Saturday, April 13, 2013

Healthy Strawberry Lemon Smoothies!

 Healthy Strawberry Lemon Smoothie | RecipeNation


 
 
Strawberry Lemon Smoothie
Source: Kim Denney

Ingredients:
1 handful of strawberries, stems cut off
Juice of 1/2 of a lemon
1-2 handfuls of ice (about 3/4 cup)
water (about 3/4 cup)
2 packets of Truvia (all natural sweetener that can be found by the regular white sugar at the store)
Instructions:
Here’s how I do it: I grab a handful of strawberries (as many as I can fit in my little hand). I wash them and then cut off the stems and throw them in the blender (Kim actually uses frozen strawberries). I juice half of a lemon into the blender. I add 2 packets of TruviaTruvia comes from the Stevia plant and is and calorie free. You could substitute 2 teaspoons of white sugar here but it will have more calories. Then I add water until it almost covers the strawberries. I add 1-2 handfuls of ice. Adjust water and ice to your preferences on thickness and sweetness. Blend well. I double this if making it for my husband too.

Sugar Skull Cookies! Yum

Sugar Skull Cookies

sugar skull cookies | RecipeNationA little while back I discovered royal icing and I can’t tell you how amazing it is. It pipes like a dream, it dries perfectly hard and if you make icing shapes on parchment paper they will dry in several days and last indefinitely. If you pipe different colors together wet they meld together like a stain glass window. So after my discovery of this amazing icing the first thing that popped into my head was of course the beautiful bright sugar skulls.
I don’t have a skull cookie cutter so I just used a round one and trimmed the sides away to make the cookies look like skulls. This is such a  fun cookie to make.
What you will need for decorating
  • a box of disposable piping bags
  • about 5-7 of the smallest round decorating tips you can find
  • Americolor food coloring in all your favorite colors
  • a mixer
  • 2-4 bags of royal icing mix (from a craft store)
  • a separate bowl for each color
  • a damp cloth to cover the bowls and prevent the icing from drying out.
  • several pans for drying
  • a place to allow the icing to dry for a full 24 hours.
Cut Out Cookie Recipesugar skull cookies 2 | RecipeNation
1 cup butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
3 1/2ish cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
Almond extract
Vanilla extract
Mix wet together and add dry bake at 350 for 8-12 mins depending on size.
if you really want the shapes to not spread you can freeze the cookies for 5-10 minutes before adding to the oven. freezing made little difference for me but if you do find that any dough is spreading it always helps to freeze it for about 10 mins. When I bake in the winter I just put the cut out cookies out on the rails of my deck to freeze. That’s just one of the many benefits of living in Canada.
Mix a huge batch of white royal icing following the instructions on the bag. I found for me that the icing required much less water than it called for on the bag so be careful with royal icing because you can’t come back from too much water very easily. If you do add too much you can always buy a container of meringue powder and add that and regular icing sugar to thicken it up again. If you do this though you do run the risk of getting icing that cracks and breaks very easily when it dries. Sticking with the store-bought stuff really is best for beginners because it won’t go wrong.
In several different bowls mix about a half a cup of each color. Americolor food colorings  are amazing. I found a craft store that sells them where I live. I’m sure that almost all independent hobby store will carry them. I strongly recommend them. They cost less money than the grocery store kind of food color and are infinitely better. There is no reason not to use them. Take my word for it. They can always be ordered on-line too.
Fill as many different piping bags as colors that you have and let your creative juices flow. I found that you absolutely should have all the colors ready to use at the same time. Having to rinse out and switch tips is really annoying. I suppose that a person could use couplers to avoid too much hassle but so far I haven’t had much luck with them.
I did a quick search online and found so many beautiful examples of patterns and designs and a couple of not quite so beautiful ones which were also really helpful to see what to avoid as well. Unfortunately I didn’t remember to take these photos until after the bake sale so all of the really good ones were gone but the ones that were left were okay too. I did these cookies for the design, but man, they turned out delicious. this is a cookie recipe that I will use for all the cut out cookies I do in the future.

Friday, April 12, 2013

No-Bake Energy Bites- To Die For!

