dessert – Page 2 – Fervent Foodie

Mini Pumpkin Muffcakes

November 14, 2010 3 Comments

Oh so simple, and oh so delicious.

In the past week or so, I realized that my year-to-date pumpkin intake is severely below goal this year. It dawned on me that I have only enjoyed ONE Starbucks pumpkin latte this year and I’ve only made pumpkin cookies ONCE. Sad! The very next day, I received an email newsletter from Hungry Girl that was ALL ABOUT PUMPKIN. Fate? I’m thinking yes.

Do any of you get the Hungry Girl email newsletter? I am a big big fan. She always has simple healthy recipe ideas and offers up tips on healthier options to make at chain restaurants. She’s also coming out with a show in January, which I’m pretty pumped about.

One of the pumpkin recipes in the newsletter that caught my eye was this recipe for Caramel Pudding Pumpkin Cupcakes. I truly am a baker at heart. Yes, I love to cook, but if I had to choose I’d pick baking any day. One of the reasons I rarely bake is that I possess little to no will power against baked goods. I’m the girl who has to try a “little bite” of each baked good at family get togethers… only to end up eating the sugar equivalent of 7 king size snickers bars… For those of you who were Sex and the City watchers, I could totally relate to the episode where Miranda ate chocolate cake from the trash can. Like I said. Little to no willpower. So rather than suscept myself to sugar induced comas, I avoid baking.

Unless of course I have plenty of people to pawn my wares off on… And when all else fails, I scale it down. I mean way down. I’ve been known to make a solitary no-bake cookie. Talk about proactive measures!

When I got to baking these pumpkin cupcakes, I decided to cut the recipe down to 3 cupcakes. Come on. You have to give yourself a little wiggle room Winking smile

I assembled the ingredients for 3 cupcakes in a large bowl (making a few minor tweaks from HG’s recipe):

1/2 cup Better Crocker moist yellow cake mix
1/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 egg white
1.5 tsp Smuckers sugar free breakfast syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 packet Truvia
dash of salt

I whisked everything together with a fork for a good two minutes:

Then divided evenly into 3 muffin tins, which I popped into a 350 degree oven for 12 minutes…. and VOILA!

Little bits of joy:

I’m so proud Smile

While the cupcakes cooled, I got to work on the caramel icing. For three cupcakes, I only needed 1 caramel candy (the little cube caramels you can find individually wrapped in the bulk candy section of the grocery store) and 1 tsp Almond Breeze Vanilla Unsweetened Almond Milk. I put both of the icing ingredients into a bowl and popped into the microwave on 50% heat for 1 minute, then stirred, and repeated for another minute.

Then I just drizzled the caramel goodness over top of the three cupcakes:

I had one of these little guys with my evening cup of Earl Grey tea. It reminded me of the pumpkin muffies you can get at Panera (you know, the ones that are dusted with powdered sugar?). These cupcakes really are a cross between a muffie and a cupcake…. A muffcake, if you will Winking smile

Not only were they super easy and scrumptious, but they made my kitchen smell absolutely heavenly.

Stats on 1 Mini Pumpkin Muffcake (as prepared by Fervent Foodie): 106 calories, 23g carbs, 1g fat, 2g protein, 1g fiber

Mini Pumpkin Muffcakes Ingredients List (makes 3)

1/2 cup Better Crocker moist yellow cake mix
1/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 egg white
1.5 tsp Smuckers sugar free breakfast syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 packet Truvia
dash of salt
1 caramel candy
1 tsp Almond Breeze Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk

Restaurants, Travel

10-Mile-Saturday

July 18, 2010 5 Comments

Saturday morning I woke up around 7am to get my run in. It was already 80+ degrees and 85%+ humidity. Perfect running weather, right? Even though the air was so thick feeling, I was excited to get out and explore some of Charleston on my run. I’m still on week #5 of the interval training, which means I’m doing 3 intervals of 3 minutes walking and 7 minutes running.

Here’s the route I ran:

My time per mile was a lot slower than my Charlotte run earlier in the week — but I’ll crack that up to the crazy humidity!

We were planning to have a late breakfast, and were in search of bottomless mimosas, so we headed to Toast.

Bottomless mimosas:

I took this picture several times, and somehow a bulging bicep kept appearing in the background… 😉

We split the Deluxe French Toast stuffed with apples and apple syrup:

And the all garden omelet (which I added sausage, zucchini, and pepper jack cheese to):

Both of these were delicious, and the mimosa made for a very relaxing brunch 🙂

(Unintentional foreshadowing: we are headed to the Folly Beach Pier today!)

After brunch, we set out to walk along the river banks. We walked, and walked, and wallllkkkeeeedddd…..

