Archive for Desserts
High Five Recipes: Easy Butterscotch Bars
Posted by: | Comments
Last week as I was quickly stirring up these Butterscotch Bars to bake and take to a homeschool event, I started counting up the ingredients. Five! Five ingredients! Yay! Another High Five Recipe!
I am so excited that these bars taste so good using sucanat and whole wheat. I had made them years ago using brown sugar and white flour and love that you can’t even tell a difference using the healthier ingredients!
Better yet, these bars can be stirred up and thrown into the oven in just a few minutes. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Easy Butterscotch Bars
1 cup melted butter
1 3/4 cups sucanat
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
Stir melted butter and sucanat together. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing well. Stir in flour and mix until well combined. Pour batter into a 9×13 inch baking pan. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes.
These bars are gooey, rich and better made not very often because I like them waaaayyyy too much.
Way too much.
———————————————–
Be sure to join us for The little Green Project next week! Read about it here!
———————————————–
This post is linked to Works for me Wednesday, being hosted today by Rocks in my Dryer.
Mini Apple Pies (A Part of This Complete Breakfast)
Posted by: | CommentsWho decided that sugar coated sugar dobbers and frosted sprinked poptarts were the best way to start the day? I also want to know why the aforementioned choices…or a pancake drenched in syrup is considered a great breakfast food…yet an apple pie is considered to be a dessert.
Remember, I like to think outside the box when it comes to breakfast. I’m all about Giant Breakfast Cookies, Breakfast Cake, Funnel Cake, Whole Wheat Donuts…and if you recall…even Homemade Ice Cream for breakfast. And what about our Valentine’s day Peach Cobbler? Yes, I think breakfast should be enticing, delicious, nutritious and sometimes even fun. And I think Apple Pie should be okay to eat for breakfast.
This Mini Apple Pie recipe is a new one I’ve come up with as I work on creating more Healthy Make-Ahead Meals. These freeze well (unbaked) – then you can just pull out a little pie (or 3) per person and bake.
Make them for breakfast…and your family will smell them baking, jump out of bed and come running into the kitchen and plow you over onto the kitchen floor (out of joy and love of course).
You can make these a couple of different ways: Mini Apple Pies, or Apple Pie Pockets…depending on what works best for you. I use the same crust recipe I use for my Homemade Pizza Pockets. Follow the same instructions for the pizza pockets to create an Apple Pie Pocket…
The following directions are for Mini Apple Pies:
Crust:
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 t. sea salt
1 cup melted butter
1 cup plain yogurt
Stir ingredients together until thoroughly mixed. Use the dough right away to create pockets or pies…or let the dough sit overnight to break down the phytates and make the grains more digestable. This dough is MUCH easier to work with if you work it like playdough in your hands a while before you try to roll it out.
Filling:
3 pounds of apples – about 11-12 smallish apples (any kind you like)
1/4 – 3/4 cup sucanat (your preference)
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
Topping:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
2-4 Tablespoons sucanat
3 Tablespoons melted butter
To make Mini Apple Pies:
Peel apples and cut them into bite sized chunks.
Add sucanat and cinnamon.
Stir well and cook over medium heat until apples are
tender and a syrup has formed (about 10 minutes).
In the meantime, separate dough into 21-24 pieces.
Roll each piece into a little circle with a rolling pen.
As you can see, I am NOT a perfectionist. If I was making these for a
ladies’ brunch or something…I might take the time to make them pretty.
But for my family of boys?
Do you think they really care if their pies are pretty?
They eat them in three minutes flat. Thus my sloppy dough squishing.
Squish (or place nicely) your dough circles into well buttered MUFFIN PANS. Using a muffin pan for these Mini Apple Pies eliminates the need to go buy 24 little mini pie pans.
Fill each (unbaked) crust with apple pie filling.
In a bowl, stir together topping ingredients until the dry ingredients are moistened.
