Diet Cravings

So I'm heading down to Dallas in a week or so for a work conference.  Of course I decided to use that as an excuse to jump start my New Year's resolutions and try and lose weight.  Now there's not a lot of weight you can lose in two weeks, but at least I can fit into my jeans now!  All I've essentially done is reduce my calories and try to cut out sweets and snacks.  Anyway, as is the case with most diets, I get cravings.

My most recent craving this morning was for scones. 

I used to eat scones all the time in college.  My thought process was if you don't buy it you won't eat it.  So my apartment was devoid of all calorie laden yumminess like chocolate or candy.  This didn't stop me from craving calorie laden yumminess though.  So my solution was to make scones.

Now these weren't any amazing scones or anything.  They were essentially just flour, sugar, baking powder, and some butter.  They were perfect because I had everything at my apartment and didn't have to make a quick run to the grocery store at 1am while studying for a test.  I could just whip up a batch and chow down into the night until I fell into a sleep deprived coma (always praying that I'd hear my alarm and wake up in time for the test (I also had my parents call me on those mornings to make sure I was awake)).  Pretty soon I got even lazier and just started making the strawberry shortcake recipe using bisquik.  So I guess I wasn't eating scones at all but instead shortcakes minus the strawberries!

Anyway, they were simple to put together, quick to bake, decently low in calories, and delicious warm out of the oven or cold out of the fridge for snack the next few days.  Ah how I miss that carby, sugary, buttery goodness.  So here's my craving recipe for you so you can make it if you're trying to be healthy too!  It's ok I won't tell ;)

Here is what you need:  Milk, bisquick (I use the heart smart), butter, and sugar.

Spoon the bisquick into the measuring cup.  If you've ever baked with Bisquick you'll know that it clumps.  So it's easiest to get the right amount by spooning it.

Add the sugar to the Bisquick.  Mix them together before adding anything else.

Next add the milk.

Mix it together till it forms clumps.

Now add the melted butter and mix it together till all incorporated.

Form the dough into biscuits.  You can make 6 for 250 calories each or you can make 8 for about 190 calories each.  

Recipe:

2 1/3 cups Bisquick® mix

1/2 cup skim milk

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons melted butter

Nummy nummy!  They're even better if you refrigerate them.  Happy snacking!

Sweet Potato Casserole

I know this is a bit late for the holidays, but we were busy on New Year's Day and didn't get to make it so we made it a few weeks later for our celebratory special New Year's dinner.  And hey Easter's almost here so you should make it then.  It's really good.  Well my family likes loves it.  If they had to choose their last meal I'm 83% positive that at least two of them would choose this dish and all four of them would have it in their top five.  I would choose a flaky pastry stuffed with cream.  But that's me.
But seriously this is a yummy recipe.  Last Thanksgiving (not the most recent Thanksgiving but Thanksgiving 2011) my cousin's high school band was playing in a Thanksgiving Day parade close to us so they came over for Thanksgiving.  Well my cousin could not stop raving about this dish.  He's the most rambunctious little kid and I swear he told us at least four times during dinner that the sweet potato casserole was so good were we sure it wasn't dessert?  And since it wasn't dessert could he have some more?  Lol at least something tasted like dessert because I forgot the sugar in the pumpkin pie . . . but ANYWAY, let's not dwell on my failures in entertaining and instead focus on this recipe so you can make it and your cousins can rave about it too :)

Ingredients needed:

Potato Mixture:

4 medium sweet potatoes (about 2.5lbs)
1/2 cup sugar
1.5tsp vanilla
1 egg white
5oz fat-free evaporated milk

Topping:

1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup butter

Start with the potatoes, sugar, vanilla, evaporated milk, and the egg.

Cook the sweet potatoes.  You can do this in the oven or you can prick them with a fork and microwave them for seven minutes, then flip them over and microwave them for another seven minutes.

 Next peel the potatoes.  If I were you I'd wait until the potatoes were cool before you peeled them.  But if you were me you'd have to peel them immediately because you were behind so you can either stick them in the freezer for 15 minutes or you can put clean dishwashing gloves on and peel them with the gloves.

Peeled potatoes!

Now mash the potatoes up.  You can do this with a fork but I find it goes faster to mash them with a pastry cutter.

Did you know I also use a pastry cutter to mash bananas for pancakes and banana bread?  Works really well.

Now add half a cup of sugar.

Open the can of fat-free evaporated milk.

Realize after you poured a little bit in the bowl that you only need 5oz and you have a 12oz can.  Freak out because you almost ruined everyone's favorite dish, then measure out the correct amount.

Pouring, pouring, pouring.

Add the vanilla.  And if you're like me you'll add more vanilla than the recipe calls for . . .

Separate the egg yolk from the white.

