d brought back from our trip. And I asked her for her Nutella recipe.
- She emailed back to say that she had also loved what I’d put in her stocking and that her mouth was watering while she waited for an orange. But she said nothing about the Nutella.
- Matt went and picked up the milk, but I was upstairs doing laundry when he left, so I forgot to send oranges.
- I found mouse poop in some red wheat I had in storage and emailed Anne asking if it would be okay to feed that to her chickens. And I apologized for not sending oranges and told her I’d eat one on her behalf, and that at that very moment, I had the juice from a delicious orange running down my chin.
- Then she emailed me back and told me that I was evil to eat her oranges. And she said, “rats” about the mouse poop. See her rodent inspired play-on-words there?
- I giggled and emailed her back and said that yes I was evil, and full of citrus, and that really and truly, I’d get her some oranges.
- Then I kept forgetting to take over the oranges.
- But I really wanted the Nutella recipe. So I emailed her again a few days later and said, “You know how I asked for the nutella recipe and you forgot to give it to me? (Kind of like I told you I would bring oranges and then didn’t?) Any chance you could throw that my way? A few thousand HHM readers would love to hear about it… :) I have a small sack of oranges ready for you by the way. And some poopy wheat.”
- She emailed back to say, “Very clever” and then she gave me the recipe.
- Then today I finally remembered to give her the oranges.
- The end.
You’ve got to admit. That story was a lot more fun than me simply stating, “I got this recipe from my friend Anne.”
Homemade Nutella
1 1/2 cup whole hazelnuts
1 1/2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup powdered milk (not an ingredient I typically use, but an okay compromise for this recipe)
1 Tablespoon mild-flavored honey
pinch salt
1 heaping cup chopped bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, or chips
1 scant cup chopped milk chocolate, or chips
On a rimmed baking sheet, toast the nuts in a 400º oven for 10 minutes, or until fragrant and their skins begin to pop. Transfer to a tea towel, gather into a bundle and rub together to remove as much of their skins as possible. While warm, transfer to the bowl of a food processor and blend until they go from finely ground to pasty and thick, like natural peanut butter.
Meanwhile, warm the milk, powdered milk, honey and salt in a small saucepan just until it starts to boil. Remove from heat. In a glass or stainless steel bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolates, stirring occasionally until smooth.
Add the melted chocolate to the ground nuts and continue to process the mixture, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the warm milk mixture and process until everything is well blended and as smooth as you can get it. Makes about 2 cups.
What’s your favorite way to use Nutella?
Homemade Caramel Brownies
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How’s this for a great way to begin the new year?! :)
I got this idea from my friend Kim. Smart! You can either bake these in a 9×13 inch pan, or in muffin cups for fun, individual servings.
Caramel Brownies
2 sticks butter, melted
2 cups sucanat
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 recipe of Homemade Caramel Sauce
Stir together butter, sucanat and cocoa. Mix in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour and mix until combined.
To make a 9×13 inch pan of these brownies, spread the brownie batter into the pan. Drizzle the Homemade Caramel Sauce over the top and “cut it in” with a butter knife. Bake at 350° for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
To make individual Caramel Brownies:
Divide brownie batter evenly into 12-15 paper lined muffin cups.
Make a small “well” in the middle of each brownie cup. I used the end of the spoon to do this, since I’m so professional and fancy.
Next, drizzle warm caramel sauce into the well and over the brownie – one or two tablespoons for each.
Bake in a 350° oven for 25 minutes.
Not interested in the Caramel Brownies? How about Peanut Butter Brownies? :)
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Balls {Christmas Brunch}
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I love treats like this that are on the healthy side, plus very easy to put together! With four simple ingredients that many of us have on hand – I’ll bet some of you will hop right off your chair and get them started right away. And I highly recommend that you do.
But beware – these are little balls of peanut butter, chocolatey, coconutty addictiveness. You’ve been warned.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Balls
1 cup natural peanut butter (I use homemade peanut butter)
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 Tablespoons honey
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
Melt coconut oil and honey together in a saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter until mixture is smooth. Fold in chocolate chips. Spread mixture into a 9×9 inch pan. Refrigerate for about two hours. Roll mixture into 1 inch balls. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Be sure to leave a comment on this post for a chance to win one of three $25 gift certificates for something downloadable from the Heavenly Homemakers Shop!
100% Juice Punch {Christmas Brunch}
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Many of you know how much I used to love drinking Pepsi – and how giving it up has been a great decision for my health. But you probably also know how much I miss that “burn”!
For the occasional treat, I like to put seltzer water into a small amount of 100% juice. It’s not too sweet – but just sweet enough to make the fizzy water taste better. And it gives me that burn I love and miss.
For our Christmas Brunch, I wanted to suggest this simple punch idea. It’s 100% juice – no added sugar or corn syrup!
Christmas Brunch Punch
12 ounces 100% cranberry juice concentrate, thawed but cold
12 ounces 100% grape juice concentrate, thawed but cold
2 (or 3) liters seltzer water
Mix all ingredients together in a punch bowl or large pitcher. The amount of seltzer water you use is up to you – depending on how sweet or fizzy you like your drinks.
Feel free to add different kinds of juice depending on your taste.
Are you like me – do you like the “burn”?
Be sure to leave a comment on this post for a chance to win one of three $25 gift certificates for something downloadable from the Heavenly Homemakers Shop!
Christmas Truffles and Easy Peanut Butter Fudge
Posted by: | CommentsNeed a couple more yummy treat recipes?
Try my recipe for Chocolate Caramel Truffles or Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffles. Both of these make great gifts!
And, you can use the Peanut Butter Chocolate Truffle recipe to make fudge! Simply mix it up and spread the mixture into an 8×8 inch pan. Chill the mixture, then cut it into squares. It is SO easy!
What are your favorite treats to make (and eat) this time of year?
