Pizza For Breakfast

I know what you're thinking. Who hasn't eaten pizza for breakfast. Cold pizza is awesome. Yes, yes it is. That's not what I made though. I made breakfast pizza!  Last night on FB, TJ posted a picture of pizza she made for dinner. She mentioned that it was a Greek yogurt crust. ??? I had to find out about this. It's one cup of greek yogurt, one cup of self rising flour (plus more for kneading), baked at 450 for 15 minutes. Well, I don't have self rising flour, but that's easy enough to make, and since I was making it myself, I'd make it with a gluten free flour blend. Since I only had vanilla Greek yogurt, I figured I might as well make a breakfast pizza.

My hands got seriously messy making this.

 Here it is, patted out on my pizza stone. Note to self: USE PARCHMENT PAPER UNDERNEATH THE DOUGH NEXT TIME.

 I used more of my vanilla greek yogurt as the "cheese" for my pizza, and topped it with lots of  berries.

 15 minutes later, browned and crispy pizza!

Okay, so here's why I need to use parchment under the dough next time I make this. I totally had to scrape the pizza off of the stone. So, it was messy. It was still really tasty!

What's the story, morning glory?

Muffins. Yum. What's not to love about muffins. I was inspired by a tweet to make these by Josie after she raved about a muffin she had with carrot, coconut and dates. Hmm. Sounds like morning glory muffins to me! And glorious, they are. At 7 WW points +, they aren't freebies, but they are jam packed with healthy stuff. You can reduce the points by substituting apple sauce for the oil.

Morning Glory Muffins (makes 14)

3/4 cup chopped dates
2 cups white wheat flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
2 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/4 t salt
2 cups grated carrots
1 large granny smith apple, peeled, cored and grated
1/2 cup coconut flakes
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup ground flax seed
3/4 cup Egg Beaters
1/3 cup canola oil
2 t vanilla
3/4 cup POM pomegranate juice

Preheat the oven to 375 and spray your muffin pan with non-stick spray. (I made 12 but there was leftover batter, which I kept in the fridge).

In a medium sized bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together the grated carrots, apple, coconut flakes, walnuts and flax seed.  In a large bowl, beat together the Egg Beaters, oil, vanilla and juice. Stir in the flour and carrot mixtures, stirring until they are well combined. Finally, stir in the chopped dates.

Spoon mixture into prepared muffin tins. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

No Knead Bread

After the craziness of yesterday afternoon, spending "quality" time with the dogs and the parrot in a closet under the stairs, listening to tornado sirens blaring and hail hitting the house, I decided to try making no knead bread. I don't know how I stumbled upon this blog but I'm glad that I did. Now I love bread. Probably too much. Especially when it's warm from the oven or bread maker, slathered with butter... oops. Drooling now.... As you know, I've been doing Weight Watchers since the end of October, so it's not a treat I allow myself very often. And since I've pretty much been at a plateau since I hit my 10% goal, I probably shouldn't be treating myself now. That's life, though. I can eat things, but I'd better be prepared to exercise more and eat plently of healthy things, too.

I have a bread machine, which makes great bread. When I've tried to make it by myself, I've totally messed up. Last time, I ended up with bread that wouldn't rise, and was so tough. I think the yeast continued to rise in my stomach, which was NOT a good thing. So when I heard about no knead bread, I thought it would be neat to try. So last night, after I signed off from work, I put the dough together. Flour, salt, yeast and water. Pretty easy, huh? I'm not 100% sure my yeast was fresh enough, but it rose. The trick to no knead bread is that you don't mess with it. It sits in a bowl, on your counter, overnight. Simple.

No Knead Bread

3 cups AP flour

1 3/4 t salt (Note: this was too salty. I'll reduce to 1 t next time)

1/2 t yeast

1 1/2 c water

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, salt and yeast. Stir in the water, mixing enough to ensure that it's worked in. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 12-18 hours on your counter.

This is what it looked like this morning, after 13 hours. When you're ready to bake, heat up your oven to 450. When it reaches temperature, put your dutch oven and lid in to heat for 30 minutes. (Note: I read that my dutch oven lid can only be safely heated to 400 because of the handle, so I heated the bottom for 15 minutes at 450, reduced the heat, and when it hit 400, I put the lid on and heated for another 15 minutes.)

While the oven is heating, dump out the sticky dough mixture on to a heavily floured counter and shape in to a ball. Mine didn't really come out as a ball, more like a blob. Cover with the plastic wrap and let it rest while the oven and the pan are heating. After the pan has heated for 30 minutes, remove from the oven. Pick up the blob and put it in to the pan. Cover and stick in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove. At this point, I removed the lid and stuck it back in for a few minutes to get it a bit more brown. When it's baked, carefully remove from the pan and let cool on a wire rack.