Add the egg white.

 Mix it all together.

Drop it into a 9x13 pan sprayed with cooking spray.  Hey look those are my hands!  As in two of them!  That's because Sarah was home and she was taking pictures for me :)

Keep plopping.

Then spread the mixture out evenly.

Now for the topping.

Add the brown sugar.

Add the flour.

Now the chopped pecans.  You can chop them up more but we just dumped them in.  The bag said chopped pecans so we believed them.

Mix it all together.

All mixed.

Start dicing the butter.

Now Sarah's dicing the butter and I'm taking pictures.  She dices very slowly.

Or I should say precisely.  You should see how long she takes to chop vegetables!

Add the butter.

Start mixing.

You can use a pastry cutter but hands work well too.

Now sprinkle it on top of the sweet potato mixture.

Spread it out so that everything is covered.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes until the top is caramelized.
Now go make it!  And see if my cousin was correct and if your family will love it as much as mine does!

Best Gingerbread Cookies EVER

**Warning**
**This is a public service announcement**
**These cookies are ADDICTIVE!!!**

No seriously, they are.
They disappear immediately from our house.  I think the problem is that you know they are cookies, but they don't scream "cookies" at you.  There is no chocolate, there are no M&Ms, no nuts, no frosting, they're practically healthy for you!  Lol, well I wish they were.  But I'm just trying to warn you, you will eat these for breakfast, and lunch, and snack and dinner and midnight snack and and and just be careful!  Even if you're so stuffed from Christmas cookies that you can't think straight.

Ok.

Here's the recipe.

Don't say you weren't forewarned.

Here are the ingredients: Flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, ginger, allspice, cloves, pepper, vegetable shortening, butter, brown sugar, molasses, and an egg.

Start with the dry ingredients:
 

Put them all in a bowl, and mix with a whisk (this is so you don't have to sift them, because I think sifting is a waste of time, and I don't exactly own a sifter.  Honestly if anyone tells you that sifting makes your baked goods fluffier when you're just going to mix them in a mixer anyway, question their motives.  They're just trying to make you waste time!) 

 

Next, add the butter and the shortening to the mixer and beat them until they are fully mixed together and creamy.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Then measure out half a cup of brown sugar (be sure to measure it in a one cup measuring device because you are too lazy/your hands are messy and you don't want to walk across the kitchen and get the half cup measuring device.  Hey, you're saving dishes.  (You're welcome dad!).  Add the sugar to the creamed butter and shortening and mix it together.

Now add the egg and molasses to the sugar/butter/shortening mixture and mix together.  Now let's be clear, the recipe doesn't call for vanilla, but that doesn't mean you can't add it, right?!  I mean EVERY baked good that I make includes vanilla, since vanilla is the elixir of life.  But you don't have to add vanilla if you don't want to.  But if you were going to, now would be the time to add it.

Here's what it looks like when it's all mixed.

Now, by hand, mix in the flour.  Don't worry about getting it all incorporated with a spoon because that's hard.  It's just as easy to mix it mostly together, then dump it out onto the counter and knead it all together.

Then, divide the dough into two balls and put the balls into two bags.

Now here's my trick.  The dough needs to go into the fridge/freezer if you're impatient like me and chill.  Well it's hard to chill a ball all the way through since it's four inches thick.  If you instead flatten the dough in the bag it's going to be only half an inch thick and will chill faster.  Again I'm impatient and want to make the cookies pretty much as soon as I make the dough!

When the dough is done chilling (about an hour or so or up to a few days if you really plan ahead.  Which I do not) take it out of the freezer so you can roll it out.  Here is the other part of my trick.  Have you ever tried to roll out a chilled ball of dough?  Doesn't work too well does it.  It splits apart and you get these big cracks where you have to press the dough back together.  The beauty of flattening the dough when it was warm and then chilling it, is that the rolling out portion is almost done!  All you have to do is cut the bag off the dough.

Then roll it out flat, and then cut pretty shapes in it.  Notice I'm using flowers and bunnies and ducks because these gingerbread cookies are not just for Christmas time!

Then bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

They'll come out of the oven and smell heavenly.

Now you can leave them plain, but I like to mix some powdered sugar and water and make a frosting/glaze to put on top.  It keeps the cookies moist and not stale for a lot longer.  Not that they will last that long . . . but dang it people, everything tastes better with frosting!

Here are the ingredients (recipe courtesy of Food Network.com)

 3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper (trust me you can't even taste it)
8 tbs butter
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup molasses
1 egg

Btw I like to make these before I go on trips or anyone I know goes on trips because they have ginger in them and ginger is supposed to calm your stomach right?  So you're in a new place and the car ride or the plane flight turbulence or ok you get the point.   But they're awesome please make them soon!