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:

Pumpkin Iced Mocha

Ever find a recipe that you want to perfect?  You HAVE to make it taste amazing?  This is the recipe that has been doing it for me.  I've tried a different way every day for about a week.  Tweeked everything atleast once.  But, I finally did it.  I finally got it just right.  

Just in time for pumpkin season!  Pumpkin is my favorite fall flavor.  I love it so much I'll use it until next March or April. Pumpkin coffee is back in both Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks.  This year McDonald's has brought out a pumpkin coffee.  I hate to admit it but I really want to try it.  I love cheap coffee. Dunkin Donuts makes the best Pumpkin Mochas and Pumpkin White Chocolate coffees.  The temperatures are still in the low-to-mid-80's here so, I've been getting mine iced.  Still 100% as yummy without the heat. 
If you don't like coffee then just leave out the coffee.  If you want to make this a hot drink just use freshly brewed coffee and/or heat up the milk. 

Pumpkin Iced Coffee
1 servings
Calories:  162
Fat:  1.7 g
Carbs: 34.6 g
Sugar: 1.6 g
Protein:  6.1g
Ingredients
1 cup Light Chocolate non-dairy milk (I used Silk)
1 cup cold coffee
3 T pumpkin puree
3 T maple syrup
1.5 t cinnamon
Directions

1. Whisk all ingredients together, until pumpkin has mixed in with the liquid
2. Pour in a large cup.

Not into pumpkin?  Make yourself a peanut butter cup iced coffee by switching out the pumpkin puree for 2-3 T PB2.  I would suggest using a blender to mix this one because the PB2 has a tendancy to clump. 

Happy National Chocolate Brownie Day!

You read right.  National Chocolate Brownie Day!  I love brownies.  I don't eat (or make) them as much as I used to because of my gallbladder.

My kids love brownies.  This was Mo's "birthday cake" from her party last year.

Don't they look delicious?  Brownies that I filled with raspberry and strawberry buttercream and topped with chocolate buttercream.  (Thank you Hershey's for the amazing recipe, found HERE) But the recipe I found for fat free brownies before fell short.  They tasted more like my mom's fluffy gingerbread cake than brownies.  Even though I like that cake, they fell short of what I was looking for.

When I found out about National Brownie Day I knew that I had a reason to try a new recipe. 

Vegan Double Chocolate Brownies from Kurry Leaves

Vegan Double Chocolate Brownies
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1.  Preheat oven to 360 degrees (180 degrees celcius)
2.  Mix all ingredients together
3.  Place batter in a parchement lined, greased 8x8 or 9x9 pan.  (You can use a spatula to smooth it down.  I had a 3 1/2 year old helping me so that's why mine aren't)
4.  Bake for 18-23 minutes  
5.  Cool and cut into 9 pieces

Store in the refrigerator.  They will keep alot longer if you do. 

With a little work this stuff....

Became this....

Not the prettiest batch of brownies but they are darn good!  Super fudgey.  Everybody in the house loved them.

These weigh in at 100 calories and 0.6 grams of fat.  And of course the pumpkin adds beneficial vitamins and nutrients.

 Now I'm going to go study for finals and eat a brownie.  Happy Brownie Day!!  Are you making a batch today to celebrate??  If so, share your recipe!

Sunday Post

(Don't you love my post title?  I couldn't think of anything witty, smart or even post related for the title.  So this is what my frazzled, 6 AM, essay writing brain came up with)

Is there any meal that you could eat 3x a day every day?

For me that meal is breakfast.  (The picture gave it away didn't it?)  I love it.  I love all breakfast foods (except grits...YUCK!) Okay, I can't lie, I love 95.7% of all breakfast foods.  I know that there are probably other ones that are gross that I can't think of at the moment.  I could honestly eat  breakfast foods 5 day a week, 3 meals a day.  I'm quirky though.  I don't like a big breakfast in the morning. All I want at breakfast time is something simple like oatmeal, or cereal and fruit.

The girls and I eat BFD (Breakfast For Dinner) at least a few times a month.  There's actually part of me that is considering doing a Christmas BFD.  But the family's a bit traditional when it comes to holiday dinners so that idea is going to be saved for a different day. 

I actually broke out the waffle iron last nite.  I VERY VERY rarely use it.  It cost me $7 at Target.  I put in a good word with Kay that if she wants waffles more often a new waffle iron would be a good thing for me to find under the Christmas tree.   

I made pumpkin waffles (which were a HUGE hit), blueberry waffles and chocolate chip waffles.  Because of my scatterbrainedness I completely forgot to get pictures.  Heck, if I wasn't so passionate about breakfast this post possibly wouldn't have happened (and I'm avoiding writing a paper.) 