Isn't it pretty?

Now all I need to do is figure out how many WW points this loaf is so I don't eat the whole thing!

Top O' the morning to you

Naw, this isn't a Saint Patrick's Day post. I just like that phrase! Plus, I'm trying to generate happy thoughts and stay positive, and what better to put you in a cheerful mood than a happy greeting? :) And a lovely, HUGE, mug of tea and a piece of pumpkin cake?

I was scouring the interwebs for recipes for pumpkin chocolate brownies after a friend mentioned them on FB recently. Too many of the recipes posted were simply boxed brownie mix made with pumpkin. Delicious, I am sure, but full of sugar and preservatives, too. Besides, it's not what you mix in to the brownie mix that's not good for you, it's the brownie mix, itself. So, I played recipe mash up and came up with these. Techically, I guess they are brownies, but there's almost no chocolate flavor here, so I'll consider this to be spiced pumpkin cake. Probably more suited to fall baking, but it's a tasty treat, nonetheless, and not too sweet. Recipe Builder calculated this at 4 +points. If you like sweeter, you could add more sugar, but the points would change.

Spiced Pumpkin Cake (12 servings)

1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup low fat buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup egg beaters
1 1/4 cups white wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar (not packed)
1/4 cup splenda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 Tablespoons of dark cocoa powder (unsweetened)
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350. Spray an 8x8 baking pan with non-stick spray. Mix the wet ingredients, including the brown sugar and splenda, together until smooth. Mix the dry ingredients together and add to the wet mixture. Pour into baking pan and back for about 35 minutes.

Breakfast Treat

A while back I picked up the WW Power Foods recipe book. I figured, since I'm going back to the Simply Filling technique, that I'd look through the book and see what struck my fancy. What struck my fancy was the Dutch Baby recipe. (They call it a "blueberry" Dutch Baby, but even I can clearly see the blackberries in their picture) First, I'll say that the recipes use power foods, but aren't only power foods. This means that I can't count them as power foods when I track what I eat, since the entire WW +points amount would come out of my weekly points total. To get around this, I just logged the components of the recipe, so only the non-power foods points came off of my total. If you're going for straight points, this came to 4 points, because I didn't use any confectioner's sugar on top or serve it with fat free Greek yogurt.

Three Berry Dutch Baby

2 t butter
1 cup of fat free milk
3/4 cup AP flour
1/2 cup Egg Beaters
1 t canola oil
1/4 t ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
3/4 cup of frozen mixed berries (I think I used closer to 1 cup)

1. Preheat oven to 450. When it's come up to temperature, but the butter in a 9 inche glass pie plate. Place in oven for 2-3 minutes, or until the butter has melted.

2. While oven is heating, combine the milk, flour, Egg Beaters, canola oil, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt in your blender. Blend until the mixture is very smooth, making sure you have no flour clumps hiding.

3. Remove the pan from the oven, swirl until the butter has coated the bottom and just up the sides of the pan. Pour in the mixture. (The butter will move up the sides of the pan, around the mixture) Sprinkle your berries evenly on top. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until the Dutch Baby is puffed up and lightly browned. When you take out of the oven, it will be very puffed up, but it will drop as it cools.

4. Enjoy! (The book calls for you to sprinkle with 2 t confectioner's sugar and serve with 1/2 cup of fat free Greek yogurt. This will at 1 point to the total). I served with a drizzle of sugar free syrup one morning, at it plain (and cold) the next. Delicious either way.

(Oh, and for my WW check in, I didn't do very well this week. In fact, I regained what I'd lost the week before... I was totally expecting it, so I'm not concerned)

Guilty Pleasures

Tis the season to get carried away by snacking and sweets. Considering my great weigh in on Sunday afternoon, I don't want to throw the whole week away. I do want a little something that tastes nice too, though. I don't work in an office, so I don't have vendors plying me with gift baskets and goodies. It's up to me to make them if I want them.

Yesterday, a person that I tweet with occasionally tweeted about some coconut macaroons that she had drying in her dehydrator. Curious, I asked her about them. Turns out, they were vegan/raw macaroons. I wasn't really into pulling my dehydrator off of a high storage shelf, and I don't follow a raw food diet anyway, so I have nothing against baking macaroons. I also don't want to wait 7-10 hours to eat my macaroons. There are a bunch of similar recipes floating around the interwebs, but you know I like to tweak things. Since I really like Almond Joy candy bars, I used almond extract in my cookies to get that flavor.

