Individual Cheesecakes (Low Fat and Low Calorie)

I wanted to try to make cheesecake using xylitol in place of sugar after Anna at Cookie Madness made this low fat and low calorie cheesecake.  I'm really excited about xylitol and that it is an all natural sugar.  I really cannot taste the difference in the things I've made with it so far (unlike Splenda and other sweeteners, which have a strange aftertaste).  I didn't want to make an entire cheesecake with the xylitol, in case for some reason it didn't work out, so I cut the recipe Anna posted in half and made individual ones using cupcake liners in muffin tins.  These turned out cute and fun and most importantly--yummy!

You can get the full recipe from the link on Cookie Madness if you want to make a really good cheesecake (noting that nothing beats a full fat delicious cheesecake), but save yourself some fat and calories.  Here is the recipe as I made it for the individual ones.  I actually changed quite a few things from the one Anna made.  I made these and we had company over just hours later and they were pretty good, but they were even better the next day, as most cheesecakes are after they have time for all the flavor to develop.  One thing I did to note was make the full recipe amount of graham cracker crust but halved the cheesecake.  It came out perfect to make 20 individual cups each holding one tablespoon or so of crust and 2 good sized tablespoons of filling.

Individual Cheesecake Cups (Low Fat and Low Calorie)

Crust:

12 rectangles of graham crackers

4 tablespoons melted butter (I should have used Smart Balance!)

Filling:

1/2 cup fat free cottage cheese

4 1/4 oz. fat free cream cheese

4 1/4 oz. reduced fat cream cheese

1/2 cup xylitol (can be substituted for sugar or sugar substitute)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

1 tablespoon all purpose flour

1 tablespoon cornstrach

1/2 cup Egg Beaters w/touch of yolk

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons light sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line 20 muffins cups with paper cupcake liners.  Set aside.

Process graham crackers in food processor until fine crumbs.  Add melted butter and pulse until mixed.  Press one heaping tablespoon mix into each cupcake liner with back of tablespoon coming up the sides a little.  Set aside.

In cleaned bowl of food processor, process cottage cheese until very smooth.  Add both cream cheeses and xylitol.  Process until smooth.  Scrape sides of processor.  Add extracts and pulse together.  Add Egg Beaters and process until well mixed then add flour and cornstarch again processing until smooth and well mixed.  Scrape sides of bowl again.  Finally, add sour cream and blend all until fully incorporated. 

Add two heaping tablespoons of filling to each graham cracker cup.  Bake for 12-15 minutes, checking after 12 for doneness.  The center of each should be set.   Best when chilled overnight, but still good after a few hours in the refrigerator.  Serve with fresh berries on top. 

  

Update:  Here's the nutrition stats for these:  1 cheesecake cup has 130 calories, 19.5 carbs, 5 grams fat, 3.5 grams protein

Goodness These Are Good! Dorie Greenspan's Chewy, Chunky Blondies

I've been wanting to make more things from Dorie's book Baking From My Home To Yours that I bought recently, without necessarily joining the weekly Tuesday's With Dorie group (I might someday!).  So I flipped through the cookie section, as that is about a difficult as I seem to get these days with my baking and I found these blondies.  They are REALLY good. 

Chewy, Chunky Blondies

Recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours

2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup butterscotch chips

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup milk chocolate chips

1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

1/4 cup mini m&m's

1 cup shredded sweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Line a 9x13 pan with foil and lightly spray with cooking spray.  Set aside.

In medium size bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

Beat butter with electric mixer until smooth and creamy.  Add both sugars and beat well.  Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until well incorporated.  With the mixer on low, add the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated.  With a rubber spatula, scrape sides of bowl, then add chips, nuts and coconut and mix until incorporated.  Put the mixture in the pan and spread evenly.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool in pan on wire rack about 15 minutes, then remove from pan using foil edges to gently lift from pan.  Cool completely on wire rack until room temperature.  Cut bars to desired size.

Just before I spread the batter into the pan, I thought I would like to try this dough as cookies.  So I popped two cookie on a parchment lined baking sheet and baked them.  They were actually REALLY good and I kind of wish I would have just baked the whole batch as cookies, mostly because I probably would have gotten about 4 dozen cookies.  They were thin, buttery, crunchy and chewy.  Kevin HATES butterscotch, so I rarely use it, but I thought these in bar and cookie form were really good and weren't TOO butterscotchy.  There were lots of other things to taste, like the chocolate, walnuts and coconut.  I really liked the coconut addition, but you could leave any of the add-ins out if you'd like.  I actually did some different add-ins than Dorie's recipe.   I'm happy to have this great blondie recipe from Dorie Greenspan!