Here's the pumpkin waffle recipe:Organic Gardening
And the blueberry: 8th Continent Blueberry Waffle Recipe  
[Note:  I actually used this recipe for both the blueberry and the chocolate chip ones.  Before I added the blueberries I split the batter in half and added blueberries in one and chocolate chips in the other.] 

Try them and tell me what you think!  Tomorrow I'll bring you a photo collage on what I eat at Mongolian Barbecue restaurants.  

Fat Free Thanksgiving Menu

The countdown to Thanksgiving begins!  Since I know people are starting to figure out Thanksgiving dinner I'm going to give you my Thanksgiving menu.  I still need to run the calories on these since one of my goals is for Thanksgiving dinner to be under 500 calories.  I'm not 100% certain if I'll make it but I think I might be close. 

Main Dish (Meat)  
 Turkey Roulade stuffed with homemade stuffing
(Courtesy of Publix FamilyStyle Magazine)

Ingredients

Approx 2 cups stuffing
2 (1.5 lb) boneless turkey breasts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees
2. Butterfly turkey breast (follow the instructions from the top picture above)
3. Remove the plastic wrap and spread half the stuffing on each of the turkey breasts.  Make sure to leave space on either side of the breast.
4. Roll it up starting with the long end.  Make sure the skin is on top when you end
5. Tie with kitchen twine every 2 inches
6. Brush with melted butter, or olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
7. Place on a shallow baking pan and cook for 45 - 55 minutes until the internal temperature is 165 degrees (use a meat thermometer for this)
8. Take it out of the oven and cover loosely with tin foil and let it rest for 15 minutes.
9. Remove twine before serving.

Main Dish (Vegetarian)

 

 Butternut Squash with Wilted Spinach and Blue Cheese

{My alteration:  I'm going to add sweet potatoes and acorn squash to it and use fat free feta instead of blue cheese}

Sides 

Mashed Potatoes

{Boil a few pounds of potatoes until soft, drain then return to pan.  Use a potato masher to mash, add fat free sour cream and skim milk to the potatoes and continue mashing until smooth and creamy} 

               

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

{Follow the same directions as the previous recipe except substitute sweet potatoes for the white potatoes}

Gravy

Ingredients

4 cups fat free vegetable broth

1/4 cup cornstarch

Directions

1. Bring 3 1/2 cups of broth to a boil in a medium saucepan
2. In a seperate bowl mix together remaining 1/2 cup of broth and cornstarch
3. Add cornstarch mixture to saucepan and stir continuously until it comes back to a boil.
4. Reduce to simmer and cook for 10 minutes.

Potato Rolls  

I'm using this recipe for the bread for my stuffing also.  

I'm going to substitute cream cheese for the butter 

 Green Beans with Mushrooms and Onions

I'm not a fan of green bean casserole so, this is a perfect substitute for my table

            
Stuffing
This is my mom's recipe.  I've used it the past few years.  I love this stuffing.  I normally double (or triple) it because Kay could eat a whole pan of it by herself.  I've altered it slightly to be vegetarian.  You can substitute the veggie sausage for regular, the egg substitute for 2 eggs, and the vegetable broth for chicken or turkey broth.  I'm also using the same bread I'm making the rolls with for it.

Ingredients

Approx. 18 slices of bread, cubed
1 cup of onions, diced

2 cups of celery, sliced small

1/2 lb of (veggie) sausage [optional]

1 T poultry seasoning

1 T ground sage

1/2 cup egg substitute

1 cup veggie broth 

Directions

1. Sautee onions and celery until soft (if you're using regular non-vegetarian sausage you want to cook it too at this point)
2. Place all ingredients in a big bowl and mix together (use your hands, it works the best.  Don't be afraid to get messy!)
3. Place in a baking pan and cover with tin foil. 
4. Put into a 325 degree oven for 30 minutes
5. Uncover and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown.

Brussel Sprouts
Here's a great link on prepping brussel sprouts: VeganYumYum

Ingredients

Brussel Sprouts (however many you want to cook is up to you)
Garlic (to taste)
Pan Spray

Directions

1. Trim and cut your sprouts
2. Heat oven to 400 degrees
3. Lay out a sheet of tin foil large enough to hold all the sprouts and spray with pan spray
4. In a separate bowl toss the brussel sprouts with garlic
5. Place sprouts in the middle of the foil and spray with more pan spray
6. Fold tin foil around sprouts and fold closed so no steam can escape
7. Place in oven and bake for 35-50 minutes until soft.

Dessert 

Pumpkin Cheesecake
{Alterations:  I'm not putting a crust on it.  I'm using fat free cream cheese and sour cream instead of full fat and I'm going to use egg substitute instead of actual eggs.}