Faux Creamsicles

I'm at a baseball game today, but if you don't live in the Northeast, and you are living somewhere where the temperature might actually be scorching, try a popsicle. These tasty and delicious popsicles are way more healthy than those delicious orange and ice cream popsicles. The recipe is super easy, super delicious, super cheap, and pretty much made from stuff I had on hand. If you don't have popsicle molds, you could try just freezing the popsicles in dixie cups for about an hour or two and then sticking a popsicle stick in until it freezes solid.

yum yum yum!

Vanilla-Orange Freezer Pops

from Eating Well

1 1/2 cups orange juice

1 1/2 cups nonfat vanilla yogurt

2 Tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl. Pour among 6 popsicle molds and freeze until solid.

Crispy Rice Treats?

Well, the good news is that I have finally gotten out of my rut and I've started cooking again. Thank you to the 4 people who still read my blog (other than family and people who love me)! I'm cooking again and it's pretty good and for the most part healthy. Yay! Unfortunately, the amount of time I'm limited to because of school and subbing has gotten even smaller thanks to my furry sous chef.

Who would think that this fluffy little dog would leave mountains of dog hair around our cozy little home? Like for the first time in my life I understand the need to vacuum every. single. day. And with all the rain and mud in the back yard, yep, there's mopping pretty damn often too. It's a good thing she's so cute and loveable and happy or I'd start to get annoyed that my dog has turned me into a clean freak.

Also, challenging and new, I've given up both butter and dessert for Lent because I'm Catholic and that's what we do. Although I have relaxed the rules a little because I will eat things made with butter. And I have had a cookie or 15 as "after school snacks". In fact yesterday I had a slice of pie at midnight, which didn't follow a meal, so clearly that was a "midnight snack".

These delicious Crispy Bars are another fine example of a snack. Except these are really healthy. While I was on the couch with my bronchitis/stomach flu blend I was watching Ellie Krieger during a brief moment of consciousness (before I realized that the Food Network wasn't the best thing to watch while nauseous) and she made these and immediately I was curious.

Fast forward a week or so and I was healthy again and on a mission to make these bars. The most difficult thing about them (besides waiting a half hour for them to set) was finding the crispy brown rice cereal. I never did find it. I found puffed brown rice. Then I was praying that they turned out okay because I did NOT want to eat this cereal without slathering it in peanut butter and honey. And the peanut butter I used is my new favorite. It's Mighty Maple and mighty delicious! Overall I was totally pleased with this snack. It's healthy! It's delicious! I am definitely making it again to get rid of the excess puffed brown rice cereal!

Crispy Rice Treats

from Ellie Krieger

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup mighty maple peanut butter

6 cups puffed brown rice cereal

2/3 cup assorted chopped fruit (I used apricots and cherries)

cooking spray

Combine honey and peanut butter in a large pot and heat over medium-low heat until melted, about 2-3 minutes. Add brown rice cereal and dried fruit and stir to combine until mixture is sticky. Press into a 9x13x2" pan sprayed with cooking spray. Let cool, then chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes. Cut into 15 squares.

Red, White, and Blueberry Cupcakes

This month, the Cupcake Hero competition is guest hosted by two of my favorite bloggers, Clara at I Heart Cuppycakes has got fun tidbits, creatively decorated cakes, and seriously delicious cupcakes. She's cohosting with the equally wacky and delicious Nikki of Crazy Delicious Food. And wouldn't you know it. For two such fabulous food bloggers, they came up with what I think has been the hardest yet Cupcake Hero challenge. Red, White, and Blue. Ah, you scoff, how hard can that be? Well maybe I should add they didn't want us to use food coloring for the whole thing.

Then it hit me. No food coloring means that I would have to, gasp, use fruit. Mostly because blueberries are the only naturally blue food I could think of. Good thing I like blueberries. In case you're new here, I don't like the majority of fruit. I'm trying very hard to eat it lately. I figure it's not a good idea to completely dismiss an entire food grouping. Unfortunately, the red fruits posed a problem. I tried some cherries and discovered that I didn't completely mind them fresh. Fresh cherries are way better than that gross super red kind of cherry flavoring type pseudo cherries. But still they had pits. Raspberries are ok, but I had a feeling they'd bleed on the frosting, and call me a little nutty, but I just couldn't deal with that. I thought about maybe a raspberry sauce, but I really wanted to limit the amount of heat going around in my tiny little house. So I started thinking about semi sturdy red fruits and came up with the dreaded strawberries. blecch. (Yeah, I'm probably one of the very few people in the world that doesn't like strawberries.)

So for this month's Cupcake Hero I decided to go way simple and scream summer. I made my favorite basic yellow cake cupcake recipe, topped with an easy meringue buttercream recipe and decorated with fresh fruit. That's red and blue fresh fruit. Well, I made some just with blueberries, because that's how I would like them.But then I packed them all off and gave them away. I figure although cupcakes definitely enhance the taste of fruit, it's not the best way to get some fruit in my diet.

Red, White, and Blueberry Cupcakes

Yellow Cupcakes (from A Baker's Field Guide to Cupcakes)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1/2 cup milk at room temperature

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place paper liners in 16 muffin cups.

Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl to aerate and combine; set aside.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down the bowl once or twice. Beat in vanilla extract. Beat in eggs one at a time, scraping down after each addition, allowing each egg to be absorbed before continuing. Add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternately with the milk. Begin and end with the flour mixture, and beat briefly until smooth on low-medium speed after each addition.