I find that melting the butter and stirring it into the flour, oats and sucanat makes a great crumb topping…much less effort than “cutting in the butter”.
Sprinkle topping all over the top of your little pies.
Try if you can to be as messy about this process as I am. Sheesh.
Freeze your pies in your buttered muffin pans for a couple of hours.
Remove your muffin pans from the freezer and allow them to sit on the counter for 10-15 minutes. Use a fork to gently pry the pies out of the pan. Place them carefully into freezer bags and put them bag into the freezer.
To bake your Mini Apple Pies:
Take desired number of pies out of the freezer and place them on a baking pan. Bake in a 375° oven for 35-45 minutes. You can let them thaw first if you want…but I find that the frozen pies bake just fine!
And now I’d like to point out that (depending on how much you use) there is about 1/2 cup of sucanat divided by 24 little pies…making this a very healthy, very low in sugar breakfast. Much less even than my Applesauce Bread or something otherwise considered a breakfast food.
Bring on the Breakfast Pie! Shucks…maybe we should even serve it with Ice Cream!
What’s your opinion about serving cobbler or pie for breakfast? Do I sound like a weirdo? (Wait, don’t answer that.)
——————————————-
Did I mention that these little pies are very inexpensive to make? Visit Frugal Friday for more money saving ideas!
Special Valentines Day Treats: Peanut Butter Truffles and Chocolate Caramel Truffles
Posted by: | CommentsI have always loved the idea of making truffles, yet it always seemed so daunting to me. Truffles sound so…gourmet or something. I finally decided that this year for Valentine’s Day I was going to give truffles a try.
I learned that not only are truffles easy to make…they are quite an inexpensive Valentine’s Day treat. Do you KNOW how much truffles cost at the store? Yeah, a lot more than homemade ones. Not only are the homemade truffles less expensive, these treats don’t have high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils in them!
This first recipe is SO easy to make! Try this one first if you want to prove to yourself that you can make truffles.
Peanut Butter Truffles
2 cups milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 T. butter
1/2 cup natural peanut butter (I used homemade peanut butter)
1/4 cup organic, unbleached powdered sugar (optional)
In a saucepan stir together chocolate chips, cream and butter over medium heat.
About the time the chocolate chips are almost melted,
add peanut butter and stir until smooth.
Spread mixture into a pie pan and chill for about two hours.
Lick the pan while you wait for truffles to chill because…
well…do I actually need to give you a reason?
Roll mixture into 1 inch balls.
Dip in unbleached powdered sugar.
Place on parchment paper and chill until set.
This next truffle recipe takes a little more time to make, but it is SO WORTH IT.
Chocolate Caramel Truffles
1 cup sugar (I used sucanat)
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 cup chocolate chips (milk chocolate or semi-sweet)
1 t. vanilla extract
1/4 t. sea salt
In a saucepan, cook and melt sugar, stirring with a fork.
It will clump up at first while it melts, but it will melt if you keep stirring and heating.
(Trust me, use a fork. A spoon doesn’t work.)
Remove melted sugar from heat and stir in cream.
Pouring in the cream will immediately create a crazy big blob thing of caramel,
so take it back to the stove and heat and stir until it melts.
It will seem to take forever but don’t worry,
it really will melt eventually (about 15 minutes).
See, it finally melted. Now you have caramel.
Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips, vanilla and salt.
Pour mixture into a pie pan and chill for about two hours.
Roll mixture into 1 inch balls and chill on parchment paper until set.
You can dip your truffles in a bit of cocoa powder if you want them to look pretty. They look pretty without the cocoa though, because hello? Chocolate and caramel all rolled into a ball? How could that not be pretty?
Place your truffles into little Valentine muffin papers and you’re all set!
I will present these truffles to Matt on Valentine’s Day, at which time we will have a conversation about whether caramel is pronounced Kare-uh-mel or Car-ml. He will say that he is pretty sure that it is Kare-uh-mel because there’s an “a” in the middle, and I will just sit there eating his truffles.
