Healthy Donuts?

This is my new favorite donut substitute.  Don't get me wrong they are not on the same level as a chocolate long john or anything but they definitly suffice the craving.  I will make them ahead the night before and eat them for the next 3 days.  I have two in the morning along with some fruit and they keep me full until lunch, and they taste just as good heated.  About 25 seconds in the microwave to be exact. 

Here is the recipe:

• 2 Tbsp Vegan Chocolate Chips
• 3 Tbsp Vegan Chocolate Chips For Top
• 1/2 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 Cup Whole Grain Oats
• 1/4 Cup Unsweetened Applesauce
• 2 Packets Splenda
• 1 Small Banana
• 3 Tbsp Unsweetened Almond Milk
• 1/4 Cup Ground Flax
• 1 Tbsp Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/2 cap full of Almond flavoring
• Sprinkles

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Add in the 2 T of vegan chocolate chips, cinnamon, oats, applesauce, splenda, cut the banana into slices, then use a pastry blender to really blend the ingredients, next add the rest of the ingredients and mix it all together.  If you have a donut pan, all the better.  I have not bought one yet, but I am in the process.  I spread mine out onto a round pan, making them circular and flat.  If you want larger donuts then I usually get about five, smaller I can get six.  Bake for 10 minutes, then flip them over and bake for another ten minutes.  Melt the remaining chocolate chips in the microwave in a small bowl then spread them onto the donuts.  Add the sprinkles right after so they will stick better.  The more and colorful the sprinkles the prettier they will look :).  Next use a cap from a water bottle and push it down into the middle of the donuts.  This will give you your donut holes.  Hope you enjoy! 

Remember the 10

This morning I met one of my best friends, Erica in Stillwater to run in the Remember the 10, 10K.  It is in rememberance of the 10 OSU members who died in a plane crash in 2011.  It is a fun run because everyone decks out in their orange.  I know what your thinking..then where is your orange?  I did have on an OSU long sleeve but at the start of the race it was really cold so I put my hoodie on.  Next year I will have to remember to bring my OSU sweatshirt as well.  We had such a good time with this run because it really got us pumped for our half marathon next weekend.  Running any race makes you excited to run, but doing a smaller run before our big one definitely got us in the mood.  It was hilly and we sprinted the last 200 meters and we felt like we were ready for the OKC memorial half marathon.

Here is a picture of us with Coach Eddie Sutton, we were almost late for our line up because we had to wait in a line to get a picture with him.  Coach Sutton coached the mens OSU basketball team for 12 years and is a celebrity in these parts.

Showing our OSU pride, pistols pointing and glad to be DONE!!:)

Sunday Study Day

I usually hear the term Sunday Funday, but not today. Today consisted of visiting my mom and studying for my test I have been pretending is not coming up this week. I also have a CPR recertification class I am taking tonight, but I just might put that out of my mind as well for the time being. I received a few pictures from the wedding shower I made cupcakes for and wanted to share them. My mom helped host this shower and she actually made the window picture frame which was one of my favorite vintage pieces there.

Vintage Style Cupcakes

This morning I finished my cupcakes I made for a bridal shower. The theme was vintage and they had it decorated to a T. It was filled with lace, chandeliers, and the chairs were a different style fabric with different colors, it made me want to have a bridal shower again :). Just kidding I like the quick stress of cupcakes over the 8 month stress of planning a wedding for sure! For the cupcakes I always use Duncan Hines, they are the best for cakes because they are moist and do not fall apart easy, so I just carry them over to cupcakes as well. Just make the cupcakes exactly how the box says by adding in the eggs, vegetable oil, and water. My trick however, is adding in 1/4 of a cup of pudding. Today I did lemon and vanilla cupcakes. So I make the pudding just as you regularly would by adding the milk and whisking. I did one bowl of vanilla pudding and one bowl of lemon pudding. Then I add in 1/4 cup of the correct pudding to their proper batch. It makes the cupcakes super moist and oh so good. I put the in 350 degree oven for fifteen minutes. I always have to make sure to do extras, I mean I do have to make sure my own cupcakes taste good before serving them right?

Here is a look at the finished product. After I made all the flowers I went back in with my new airbrush set and sprayed a shimmer on them. It gave them a much softer vintage look, exactly what I was wanting.

Bikini Body Slacking

Every year besides this one, I have waited until summer starts to tone up my body.  This year I am planning on having it bikini ready by the time summer starts.  So to keep it healthy we whipped these white chocolate pancakes up the night before, for our weekly breakfast for dinner meal.  I also had some the next morning and they still tasted delicious!

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
1 egg
1 1/2 cups almond unsweetened milk
1/2 t salt
2 packets of splenda
1/2 box of while chocolate pudding powder

1. Mix together the flour and baking powder in a bowl and set aside. 
2. In another bowl beat the egg, almond milk, salt, and splenda together, then wisk in flour until moistened, and then add the pudding powder.  
3. Turn the skillet to medium heat, spray with cooking spray. Each pancake is 1/3 cup of the batter.
4. Before you flip the outsides should be bubbly it takes about 1 1/2 minutes. They should be golden brown.

This recipe is about 85 calories per pancake. 