Coconut Cocoa Almond Bites (makes 78 cookies at 1 WW point+ per cookie)

3 cups shredded coconut (I had sweetened in freezer, 1 cup had been toasted previously)
1 cup dark cocoa
1 cup of ground almonds
1/4 cup sugar free "maple" syrup
3/4 cup agave
1 T almond extract
1 t salt (which I forgot to put in)

Preheat oven to 250. Cover baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine all ingredients together. With a small teaspoon, place small scoops on baking sheets. Bake for 30 minutes.

Eureeka!

Some times it's three strikes you're out. In this case, it's third times a charm. You see, I've been attempting to bake a clean, or reasonably so, pie since I saw the recent issue of Clean Eating magazine.

First attempt was the cover recipe: banana chocolate freezer pie. Meh. Not successful, in that I don't like eating shards of ice in my pie. Might as well just stick to my breakfast smoothie for those flavors.

Second attempt was a variation on their strawberry lime pie. I didn't want to use tofu in my pie (ask me about the tofu "cheesecake" my sister used to bring home from the hippie bakery in the 70s some time), so I used greek yogurt instead. It didn't set up, plus, I couldn't find no salt cottage cheese, so the flavors were off.

Third attempt was a variation of a no-bake berry cheesecake recipe. Eureeka. The pie set, it tastes good, and it's actually full of healthy, low fat, whole grain ingredients. In fact, with ingredients like fruit, oats, almonds, whole wheat, low fat cream cheese and fat free greek yogurt, I just had a slice for breakfast. ;)

Strawberry Cheesecake Pie

Crust:

1/2 c oat flour
1/2 c almond flour
1/2 c white whole wheat flour
1/4 c rice flour
1/4 c cocoa roast almonds, finely ground (I couldn't dig out my regular almonds from the freezer, and I had these in the pantry. Feel free to use regular almonds)
3 T butter, cold and cut into chunks
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t sea salt
1 1/2 t splenda (you could use 2 T agave or brown rice syrup in place of splenda)

Mix flours and other dry ingredients together in bowl of a food processor. Pulse to combine. With processor running, add in the cold butter and process until it has the appearance of large crumbs. Slowly add in the water until the dough combines into a ball. If you need to add more flour because it's too sticky, now would be the time. (I originally started with 1/4 c white wheat flour, but needed a little more, which is why I put 1/2 c in the ingredients list) BTW, the reason I'm using white wheat flour and rice flour is because I don't have whole wheat pastry flour, plus I was trying to make this a lower gluten crust.)

Remove the dough from the processor bowl, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for about 15-20 minutes. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 375.

After your dough has chilled and the oven has heated, press the dough into your pie pan. You'll note that this is what could be termed a "short" crust. It acts more like shortbread than a stretchy dough that you'd roll out. Bake the crust for 20 minutes at 375. Allow to cool completely before you fill the crust.

The filling:

1 1/2 lbs strawberries, hulled and quartered. (1 pound goes into the pie, the 1/2 pound you'll cook down as a topping)
1/4 cup water
2 packets of unflavored gelatin
1 1/2 packages of low fat Neufchatel cheese (aka low fat cream cheese. I don't know why they just don't call it cream cheese... whatever...)
1 6 oz container Chobani fat free vanilla greek yogurt (this stuff is like crack, I tell you)
1/2 c. splenda (you can use real sugar if you want to)
2 packets of True Lemon lemon crystals or 1 T fresh lemon juice

Pour the 1/4 cup of water into a small sauce pan. Sprinkle the 2 packets of gelatin over the water and let it soften for about 15 minutes. Stir with a spoon, and over low heat, make sure that the gelatin has all dissolved and that you don't have clumps.

Put the cream cheese, greek yogurt, splenda and about 3-4 cups of the quartered strawberries in the bowl of the food processor. Process until well combined. You'll need to stop a few times and scrape the mixture off the sides of the bowl. When it's thoroughly mixed and you don't see streaks of cream cheese or yogurt in the pink mixture, while processor is going, slowly add the gelatin mixture in through the feed tube of the processor. Pour into cool pie shell. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Topping:

1/2 pound strawberries, hulled and quartered
1 t splenda (again, you can use regular sugar or even agave syrup if you like)
splash of orange juice (if you have, it's not necessary)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, cook down the strawberries until they start to break down.

Here's the pie just after I took it out of the refrigerator this morning and removed the plastic wrap. As you can see, the plastic leaves marks in the top of the pie. It'll still taste great though, and you're going to drizzle strawberry topping on the pie anyway... ;)

And here, my friends, is the final product, mere seconds before I dug my fork into the pie. So, yogurt, fruit, almonds, oats... sounds like breakfast pie to me.