Mixed Berry Crumble Cake

This was SO good and actually quite healthy!  I haven't tried it yet with a scoop of low fat vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt, but I know it would be good.  My husband loved it warmed up.  I had some slightly warm from the oven and it was to die for!  You can use all one kind of any berries or a mix.

For the cake--

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 cup xylitol (natural sweetener) or you could use 1/2 cup granulated sugar (I taste nothing different in this cake using the xylitol)

3 tablespoons wheat germ, toasted

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup fat free milk

1/4 cup Egg Beaters with a touch of yolk (or you could use 1 large egg)

3 tablespoons canola oil

1/2 cup Dannon Light & Fit Vanilla Yogurt (you could use plain)

1/2 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

1/2 cup blackberries (fresh or frozen)

1 1/2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)

For the crumble topping--

1/3 cup old fashioned oats

1/4 cup chopped pecans

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3 tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line a 9x9 inch baking pan with foil and spray lightly with cooking spray.  Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the flours, wheat germ, salt, baking soda, baking powder and xylitol or sugar.  Whisk together and set aside. 

In a large bowl, combine the milk, egg, oil, and yogurt.  Stir to combine.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.  Stir together with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon just until combined.  Do not over mix.  Put all but 1 1/2 cups reserved mix in baking pan and spread evenly.  Next, put all the berries over the top of cake batter.  Dot the remaining batter over the berries. 

Mix the oats, pecans, cinnamon and brown sugar in a medium bowl until combined.  Sprinkle evenly over top.  Bake for 25-30 minutes.  Begin checking cake with toothpick inserted at 25 minutes.  If toothpick comes out clean, remove cake from oven to cool on wire rack.  If not, return to oven for two minutes at a time until done.  Serve warm with scoop of vanilla ice cream, or serve as a great breakfast "treat".  Makes 16 servings.

     

A Chocolate Chip Cookie Experiment

I made the New York Times Ultimate Cookies yesterday, so I could bake them today.  Are you getting sick of those?  Well, I'm really just trying different things with the recipe and having a good time actually.  This experiment resulted in, surprisingly, the same cookies!  The NY Times cookies, like Jacques Torres's cookies call for cake flour and bread flour, which I have always used with this recipe.  But I wanted to see if all purpose flour would produce the same results.  I made half a batch of each.  I also wanted to see if there was a difference in using chocolate chips instead of the chocolate "disks", which I have used chocolate bars chopped up and Hershey's Bliss chocolates, sliced thinner for the "disks".  I'm not going to retype the recipe for you, but I have linked it a number of times in some previous posts about this cookie.  I followed it exactly, except for the flour, with the half batch I did with all purpose flour, I used unbleached.  The only other change in the recipe is just the chocolate chips.  I chilled the dough for about 20 hours.  I made these small ones (not the 3 1/2 oz. ones that the recipes says to do).  Mine are 5/8 oz. each.  I baked 4 dozen cookies today and still have about 1/2 the dough left of each one.  These smaller ones bake for 9-10:30 minutes.  There is more to bake tomorrow!  Can you tell the difference in the two cookies with the different flours?

  

The two pictures above are the ones with cake and bread flour.

These are the ones with unbleached all purpose flour.  They really do look and taste the same, SO, if you want to make these delicious cookies, go ahead and use all purpose flour.  I, on the other hand, tend to have cake and bread flour on hand and will continue to make these as the recipe says.  I also think I REALLY like the chopped chocolate bars, or "disks" better as they seem to make it like "layers" of chocolate throughout the cookie, which I really like.  These will be my "splurge" cookies and I would make them again in a pinch using all purpose flour and chocolate chips. 

Have I mentioned that I like these?  ; )

 

Kevin went on a business trip to LA last week and visited a Lego store.  He bought the boys each something and bought me this fun looking cupcake pan/Jell-o mold.  Taylor was dying for me to make Jell-o. 

Taylor was dying for me to make Jell-o.  Of the five (one pkg. of Jell-o only filled five of the molds), here's the best one.

  

Taylor was less than thrilled about this.  I even made the Jell-o Jiggler recipe, which should have been more firm and held up better.  Oh well.  We'll see if cupcakes work better.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the cake may not come out of the little Lego circles.  Any tips on greasing and flouring?  Maybe a rice crispy treat would come out nicely.

