An Ode To My Mother....Kinda

Growing up I remember my mother used to make a lemonade cake.  It was amazing.  Kind of sweet, super lemony, just great.  I'm a sucker for anything lemon.  So, when I thought about the Recipe Redux theme {Treasured Cookware}, this recipe came to mind.

There isn't a piece of cookware in my kitchen that WAS my mother's but, she has stocked about half of my bakeware throughout the years.  Every Christmas I get a new piece.  One of the things she bought me was my angel food cake pan.  

Honestly I used to hate angel food cake, until it was the ONLY cake I could eat.  Now I love it and love playing around with flavors and different ways of using it.  For this recipe I used sugar free lemonade mix since there is SO MUCH sugar in the cake and then the glaze has added sugar.  I prefer to not have a complete sugar bomb. Pink Lemonade would make this rather pretty too.

Angel Food Lemonade Cake

Ingredients
1 angel food cake (I normally use a box mix and make it myself but, you can use a store bought one)
.25-.5 cup sugar free powdered lemonade mix (depending on how lemony you want it)
1 cup powdered sugar
2-4 T water


Directions

1. Poke holes in the top of the cake with a fork
2. In a small bowl mix together lemonade mix and powdered sugar
3. Whisk in water and continue whisking until you have a nice smooth glaze
4. Pour glaze over the top of the cake making sure some of the glaze gets into all the holes.
5. Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

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Winter Squash Cakes. A Thanksgiving Post a Bit Late....Or Super Early

Okay, I know that this post comes quite a bit after Thanksgiving.  It got lost under some other posts.  But, this recipe is great any time of year in my opinion.  

The Saturday before Thanksgiving I found out about Ken's Thanksgiving potluck at work.  I decided that the most logical thing for me to bring would be the turkey cupcakes.  Can you imagine me trying to make a turkey after not cooking meat for over a year??!!??

I love it when flavor ideas automatically come to me.  2 seconds after I decided to do cupcakes my brain had already decided on flavors.  While I was writing the recipe for the post I decided to change my cupcakes into sheet cakes.  Fat free cupcakes do not like liners.  I really want these desserts to be special and pretty and......perfect.  As an added bonus sheet cakes are quicker and easier to frost.  Which is nice if you have alot of other dishes to do.  I'm doing 2 different Thanksgiving flavored {yes, now Thanksgiving is a flavor} cakes.  The first is a pumpkin cake with a pumpkin frosting.  I call it Pumpkin Palooza.  The second one is a sweet potato cake with a meringue frosting.  The recipe for both cakes are the same except you are using sweet potato in one and pumpkin in the other.

The cakes before I frosted them.  Pumpkin on top, sweet potato on the bottom

Sweet Potato Cupcakes 

2.5 cups + 2 T flour

.25 cups + 2 T cornstarch

2 cups sugar

2.5 t baking powder

1 cup milk

1 cup pumpkin/sweet potato

2 t vanilla

.75 cup egg substitute (equivalent to 4 eggs)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 and spray a 9x13 pan
2. Whisk together your dry ingredients 
3. In a blender or food processor blend your wet ingredients until smooth
4. Mix wet ingredients into dry
5. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 30-35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean 

Helpful hint:  I read that if you stick a metal decorating nail in the center of your cake it will bake evenly.

Pumpkin Cake Frosting

Ingredients

2 envelopes Dream Whip

2 (4 serving) packages of Pumpkin Pie Jello pudding mix

2.75 cup skim milk
.5 t vanilla

Directions

1. Mix Dream Whip with 1 cup of milk and vanilla in bowl of mixer
2. Beat on high speed for 2 minutes until light peaks form
3. Add milk and pudding mix
4. Mix on medium, then beat on high for 2 minutes
5. Let set for about 1 hour then frost cake

Sweet potato cake frosting

adapted from Martha Stewart

Ingredients

1.5 cup sugar

2 T corn syrup

.25 cup water

6 egg whites

Directions

1. In a double boiler stir together everything until they reach 160 degrees on a thermometer
2. Beat using a stand (or electric hand) mixer on high until there are soft peaks.  {this should take 5-10 minutes depending on your mixer} add in 1 t vanilla near the end

Want to see what else the girls had for their Thanksgiving lunch?