I really wanted to like it...

I really did. By "it," I mean the cover recipe in a healthy eating magazine. It's a banana chocolate freezer pie. What's not to like, it's like your morning smoothie. It was easy to make, I had the ingredients on hand, and I had my own wheat free crust that I wanted to try out. Maybe it was my freezer, I don't know, but the texture of frozen pie was not pleasing. It was like little shards of ice imbedded in the pie. It tasted good, but it wasn't fun to eat. This won't deter me though. They have a berry pie recipe that looks good too, so that's up next! The strawberries are waiting!

Oatmeal Pumpkin Creme Pies

It's such a winter-y, icky day for so many of us today, I thought I'd post a recipe to help cheer you up. I made these on Sunday, but I had a lot of leftover batter, so I baked up a fresh batch to share with the class.

I read about these creme pies here and here. I love how people make recipes their own. Beloved Green tweaked the original and I tweaked it too, to suit my taste and on-hand ingredients. This recipe makes A LOT of creme pies. The original said 12, but I can't see how that's possible unless a serving is 5 pies. I made 16 pies (32 cookies) on Sunday and didn't even use half of what the recipe made in batter and filling. I used parchment paper on my cookie sheets, per the original recipe. I read you can use no stick cooking spray, but I can't confirm that.

Oatmeal Pumpkin Creme Pies

For the cookie:

1 c brown sugar
1/2 Splenda
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c vegetable oil
1/2 c apple sauce
1 can pumpkin (15 oz.)
2 whole eggs (I was out of Egg Beaters)
1 t vanilla
1 c ground oatmeal (I put in the blender to grind)
1 c white whole wheat flour
1 c AP flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1 T ground cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1/2 t freshly grated nutmeg
1/4+ t ground cloves (I love these, so I used 1/2 t)
1/2 t salt

Filling:

1 package of low fat cream cheese, softened (8 oz. box)
1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
16 oz. powdered sugar (half the regular sized bag)
1/2 t vanilla
1/2 ground cinnamon
1 t milk

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, beat together the brown sugar, sugar, oil, apple sauce and pumpkin. When that's mixed well, add in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each egg. Add in the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together. Slowly add the dry mixture to the pumpkin mixture until combined.

Cut off parchment paper, if using, to fit your cookie sheet. If not using, spray your cookie sheet with non-stick cooking spray. Spoon the batter into a large zip top plastic bag. Smush down (like my technical term?) until the batter is in the corner. Snip of a small corner of the bag. Starting in the middle of your cookie, squeeze the batter into concentric circles until it's about 2-3 inches big. Repeat until your cookie sheet is filled. Try and do even numbers of cookies so you don't have an odd cookie out. Or don't worry and eat the odd cookie!

Bake for 12-14 mintes. I tried the 11 minutes the original recipe called for, but it wasn't enough in my oven. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Now for the filling! In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese and butter. Add in the powdered sugar, vanilla and cinnamon.

Frost the bottom cookie in the sandwich and pop the top on.

If you were impatient, like me, and the cookies are still warm, it may get a little messy!

Enjoy!

Dog Toys Update...

Well the dog toys didn't go over as well as I'd hoped. The braided tug toys sold out, and two of the squeaky toys sold, which I'm very happy about. I got a thank you email, complete with this picture, from the doggie parents who bought the big squeaky toy. Their girl is very happy, and is carrying her toy around the house, wagging her tail. So those of us who buy stuffed toys have to clean up debris fields after our dogs play with toys. They're having fun, which the whole point of giving dogs toys.

In other news, the dog cookies were a HUGE hit. I made 8 dozen peanut butter cookies and 6 dozen turkey egg and cheese cookies. Sold out, with requests today at church for the recipes. I am baking another batch of the turkey egg and cheese cookies for my girls, as they're a huge hit at home too. :)

Dog toys!

I couldn't resist posting a picture of the dog toys I made for my church's upcoming fundraising event. I'll also be making dog cookies. We have so many dog-parents that they sell out at our bake sales. :)

All hope abandon, ye who enter here...

In an attempt to make amends to my tastebuds for the recent black bean brownies episode, and in honor of MizFit and Talk Like A Pirate Day, I be bakin' a decadent favorite for the crew!