How do you say caramel, by the way?
(It may seem like Matt and I argue over word pronunciation often, but really we don’t. Just KYOOPON vs. KOOPON and the occasional Kare-a-mel vs. Car-ml. And if those two marital issues are among our biggest, I’d say we’ll have a pretty great Valentine’s day.)
———————————————-
This post is linked to Frugal Friday and Finer Things Friday.
Warm Chocolate Soother
Posted by: | Comments
So, chocolate…or vanilla? That is the question.
I’d almost always say “chocolate” and yet…depending on the day, the occasion or the item…I may want vanilla. I’d say just about nothing beats this Warm Vanilla Soother.
And yet, last week the boys asked if I could try making my Warm Vanilla Soother into a Warm Chocolate Soother, just for fun. The kids thought it sounded yummy and hey, who am I to argue when it comes to making something chocolatey?
This recipe is almost exactly like Warm Vanilla Soother…just a couple of ingredients added.
Warm Chocolate Soother
3 cups whole milk
4 egg yolks
1/4 cup real maple syrup
3 T. sucanat
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 T. arrowroot powder or corn starch
1 Tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
In a medium saucepan, whisk together milk, egg yolks, maple syrup, sucanat, cocoa and arrowroot powder. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly (I use a whisk) until mixture begins to thicken. Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla. Stir until creamy. Pour into mugs and serve warm.
Once this finally cooled down enough to drink, my eight year old proclaimed, “Mom!! It tastes just like you’re drinking a brownie!”
For real?! Drinking a brownie? I want to drink a brownie!!!
Mmmm, he was right!
This has the appearance of hot cocoa, but it’s thicker and heartier. Oh. My.
So chocolate…or vanilla? That is still the question.
Maybe we’ll assign days to flavors.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday and every other Sunday will be Warm Chocolate Soother days. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and every other Sunday will be Warm Vanilla Soother days.
Unless I have a hankering for vanilla on a Friday or feel a deep need for chocolate on a Tuesday, which I very well may. I’ll have to be flexible and leave the options open.
Let’s see, today is Tuesday. Which one are you gonna make?
———————————————————————
This post is linked to Frugal Friday.
Homemade Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers
Posted by: | CommentsWe have become a household of the ”eat it while you can because it won’t be around long, hurry they’re almost gone already” sort.
That’s definitely how it was the day I first made homemade vanilla wafers. Now, I double the recipe when I make these.
Homemade Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sucanat or brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Cream butter and sucanat together. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Scrape the dough into a pastry bag with a large, plain piping tip.
Pipe nickel sized amounts of dough onto the parchment paper. (If you don’t have the tools you need to “pipe” these onto your cookie sheet…I think just plopping tiny plops down with a spoon will work okay too.)
If, after you are done piping dough, you have a big pan full of ugly, weird shaped blobs, you have done very, very well.
Bake at 325° for fifteen minutes. Turn off the oven and let the cookies sit inside for a half hour or so to crisp up.
See? The ugly blobs spread out while they bake and make nice circle shaped Vanilla Wafers that your children will devour before their daddy comes home.
And two days later when their daddy hears about the homemade vanilla wafers he will say to you, “What? Vanilla wafers? You made vanilla wafers? I never saw any vanilla wafers.”
Or something like that.
I have got to remember to set some of these aside next time.
————————————————————————–
This recipe can be found, along with the Warm Vanilla Soother recipe, in the What to do with Vanilla downloadable recipe card pack, which is still on sale for half off! Makes a great gift!
————————————————————————–
This post linked to Frugal Friday.
Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe and Red Ape Organic Cinnamon Giveaway!
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s too bad you can’t smell my house right now. The boys and I have been baking Snickerdoodles and the whole house smells SO GOOD!!!
It seems that my boys think sitting on the
countertop is the best way to bake.
Last week I received some of this yummy organic Red Ape Cinnamon from KestrelGrowth.com. I don’t know why I’ve never tried to make a healthier version of Snickerdoodles. But…when my Red Ape Cinnamon came in the mail that’s the first thing I knew I wanted to make!