I had to have a healthy breakfast and dinner because I will be trying out different recipes for the cupcakes I am making for a bridal shower this weekend.  They did not specify on the flavors so I am going to make some and let my tastebuds and co-workers do the judging.  Seriously,  I can take 20 cupcakes up to work and they will be gone by the time I leave.  I mean for real we work at a gym people.  Haha can't blame anyone though I am a self proclaimed cupcake addict myself.  Here is what I have so far, I just dyed the gum paste a pink color and made them the same way as my gum paste rose post.  Then I made little cherry blossoms and put edibile pearl sprinkles in the middle.  I will be posting the finished product here in a couple of days!

Chicken Alfredo Pizza

Ever since we made our panini's, Jeremy and I have been on a Pesto sauce kick. This time we put the pesto on our pita pizzas. We usually have pita pizzas about once a week, but the pesto with the low fat Alfredo sauce really took it to the top. It made it taste more restaurant style than homemade I thought. We were both pretty impressed with how well it turned out. We started out by preheating the oven to 425 degrees. Next, we spread a thin layer of pesto onto the pita bread, then a thicker layer of low fat Alfredo sauce. Then, comes the mozzarella cheese. We topped it with chicken that we grilled on a skillet and added several dashes of garlic salt and McCormicks Italian seasoning. After applying the chicken to the pita pizzas, stick it in the oven for 9 minutes. We had this after church with a side salad and it was such an amazing light Sunday lunch. It is fast, easy, and very tasty, just the way we like it!

Chicken Panini

Last week Jeremy and I went to Panera Bread, I got my usual turkey sandwich but he got a chicken panini.  I tried his and we both decided we were going to have to make this ourselves. We gave it a shot last night and it was AMAZING! To good not to share. We didn't have a panini press so it probably tasted closer to a fancier grilled cheese but it was it was delish all the same.

Our ingredients consisted of: A loaf of sliced Italian bread from the Wal Mart bakery, Pesto sauce, chicken, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and pepper jack cheese.

I started by chopping up the chicken and sticking it onto our George Foreman.  Jeremy told me he thought it would be better if the chicken was in larger strips, so I got offended and wacked him across the head with a frying pan... Just kidding.  I may try it next time since I will probably be making this dish about 500,000 gizzilion more times. 

Next, we spread the pesto sauce on one side of each slice.

The side with the pesto goes on the inside.  Then comes the mozzarella, chicken..

Tomatoes..

Then the pepper jack cheese ( maybe that's why I like it so much, lots and lost of cheese) and the other slice of bread, again the pesto side on the inside.

Then just stick the on the grill, or panini press if you have it.

Aww

Ahhh so beautiful.  I was proud to eat my ravishing sandwich. I want another now.

Edible Cowboy Hat

I made a couple of cakes for a western themed birthday party.  The cake was a two tiered, it was a 10 inch circle for the bottom and an 8 inch circle for the middle tier.  If you make cakes then I'm sure you can relate, customers ALWAYS worry they wont have enough, you tell them how much a certain size cake will feed and I swear they think I am lying to them.  Since I knew a two tiered cake would already be plenty, I wanted to change up the top tier by using rice krispy treats for the top cowboy hat tier.

I started by using a one quart size bowl.  Make sure you spread enough crisco around so that the rice krispies will slide out easily.  Next, pour the already made rice krispy treats (jsut follow the instructions, mine was on my box.  It's just rice krispys, 1 bag of marshmellows, and butter)into the bowl and make sure it is nice and packed down.

After taking the Rice Krispys out of the bowl, take your small rolling pin and make an indention in the middle to give it a nice hat effect.

Next, cover the Rice Krispys in your choice of colored fondant, and cut around the edges with a pizza cutter.

Here I just rolled out some fondant and cut around it for the hat base.

To give it a curve I place rolled up paper towels on the inside.  Then to hold that up I used two of the same sized sprinkle cans.  You can use whatever you have laying around. You can see a few creases I had at the brim, but all you have to do is run your finger acrossed it to get those out.

To make the brim come up I used two small dowel rods.  I left it this way for about 24 hours.  It most likely does not take this long to dry but I am a "better safe than sorry" kinda gal.

After it had dried I used a cake lift to get it to my top tier then just twisted two pieces of fondant to give the hat a rope accent. and BOOM done and done!

Animal Cookie Truffles

I was trying out different recipes I could take to my grandmas house for Easter, so I combined my favorite cookie into a truffle. I have also done this with an Oreo and it is equally good. For my taste testers I made these and brought them to my coworkers and I received nothing but positive feedback! On my first attempt my plan was to make the whole batch, which is a bag of circus animal cookies and 8 ounces of cream cheese. Well if you love them as much as me that turned into half the bag (because I ate the other half) and four ounces of cream cheese:). Start by pouring the bag into your food processor, then pulse. Make sure you pulse because the cookies are very heavy at first. Once they start to crumple then you can pulse for longer. Next pour the animal crumbs;) into a bowl and add 8 ounces of cream cheese ( if you managed to not snack on the cookies) next roll them into a ping pong size ball. I try to go smaller because they are pretty rich. Next heat your almond bark, or candy melts which is what I used. If you want the chocolate a different color then be sure to add the dye before you start to melt them. Heat for 30 seconds at a time until they are completely melted. Then, coat the ball with the candy melts. Afterward I wipe my finger around the sides to make them more smooth. Only do a couple at a time before you add the sprinkles. You want to do this because the longer they have to dry the less the sprinkles will stick. Stick them in the fridge over night and indulge. Calorie counter not included!