RUM CAKE

Here's your cast of scallywags, I mean ingredients:

* 1 yellow cake mix (can be made with gluten free cake mix. My neighbor is gluten intollerant, so that's how I make it when I bring it over for dessert)
* 4 eggs
* 1/2 stick butter (or half cup oil if you're dairy free)
* 1 package instant vanilla pudding
* 1/2 cup of rum (I like dark rum, but feel free to use whatever kind you like or may have on hand)
* 2/3 cup water
* 1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine all ingredients, except chopped pecans if you're using them, in a large mixing bowl and mix with electric mixer for 4 minutes, until there are no lumps.

Grease and flour a bundt pan. If you're using the nuts, sprinkle them in the bundt pan. Pour batter in to pan. Bake for 50 minutes.

Viola. A baked rum cake. Now this is where it gets fun. Time to make the glaze.

GLAZE

1/4 cup rum
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 stick butter

Combine in sauce pan. Slowly bring to a boil, and let boil for 3 minutes.

Pour the glaze on to the cake while it's still in the pan and is warm. So Miz, this 'tis for you, a slice o' cake with a wee bit o' grog in it. Enjoy!

Yum. Well you didn't expect me not to taste it and make sure it was good enough for other people to eat, did you? I would never be that thoughtless... ;-)

Well that was different

Last night we had a friend, The Alpha, over for dinner. He's stuck in town waiting for his and his wife's house to sell. She's already relocated to Arkansas with their furbabies, so a few of us from church are making sure he has a decent meal every once in a while. (I'm not being sexist, I'm sure he's a fine cook, he just has to keep the house spotless and can't mess up the kitchen.) Company for dinner tends to equal DESSERT for me. Those bake and serve brownies are fantastic. Fattening, but fantastic.

So today I thought I'd try baking black bean brownies. I'd heard of them, but never tried them. Here goes.

1 15 oz can of black beans, rinsed and drained
3 eggs
3 T vegetable oil
1/4 c. cocoa powder
1 pinch salt
1/2 t backing powder
1 t vanilla
3/4 c sugar (I used Splenda)
1 t instant coffee

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 8x8 baking pan

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Pour mixture into the prepared baking pan and bake for 30 minutes.

The verdict: I'm not sure. Maybe I was too heavy handed on the coffee crystals, maybe it's because I used Splenda instead of sugar and they have that Splenda aftertaste. Maybe it's because I wanted something more like the brownies I had last night. They were easy to make, out of things I have in my pantry, and they're full of fiber. Other versions of the recipe have you using lots of butter and melting unsweetened chocolate. Maybe I'll give them a try. I wanted something really good to bring to the church auction next weekend that a friend, who's both celiac and can't eat anything with casein in it, could enjoy. Maybe she'd like these. I guess I'll have to bring her some on Sunday and find out!

Lemon Chiffon Cupcakes

Let me start out with my disclaimer: I made these cupcakes for an event at my church. No, they are in no way, shape or form, diet cupcakes. I can't help it if they didn't eat enough of them there and a bunch of them followed me home. The Aussie certainly didn't mind that. He was eating cupcakes without frosting, spread with butter, like they were muffins. The other morning I did make muffins and he was so excited. "Are they the kind you made the other week?" he asked. "Those were cupcakes. I'm making muffins" I replied. Talk about a dejected look. I believe there was a "harrumph" in there somewhere as he sulked away.

These cupcakes are a combination of the golden cupcakes and the lemon cupcakes recipes from the book Crazy About Cupcakes by Krystina Castella.

Lemon Chiffon Cupcakes

1/2 pound unsalted butter (room temperature)

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs (room temperature), separated

1 t vanilla extract

3 cups AP flour

4 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 c milk

2 T lemon zest (from one lemon)

2 T fresh lemon juice or 1 1/2 t lemon extract

1. Preheat oven to 350. Insert cupcake liners in pan. I did one batch of mini-cupcakes and the rest were regular sized cupcakes.

2. In a large bowl (this bowl needs to be bigger than the dry ingredients bowl), cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the yolks of the 4 eggs and beat well. Add in the vanilla. Mix well.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the flower, baking powder and salt.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter mixture, alternating with the milk. Add the lemon zest and the lemon juice. Mix well.

5. With clean beaters, beat the egg whites on high speed until stiff peaks form. With rubber spatula, fold the egg whites in to the batter.

6. Fill the cupcake liners to 3/4 full. Bake 11-13 minutes for mini-cupcakes or 20-25 minutes for large cupcakes (or use the toothpick test). Cool the cupcakes and frost.

Lemon Buttercream Frosting

2 c. confectioner's sugar

1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened

2 t lemon extract

2 T milk

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the butter until soft. Gradually add in the confectioner's sugar, mixing at medium speed, alternating with the milk. Lastly, add in the lemon extract, making sure it's mixed well through the frosting.

Frost your little cupcakes and enjoy!