Which peach would you rather have?  The little one actually was really small and the big one was REALLY big.  I got one at the farmer's market and the other at Walmart.  The tiny one was actually from the farmer's market.  The thing I really like about these, which I've been getting about a bag of 10 or so little ones like this, somewhat differing in size, but all smaller, is that they are perfect size for the boys.  They would waste a lot of the giant one.  And do you think they'd just share the big one, oh no--they have to have their own.  So while both were delicious, the little ones win with me.  Thanks, Farmer's Market!

What?  Sam is up on a chair again?  Well, this may have been the last time.  I thought he was going to seriously drive me nuts moving the chairs around and getting up to wherever he wanted, but I smartened up.  For a few days, I just put the chairs out on the deck.  He was NOT happy as he'd look longingly at them out the window.  Now all the dining chairs and bench (one side of our table has a bench) are in his bedroom, which is always shut, he pretty much just sleeps in there.  So, little Sam-o cannot climb and Mommy is happier.  He's a determined little Stink, so I'm sure it will only be a short time before he's "up" somehow.  He tries to stand on anything that can be used as a step, like the Lego bucket, my nice stainless steel bowls, pitchers, whatever looks good, you can see the wheels a-turnin' in his head as he tries to figure it all out.  I think I'm really doomed!  He's so stinkin' cute though!

Taylor always wants to take pictures with the camera whenever I have it out.  I let him snap a few of me, which I will not be posting, but as he was sitting basically on the same chair I was on, I snapped a few of him.  Cute little freckles, huh, Mom! 

Love you, T!

And on a wonderful bright happy ending note--Scott and Parker start school on Wednesday!  So excited!  (And yes, I'm a lot more excited than they are!)  Bye bye, summer, thanks for coming!

A Couple of Overdue Thanks for Some Blog Awards!

I've been meaning to thank some people for some blog awards I've received recently so here goes--

First of all, thanks to Pamela from Cookies with Boys for the Brillante Weblog Premio 2008 Award.  It's fun to see others out there who are a lot like me--they have a love for baking and are raising boys!  Check out Pamela's blog for some great, tasty looking recipes.

 

Next I wanted to thank an amazing baker, Rita at Clumbsy Cookie for the Yum-Yum Blog Award.  That was so nice of you, Rita.  Your blog is so fun and a total inspiration to me.  (If you'll remember her amazing Cookie Chips Chocolates that I had to make as soon as I saw hers, you'll see why I think she's so great!)

And most recently I received The Smile Award from Lisa at Jersey Girl Cooks.  Thanks a bunch--that made me smile! ;)

Lisa's blog is one I am sure to check on daily for her great ideas and recipes and I enjoy her writing and stories that she shares along with them.

 

Thanks a bunch, Ladies, it's so fun to be involved in this food/baking/cooking blog world!

FINISHED!

Well, I did it.  I finished cleaning Taylor's room.

Yeah!  I'm so happy it's done.  I can't show you the closet, yet.  But, no, I didn't just stuff a bunch of junk in there.  On my last post, there is a picture of the closet and well, it still looks the same. 

Okay, truthfully, I said I won't do any baking until the room is clean, but I cheated a little.  I made some brownies, then while they were baking, I finished the room.  That counts doesn't it?  Well, who ya gonna tell, the Baking Police!  Pashaw!  I was going to say that I've come to a conclusion that there are TOO many toys in this house, but I've actually known this for quite some time.  One of my goals (long term!) is to go through all the toys and purge a BUNCH of things. 

So, back to some baking....wait, I really must clean the kitchen first....but that doesn't take too long.  I'll probably have to postpone it until Sam is napping, he just doesn't add much help to loading the dishwasher, in fact he usually takes dirty stuff out while I'm trying to put them in!  Love my little guy! 

If You Ignore It Long Enough, It Will Go Away! (Also A Fruit Salsa Recipe)

I've heard that quote many times in my life.  And I keep expecting it in many situations to actually work, but it's just not working.  THIS will not go away!

What's a gal to do?  Well, I've now told myself that I cannot bake anything else until this is taken care of!  Sigh!  I don't want to do it.  Every time I walk in there I just shriek and turn around and walk out.  THIS is not a toy room, this is Taylor's room!  He sleeps in that little crib bed (he's almost 5!) that Sam is standing on (Surprise, Sam is standing up on something!)  And I will point out there is a nice clean spot, a path to Taylor's bed all the way to the doorway where I'm standing. 