Divide batter evenly among cupcake wells. Bake for about 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center shows a few moist crumbs. The center should also spring back when lightly pressed. The cupcakes might color a bit around the edges, but they will not brown.

Cool completely.

Easy Meringue Buttercream (The recipe is on a recipe card that is mighty well loved and I have no idea who to attribute the original recipe to. Sorry!)

4 large egg whites

1 cup sugar

pinch of salt

12 ounces (3 sticks) unsalted butter very softened

Place egg whites, sugar and salt in medium sized heatproof mixing bowl over a pan of simmering water and whisk gently until egg whites are hot (140°F.) and sugar is melted, about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and whip by machine until thick and cooled, about 5 minutes. Beat in butter and continue beating until buttercream is smooth and spreadable.

To Assemble

handful of blueberries

handful of strawberries

Frost cooled cupcakes with a layer of buttercream. Decorate the tops of cupcakes with an assortment of blueberries and strawberries.

Grilled Jerk Pineapple

I hate fruit. Yes fruit. My nemesis. Well not actually my nemesis, but I'd pretty much eat most other food groups before fruit. But I'm trying to be healthier so I will make myself eat some fruit pretty much daily. But the real breakthrough is that I LIKED this fruit. Really, what's not to like about this fruit? It's grilled and marinaded and topped with ice cream. Yummy.

See while I was in Meijer's last week picking up an assortment of vegetables, they had a big pile of pineapples. This happens to me fairly frequently that I think a fruit is pretty and I pick it up and then I have no idea what to do with it. I actually had a pommelo go bad in my fruit bowl because I simply was clueless about it. So after about 5 days when the pineapple was starting to get really fragrant I knew my time was limited. Fortunately a helpful gentleman last year taught me how to pick a good, almost ripe pineapple. So I got on the trusty Internet and found this fabulous recipe from Health magazine on My Recipes.

It's spicy. It's a little boozy. It's tart. And it's creamy. I did manage to refrain from licking the plate this time, but I definitely thought about it. I've never had grilled fruit before so that was a new experience for me. The Brain even jumped in and grilled it for me. I varied from the recipe at one point because I had lots of marinade left over and so I reduced it in a small saucepan for a little bit. Overall it was a delicious, healthy, fairly elegant, and super easy dessert. I might pick up a pineapple again next week...

Grilled Jerk Pineapple

adapted from Health magazine

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup dark rum

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground red pepper

1/8 tsp ground ginger

1/8 tsp ground allspice

1/8 tsp ground cloves

8 (3/4 inch thick) slices fresh pineapple

Cooking spray

1 1/3 cups low fat ice cream*

1. Prepare grill.

2. Combine sugar, rum, thyme, cinnamon, salt, red pepper, ginger, allspice, and cloves in a large Ziploc bag. Add pineapple, and chill 1 hour, turning occasionally.

3. Remove pineapple from bag, reserving marinade. Place pineapple on a grill rack coated with cooking spray, and grill 4 minutes on each side or until thoroughly heated, brushing with reserved marinade.

4. Reduce marinade in small saucepan until thick and hot.

5. Arrange 2 slices on each of 4 dessert plates; top each with 1/3 cup of ice cream. Drizzle marinade over ice cream.

*Yeah, I had some Haagen Daz in the freezer. I'm not so big on low fat ice cream. If you're going to have ice cream then have the good stuff. The Brain had his without ice cream and proclaimed it some "Damn good pineapple".

Blecch Fruit

It has been said, that it is far better for a person to eat a fruit or vegetable than to drink the juice. And while I seriously love all vegetables,( Well, excepting olives of course, but olives don't really count as a vegetable, they're more of an optional beverage accessory.) I just don't like fruit.

So I have been diligently over the last couple years attempting to find fruits that I like. Sadly this list is small. And, no, tomatoes don't count as a fruit, they're a vegetable in my book.

Fruits I like are:
Apples
Blueberries
Fresh Raspberries (like off the bramble fresh, none of the soggy grocery store ones)
Bananas

So in a desire to find another fruit to add to the list, I attempted a pomegranate. They were on sale and they've been taunting me for a while. "C'mon, we're different. We take a LOT of work. We're mysterious. We're unbelievably good for you. C'mon we're on sale."

Mysterious? A fruit I can get at the local grocery without having to leave the county? Actually if you look for it, pomegranates have many biblical and mythological references. Shoot you've heard the story of Persephone before haven't you? Like the whole she ate 6 pomegranate seeds so we have 6 months of winter thing? So I bought a big red one and followed the directions to make sure it was heavy for it size and sounded slightly metallic when tapped. What the hell does tapping a slightly metallic pomegranate sound like anyway? It didn't sound like a clink or anything, but I figured it was good enough.

So I bring this beautiful and mysterious pomegranate home and I slice it open and whack the crap out of it to get the little seeds out of it. The Brain had never had one either, so he watched intently for the first 10 minutes. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity I had pulled apart all the white pulp and gotten out the pretty ruby seeds. I do have to say it is one of the prettier fruit.

While the Brain happily ate his bowlful, I just couldn't get past eating seeds. It was like, a burst of oooooooh tasty, followed by a minute of crunch crunch crunch here's a seed. Maybe I'm a little paranoid, but crunchy things like seeds are a darn good way to break a tooth. No teeth were harmed in the eating of this pomegranate, but this fruit again ends up on my dislike list. It's kind of a shame, because I really wanted to like a pomegranate, and I have half of one left in my fridge.....

Maybe I'll just buy the juice.