Turkey, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese
a chocolate chip cookie and a brownie

And just in case I never showed you our Thanksgiving dinner:

Recipe Redux

Cupcakes are everywhere these days aren't they?  You can find 40 bajillion flavors. Normal flavors (chocolate, vanilla, and carrot), off-the-wall flavors (beer, apple onion, and corned beef with cabbage), ones for every dietary restriction (vegan, gluten free, and sugar free), and combinations of all of the above. I love cupcakes. They are great pre-portioned desserts (as long as you only eat one.)
Sunny's birthday is tomorrow. She's one lucky duck. She's getting a watermelon cake at home before presents and cupcakes after dinner at Ken's work. Why 2 different desserts? Because we are bringing cupcakes to share with to Ken's coworkers because we like to spoil them and they adore the girls. I made chocolate zucchini cupcakes with a marshmallow creme-cool whip frosting.
I love this recipe. It's sweet but not too sweet.

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

Adapted from Happy Herbivore
Calories:  86
Fat:        0.4 grams
Carbs:  19.3 grams
Sugar:   6.9 grams
Protein: 2.1 grams

Ingredients
1.25 cup whole wheat flour
.25 cup unsweetened cocoa  
1.25 tsp baking powder
1 banana, mashed
.25 cup sugar  
.5 cup applesauce
.25 cup skim milk (non-dairy milk would work also)
1 t vanilla
1 cup shredded zucchini

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350.
2. Grease your cupcake pan (or use liners)
3. Combine dry ingredients
4. Mix together the banana, applesauce and sugar
5. Stir in the milk, vanilla and zucchini
6. Add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture
7. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full
8. Bake 18-25 minutes (stick a toothpick in it and if it comes out clean then it's done)

You can substitute the sugar for sugar free syrup.  This drops the calories to 70, carbs to 15.4, sugar is 2.8

I frosted them with a simple Cool Whip Fluff Frosting.  Word to the wise, when you want to do something impressive, stick to what you know.  I decided to try a new fat free frosting.  Cool Whip and marshmallow fluff.  It didn't stiffen up.  So now my cupcake's frosting is all runny.  It tastes good but, instead of the recipe I was planning on posting I'll give you a link to my normal fat free frosting.  Click Here for it.  Just so you know, the normal recipe is great because you can use any flavor of pudding that you'd like.  And if anybody has a good fat free frosting recipe, please PLEASE send it to me!  I'm always searching for a new one.    But it's really pretty though....

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Muffin Monday {March 18}

Happy Muffin Monday everybody!  Okay, I totally lied, today I'm not making muffins.  I'm giving you a cupcake recipe.  I'm testing a few cupcake recipes on my guinea pigs Ken's coworkers.  This one was so loved a few people asked for my recipe.  So, I decided to give it to you guys. 

I made the frosting green for St. Patrick's Day.  My frosting skills still need a bit of work.  This cupcake is special because honestly it is the best damn fat free cupcake I've made to date.  It will be taken for the Easter party for the community.  These are also better for you because they have vegetables baked right in.  So, give them to the picky eater in your house and they'll never know.

Puree Recipe
1 zucchini, peeled (it is VERY important that you peel the zucchini.  You want your puree white-ish, not green)
4 medium carrots

1) Steam vegetables until soft
2) Drain and puree in a food processor

Vanilla Cupcake
118 calories
0.2 grams of fat
25.6 grams of carbs
13.1 grams of sugar

Ingredients
1 cup vegetable puree (recipe above)
1 cup sugar (you can possibly reduce the sugar.  These cupcakes are very sweet)
2 cups All Purpose Flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
3/4 cup + 3 T egg substitute (equal to 4 eggs)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Mix all ingredients together
3. Spoon mixture into a greased muffin pan (it makes between 16 and 18 cupcakes so you'll need to pans)
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes
5. Cool for 5 minutes then cool cupcakes on a rack.
6. Store in the refrigerator

Meringue Frosting (a.k.a 7 Minute Frosting)
39 calories
0 grams fat
9.4 grams of carbs
9.4 grams of sugar

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup water
5 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1. Put sugar and water in a medium saucepan.  Clip on your candy thermometer
2. Over medium heat bring mixture to a boil and let it get to 245 degrees (DO NOT STIR DURING THE HEATING!)
3. While the sugar is boiling whip egg whites until they form soft peaks
4. Turn your mixer to low and slowly pour in the sugar syrup
5. Turn your mixer back up and whip egg whites and sugar mixture on high for about 7 minutes, until the bowl of your mixer cools
6. Stir in vanilla (this is also the time where you'd mix in your food coloring)

I really need to play around with the meringue frosting and see how it holds up to flavorings.  I think that this frosting will be a good host for a variety of different flavors.  

Most people have a definite opinion about hiding vegetables in kids' food.  I think that it's perfectly fine.  How do you feel about it?