Kevin has been out of town for four days.  I have been home with the boys, no, wait, I took all four of them to the store on Monday.  I actually cleaned the whole house (except T's room) as we had company come yesterday.  Michelle and Peter Stewart came through town on their way out west and stayed a night at our house.  It was so fun to have them here! (We miss you guys living in Lawrence!)  I invited everyone who knew them to come over for goodies and visit.  We had a good house full of kids and parents.  It was fun.  THIS is what I'd rather be doing----

I've been doing a lot of baking and there's just something about it that I really enjoy.  So the spread of goodies was fun and there's a lot left over!  On Monday I made the dough for these little puppies---

That's right, it's the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie!  I wanted to make them small and see how they turned out.  This is only about half the cookies that the full recipe made as each one was about 5/8 oz. of dough.   I chilled the dough for 24 hours.  They were/are SO good!  There's something about these, well, I'm sure it's a combo of the chocolate disks (I just chop up bars of chocolate) and I really think the cake flour/bread flour is something else, too, besides the chilling of the dough.  Right now (because who knows, another great/better one might just come around), but right now, these are my favorite chocolate chip cookie.  I don't even sprinkle mine with a little salt as the author of the article in the Times suggests.  I think the recipe made about 6 dozen of the little guys.  I love them and am proud to say I only ate one as it was slightly warm from the oven.  Now they are mostly gone and the rest are in the freezer.  LOVE THESE! 

So, after all the cookie talk, I'll post a quick recipe for some really good fruit salsa and try to get to work on that bedroom!

I've been making this fruit salsa for a few years now and every time I do I try to remember why I wait so long to make it again.  It is so yummy.  And I just discovered it is really yummy to scoop up with graham crackers or graham sticks.  I found the recipe here at Allrecipes.  It is called Annie's Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chips.  You can make your own cinnamon chips by cutting flour tortillas and spraying them with a little cooking spray then sprinkling them with cinnamon/sugar and baking for a short time. I tried using the low carb whole grain tortillas and they just weren't as good.  The flour tortillas are good, but I really like the graham crackers.  The recipe calls for fresh fruit, but I have always used thawed frozen berries.  Here is how I made it.

1 16 oz. bag frozen mixed berries, thawed and bigger pieces chopped smaller

3 small Golden apples (you really could use any apple you'd like, peeled and chopped into smalls chunks

2 kiwi, peeled and chopped

3 tablespoons Smucker's Strawberry Simply Fruit Spread

2 tablespoons sugar (can be omitted, which I would do next time)

1 tablespoon brown sugar (also can be omitted)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Chop all fruit into small pieces, mix together, add sugar, fruit spread and lemon juice, gently stir to combine.  Refrigerate.  Serve with homemade cinnamon tortilla chips and/or graham crackers.  This would also be good served over a small dish of fat free/low fat vanilla ice cream or with yogurt and some graham crackers broken up sprinkled on top. 

Mine has made A LOT of liquid/juice, which is also why I'd omit the sugar next time.  You cannot tell in the picture, because the picture was taken right after it was made.  You can also substitute really any fruit you'd like, peaches would be good.  A yummy, nutritious treat!

Better go start tackling that room!

Baking and Boys, What Else?

Kevin is out of town, finally got the boys in bed.  We'll see what I can get done!  Still having fun trying out lots of different recipes and falling back on some favorites. 

First of all, I've got a new "kitchen helper".  (She says with a big sigh!)  Sam has figured out how to move a dining chair to pretty much wherever he wants.  His parking place of choice is usually at the kitchen sink.  Now this wouldn't be such a big deal, but I've now got to make sure I know where he is and what he's doing at all times, AND I have to keep all dangerous things (like knives) out of his reach!  Let's just say the last two days he's been driving me crazy!  He will even fall off the chair, be hurt (just a little) and get right back up.  I've tried putting him in his crib for a timeout when he keeps doing it at times that I can't have him doing it.  That sure makes him mad!  But he just comes out and does it again.  Sigh!  If he's not climbing in the kitchen, he's climbing on the couches and reaching light switches.  I've thought maybe if I just try not to make a big deal of it and ignore him (when the situation permits), that maybe he'll get bored of it faster and stop doing it.  We'll see.  We've already had to remove the lamp and books from the end table between the couches.  But I'm not sure how clean I can keep the kitchen counters.  I'm sure it's only a matter of time until he actually climbs from the chair onto the counters.  Oh boy!  None of the other boys were climbers.  This is all new and well, let's just say really FUN for me!  And need I even mention the ice and water dispenser to the fridge!  It is actually pretty funny when the water comes down and gets him right in the face when he doesn't have the cup positioned correctly!

We made a fun breakfast the other day.  I'm LOVING homemade oatmeal lately, so here's my latest.  I usually just love piling whatever fruit we have on it.  It is so yummy.  You can get some great oatmeal ideas from a great health food blogger at www.katheats.com.  Love this gal!