Snickerdoodles
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup sucanat or rapadura
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 Tablespoons sucanat mixed with 2 teaspoons cinnamon
Stir together melted butter and sucanat. Add egg, vanilla, baking soda and cream of tartar, stirring well. Mix in flour. Cover bowl and chill dough in refrigerator for one hour. Roll dough into one inch balls. Roll balls in the sucanat/cinnamon mixture. Place balls about two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown.
These cookies turned out SO good!! Now, I want to use my new cinnamon in Applesauce Bread and Cinnamon Swirl Bread!! I love baking in the fall…
This week, just in time for YOUR fall baking, KestrelGrowth.com is offering to give one of my readers a FREE jar of Red Ape Cinnamon!! Leave a comment here letting us know why you’d love to win!
I’ll draw a random winner on Tuesday, September 15. Woohoo for Red Ape Cinnamon!
Make Your Own Funnel Cake!
Posted by: | CommentsWhat comes to mind when you think of funnel cakes? I think of two things: Greasy and Expensive
Okay…three things: Greasy, Expensive and Yummy
Funnel cakes are one of the most popular items at the fair. People stand in long lines for them. But I never can make myself buy one (because of the greasy and expensive part).
Recently my kids asked me, “Mom can you MAKE a funnel cake at home?”
Oh wow…I never thought about trying that. Sure, why not? And so I did.
Do you know how EASY it is to make a funnel cake? I whipped some up in just a few minutes. (And the family wolfed them down in just a few minutes too…)
Homemade Funnel Cakes
1 1/4 cups flour (I used freshly ground whole wheat)
2 T. sucanat
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. sea salt
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
Oil for frying (I used coconut oil)
Organic powdered sugar or raw honey
Whisk together flour, sucanat, baking powder, salt, egg and milk. Heat oil in a skillet.
There are different ways to create your funnel cake. You can pour your batter through a funnel…or you can do what I did: Use a cake decorating tip (the one with the biggest hole) and a plastic baggie.
Squirt batter into hot oil (I used my electric skillet heated to 350° with a few tablespoons of oil). Cook thoroughly on one side, then flip and cook the other side (about two minutes per side).
Sprinkle with powdered sugar or drizzle with honey!!
With these few ingredients, it is amazing what you’ll save by making these treats yourself at home. Now if I could figure out how to recreate the rides at the county fair so that allowing our kids to ride on them won’t require taking out a second mortgage. Any suggestions? 
Zucchini Recipes: Zucchini Brownies
Posted by: | CommentsIf you know me very well, you know I love brownies. These fudgy brownies to be exact. So while coming up with zucchini recipes, of course I experimented to come up with a zucchini brownie recipe.
Zucchini Brownies
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sucanat or rapadura
1/3 cup cocoa
1 cup shredded zucchini
1 egg
2 cups whole wheat flour
Mix butter, sucanat and cocoa. Stir in zucchini and egg. Gradually mix in flour until well combined. Pour batter into a 9×13 inch pan. Bake in a 350° oven for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Since I’m getting vegetable in every moist, chocolaty bite…do you think I can justify eating twice as many?
Just wondering.
Be sure to check out these zucchini recipes also:
- Zucchini Cake
- Cheeseburger Zucchini Boats
- Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini Bread and Muffins
- Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies and Bars
AND, if you want even more zucchini recipes, check out Tammy’s Recipe swap today! We really might just all turn into zucchinis.
—————————————————————
This post is linked to the In Season Recipe Swap and Works for me Wednesday.
Zucchini Recipes: Whole Wheat Zucchini Cake
Posted by: | CommentsWith all these zucchini experiments you might think that I don’t have any more huge zucchini in my kitchen any more. Oh but you’d be wrong. There’s still a big huge one on my countertop waiting to be played with. I’ve still got a Zucchini Brownie recipe coming for you…and in case you missed them…here are more zucchini recipes you might be interested in: Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies and Bars; Cheeseburger Zucchini Boats; Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini Bread and Muffins.