On our way back towards the studio, we stopped at the Buccaneer restaurant for some margaritas and snacks. The Buccaneer has a ton of authentic pirate artifacts, which was pretty neat.

I ordered the crab cake:

This was pretty good, but I don’t think my belly is sold on crab meat yet. I could only eat half of this (may have been do to the exhaustion from walking though).

Here’s the route we walked during our Saturday afternoon excursions:

That’s over 7 miles. Add that to the 3 miles for my AM interval training, and you’ve got yourself a 10-Mile-Saturday!

After a much needed 2-hour nap and showers, we headed to California Dreaming for some waterfront dining.

View from our table:

First up was the bottle of wine:

We split the chicken quesadilla appetizer:

SOOO frickin good.

For dinner, we split the blackened chicken pasta:

Pasta four nights in a row? Check. 😀

And then we split the hot brownie with ice cream for dessert:

Of course we were extremely happy with this meal:

We decided to go green on the way home, and called up a Green Taxi:

Jarrod was pretty pumped about this:

Today is our last day in Charleston! We plan to get in a little beach time then head to King street for some grub 🙂

Recipes

Hot Caprese, Jalapeno Turkey Burgers, and Dessert!

June 22, 2010 10 Comments

One of my all-time favorite things to eat is caprese salad. For those who have never had it, it usually consists of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and fresh basil. It’s so simple and amazingly delicious.

After my Jambalaya! success last night, I decided to try the recipe for Hot Caprese in the July/August 2010 issue of Clean Eating Magazine.

I used their basic ingredients, but modified it to keep it a little healthier (and also to bring it down to a single–albeit it large–serving).

1 cup grape tomatoes
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp olive oil
S&P
1 clove garlic, minced
1 light babybel cheese
fresh basil

Mix all the ingredients (except the cheese and basil) in a bowl, then pour onto a piece of foil that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Wrap into a pouch, taking care to ensure all edges are sealed so that no liquid seeps out. Poke a few holes in the packet to let steam escape, then pop into a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, until the tomatoes have started to burst and let their juices go.

Next, I carefully poured the liquid out of the packet and topped the tomatoes with a cubed light babybel cheese round. Close the packet back up and make sure to leave space between the cheese and the foil so that the melted cheese does not stick. Cook for an additional 5-10 minutes until the cheese is melty.

When the tomatoes were finished cooking, I poured them out onto my plate and topped with fresh basil that I grew in my very own back yard! 🙂

To go along side the tomatoes, I cooked up two Jalapeno turkey burgers that consisted of:

10 ounces 99% lean ground turkey
1 clove garlic
1/2 a small zucchini, grated
1/4 cup white onion, chopped
S&P, RPF, Onion powder
1/2 a jalapeno, seeds removed, chopped

Once the burgers started cooking, my nose could tell that the little jalapeno was gonna add some kick to the burger. So I decided to top the burger with some tomatoes, onion, and cool fat free sour cream atop a Pepperidge Farm 7 grain deli flat.

Sooooo tasty!

Word to the wise — use more seasonings on the tomatoes than you think you need. I’ll def bump it up next time.

Also, I definitely want to add some fresh herbs to the jalapeno turkey burger next time. Possibly cilantro or flat leaf parsley.

Stats on Dinner: 387 calories, 46g carbs, 7g fat, 47g protein, 7g fiber

Post-Dinner

After dinner, I completed Day #2 of my interval running/walking plan. I was able to complete all 5 intervals of running without any knee pain! Yay! 🙂

After exercising, I threw half of a peach onto the george foreman grill for about 6 minutes. Then I topped it with some plain greek yogurt I had sweetened with 1/2 packet of truvia and a sprinkle of cinnamon and cloves.

This was quite tasty! But let’s be honest, I was thinking about ice cream the entire time. Definitely need to give this a shot with the good stuff.

Other thoughts before bed

For those of you who have hopped on the Greek Yogurt train (gimme a whoop whoop!), and even for those of you who haven’t this FitSugar link gives a few different ideas on how to switch up your normal yogurt routine.

I’m trying out some new things for breakfast and lunch tomorrow…. this should be interesting 🙂

Oh yes! I tried the Oatmeal Luna Bar today, and thought it was pretty darn tasty!

Not my all time favorite flavor, but overall I was very pleased with my afternoon snack. It definitely tasted like an oatmeal cookie. I went to a grocery store by work tonight rather than my usual store, and they had a huge selection of Lara Bars. So I picked up a few of those to try out 🙂

QUESTION FOR ALL YOU SILENT READERS OUT THERE: Have you tried overnight oats yet? If so, did you love them as much as I do? If you haven’t tried them, what’s holding you back?

« Previous 1 2