Scott is the only one who will eat oatmeal, but the boys had already had breakfast, so I just made them some silly fruit faces.  They loved them!

We have color coded plates, Purple Parker, Taylor loves frogs, so his is green and Scott is blue.  We have several plates that are colored to remember whose plate is whose, it's especially helpful at dinner.  Oh and here's my lunch from that same day.  Nothing like having your food stare at you while you eat!  I loved the fresh strawberries on the peanut butter bread.  That's the way to go instead of jam or jelly!

Recipes and yummy things!

I bought a box of All Bran to make bran muffins.  The box is TOO much to make THAT many muffins, so I needed to find some other things to do with the bran.  Low and behold, www.allbran.com has lots of recipes.  So I made these Raspberry Streusel Bars.  I followed the recipe exactly.  They are very low in fat and are good, but seem a little dry, not bad though.  I would bake them a little less time next time and would use an All Fruit Preserves, which since these are pretty healthy with bran and whole wheat flour, I wish I would have done so, but didn't think about it until it was too late, so I used Smucker's Raspberry Preserves--great tasting, but the number two ingredient is high fructose corn syrup.  Real healthy people, I should write to the company.  Now and then I do that kind of thing, just with suggestions or compliment or complaints and will get coupons in the mail for doing so!  Anyway, I like the bars and used up one whole cup of All Bran.  Only about six or so cups to go!

Next up--Lemon Nut Cookies courtesy of Giada De Laurentis from the Food Network.  Here's the recipe.  I did everything according to the recipe, but only made half the batch.  This half recipe probably made a good three dozen cookies.  I think I made mine a little smaller than Giada, she says do 1 1/2 inch balls, but I did about 1 inch.  She also rolled them in powdered sugar after they baked and were still warm, but after I did a few and didn't feel like doing that anymore, I turned the powdered sugar into a quick glaze by just adding a teaspoon or two of lemon juice to the sugar.  I mixed it up well and put it in a snack size sandwich bag, snipped off a tiny corner and drizzled the icing over the cookies.  I liked them better this way.  But both ways are great.  These are crisp little nutty lemony bites that melt in your mouth.

  

I know, you're thinking, "Wow, she did this all in one day!"  No, these are all over the span of this last week, I just can't post things daily!  That being said, up next is an amazing brownie (again)!

Anna, at Cookie Madness, made another brownie the same day I was about to make some brownies to give away.  She was interested in seeing if someone else liked them as much as she did, so I made these One Bowl Cocoa Brownies.  The only thing I did different was instead of using 3/4 cup cocoa powder, I used 1/4 cup regular cocoa powder and 1/2 cup Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder.  I also added about 3/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips to the batter.  I actually haven't liked how strong things have been when I've used the dark cocoa, but these brownies were very good since I used some of both kinds.  The nice thing about this recipe using cocoa instead of melted chocolate is that it is cheaper and still a GREAT brownie.  I will use this recipe time and again, I'm sure.  (Thanks, Anna.)

These brownies were made in a 9x13 baking pan and I cut them into 35 squares.  You can cut them any size you wish.  I'm going to make the cookie dough brownies again and use this recipe. 

Can't pass up telling you about these bad boys that I made again.  It's a good thing I gave them all away.  They are too tempting and SO good.  Butterfinger Blondies from www.recipegirl.com. 

And finally, I may have found what I consider to be right up there with the darn best oatmeal raisin cookies yet.  These come from the same lady whose cookies I love that are Chock Full of Chocolate Chip Cookies from her book, The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook.  Another book I have of Elinor Klivans is Cookies, Brownies, & Bars and these Oatmeal-Raisin Crisps are superb!  I halved the recipe and here it is as I made it:

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder (slightly less than 1/2 t.)

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

In medium size bowl, combine flour, soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.  Set aside.  In bowl of mixer, cream butter and sugars together until well combined.  Add egg and vanilla and mix well.  Scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula.  Add flour mixture and beat on low speed just until incorporated.  Stir in the oats and raisins (I do this by hand, so not to over mix the dough). 

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto baking sheets.  (I made mine about 1 inch balls and this made about 4 dozen cookies-that's half a recipe.)  Bake 9 minutes or until golden brown.  Elinor's cookies look dark and crispy, but I didn't bake mine quite as long as I wanted crisp chewy cookies.  Let cookies cool on baking sheets for five minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool.  These were great still just slightly warm!

And now it's late and I must get to bed!  Goodnight!