This cake was maybe my favorite of all the experiments. It was really, really good (and by was, I mean that every last piece is gone). Of course I happen to think cream cheese frosting makes everything good!
Whole Wheat Zucchini Cake
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups sucanat or rapadura
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. cinnamon
2 cups shredded zucchini
2 eggs
1/2 c. butter, melted
Stir together dry ingredients. Mix in zucchini, eggs and butter. Pour batter into a buttered 9×13 inch baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Allow cake to cool completely. Frost with Cream Cheese Frosting. Below are two recipe choices:
Sorta-Naughty (But at Least the Sugar is Unbleached) Cream Cheese Frosting
1/2 cup melted butter
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 t. vanilla
4 1/2 cups organic/unbleached powdered sugar
Cream butter and cream cheese together. Add vanilla. Beat powdered sugar in gradually until you reach the right consistency.
Not-So-Naughty (But Still Really Good) Cream Cheese Frosting
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
3 ounces cream cheese
1 t. vanilla
4 T. honey
Whip cream until soft peaks form. In a separate bowl, stir cream cheese, vanilla and honey together until smooth. Gently fold in whipped cream.
Either frosting recipe is really good…the latter one is just a bit more natural and healthy.
If you like carrot cake…we all kinda thought this cake tasted a lot like carrot cake. Mmmm!
(If you don’t like carrot cake, then this cake tasted nothing like carrot cake.) You should totally try it. 
—————————————————-
This post is linked to Frugal Fridays.
Zucchini Recipes: Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies
Posted by: | CommentsTis the season for zucchini to grow into the size of baseball bats (and be used as such if you live at my house). Tis the season for everyone to lock their doors while at church…just to prevent someone from unloading their overgrown zucchini into other people’s cars when no one’s looking. Tis the season for people to start offering to pay you money just to take zucchini off their hands.
It’s amazing how one little hill can produce enough zucchini to fill an entire kitchen. (Did I mention that I didn’t even plant zucchini this year?!)
We’ve eaten a bunch of zucchini in stir fry or simply sauted it in a bit of olive oil. It’s SO good like that. I’ve already shredded a bunch and put it into the freezer. Now, I’m on a quest to figure out some great recipes that will sneak zucchini into a variety of dishes, making them more nutritious. And well…a zucchini can only serve as a baseball bat for so long. Eventually it must be eaten.
I don’t like eating a huge zucchini as is. The seeds are larger than my teeth and the skin is tougher than I prefer. I like shredding the large ones in my food processor and stirring them into zucchini bread (whole wheat and honey recipe coming soon).
While making zucchini bread last week (and then looking around at all the other huge zucchini in my kitchen) I realized that surely one could come up with a cookie, or at least a cookie bar that included zucchini. So I tinkered around. I discovered this: Cookies are a delicious way to eat more zucchini.
Here’s the recipe I came up with:
Giant Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies
2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup organic sucanat (dehydrated cane sugar juice)
1 egg
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup chocolate chips
Shred zucchini (I use a food processor). In a large mixing bowl mix sucanat, flour, salt and baking soda. Stir in shredded zucchini, melted butter and egg. Fold in chocolate chips. Use a large scoop to put 1 1/2 T. sized balls of dough onto a cookie sheet. Bake in a 350° oven for 15 minutes. Makes about 20 giant cookies.
Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bars
Follow the same recipe as above, only spread the dough into a 9×13 inch pan. Bake in a 350° oven for 20-25 minutes.
My husband, kids and I all loved these. Zucchini makes them moist…and of course chocolate makes everything good.
Coming up in my next Zucchini Recipes post…I’ll share my whole wheat and honey zucchini bread and muffin recipe!
————————————
Go check out Amy’s awesome list of zucchini recipes!
[print_link]