No Bake Energy Bites | RecipeNation No Bake Energy Bites 
Ingredients:

For about 20 bites
  • 1/2 cup mini chocolate chipsNo Bake Energy Bites | RecipeNation
  • 1 cup oatmeal
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter (or other nut butter)
  • 1/3 cup honey
  • 1 cup coconut flakes
  • 1/2 cup ground flaxseed
  • 1 tsp vanilla
Directions:
Cool recipe from Smashed Peas and Carrots
As simple as it gets -
Mix all the ingredients together.
Refrigerate it for a while in order to make the mix firmer and easier to work with.
Make small balls, bite size, from the mix. Refrigerate.
Optional – Roll the balls in coconut, make it less sticky and adds a little twist too it.
 
PS-  You can substitute almost anything for any of the ingredients to work around food allergies, special diets, etc.  Soybutter, almond butter, cashew butter, sun butter, etc all works in place of peanut butter.  You can use creamed or liquid honey, or agave nectar or even maltitol syrup in place of the honey.  If you do not like or cannot eat coconut try some type of crushed cereal, wheat germ, whole wheat flour, granola, cocoa powder...the possibilities are really endless.  If you cannot find ground flaxseed you can buy it whole and grind it yourself in a coffee grinder or magic bullet or you can substitute any other dry ingredient in it's place.  Yes, the mini chocolate chips can be regular sized or carob or you can use raisins, cranberries, goji berries, or crushed nuts (almonds, cashews, walnuts, whatev) of some kind.  

Miranda's Snickers Cupcakes! Delicious

Miranda's Snickers Cupcakes | RecipeNation Chocolate Dessert


Snickers Cupcakes | RecipeNation Desserts! 


Miranda’s Snickers Cupcakes are delicious devil’s food cupcakes made with boxed cake mix, filled with caramel and frosted with whipped peanut butter buttercream. They have all: rich, moist chocolate cupcakes, yummy caramel filling like the snickers bars, and buttercream on top, drizzled with some more Dulce de Leche and small pieces of chopped Snickers candy bars for decoration.






Apple Cupcakes!


Apple Cupcake | RecipeNation! Apple Cupcake

Red food coloring
1/4 c. vanilla frosting
1 mini plain doughnut
1 unfrosted vanilla cupcake
1/4 c. red decorating sugar
1 chocolate caramel, Tootsie Roll
1 spearmint leaf

    Tint the vanilla frosting red with the food coloring. Cut the doughnut in half crosswise to acquire 2 circles (the similar way you'd cut a bagel into two halves). Spread some of the red frosting on summit of the cupcake. Place one doughnut half upon summit of the cupcake, rounded side up and cover with the remaining frosting to make a rounded summit with an indent in the centre. Make the frosting as mild as possible.
    Place the sugar in a little shallow bowl. Gently roll the top of the cupcake in the red sugar to jacket evenly. Smooth the sides by gently pressing with fingertips.
    Cut the Tootsie Roll in half lengthwise and gently roll one stop between your fingers to make it pointed. Curve slightly to make the stem. Cut the spearmint leaf in half crosswise to acquire 2 leaves.
    Insert the Tootsie Roll stem, pointed end into cupcake, in the indentation as the stem. Place a leaf near the stem.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Skinny Strawberry Cheesecake Smoothie! It is only 1 WeightWatchers point!


Skinny Strawberry Cheesecake Smoothie | It's totally decadent, just like it's name implies. But it comes in at just 1 WW point! #skinny #smoothie #recipe

How are your Resolutions holding up?

I didnt really make any. I feel like Im constantly goal-making, so. why bother making a immense thing of it once a year? Every Monday is New Years over here!

We do make family goals though three. We attempt to make one goal financial, one spiritual, and one thats fun (like go on a family vacation). 2012 was a big, fat Swank family FAIL on all three counts. So our goals this year were easy to make were just trying again for all the similar goals in 2013 :) Wish us luck apparently these arent easy feats for us!

Weight loss is, of course a DAILY struggle for me. I had really wanted to lose about 15 lbs before Blog Conference season. And instead, I gained 5! So here I am, with about 20 lbs to lose, and less than 6 weeks till my first Conference. Not ideal


Skinny Strawberry Cheesecake Smoothie

Ingredients
  • 1 1/4 cups frozen strawberries
  • 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
  • 1 tbsp sugar free fat free instant cheesecake pudding mix
  • 1 tsp truvia (or other no calorie sweetener)
Instructions
  1. Place all ingredients into a blender. Pulse until smooth and serve. Makes 1 serving.
 Wasn't that easy and delicious. Hope you enjoy!

Balloon Bunch Sprinkle Cupcakes

Inspired by a tiny blurb I saw in a Parenting Magazine article on creative cupcake toppers, I made balloon bunch cupcakes out of tiny dum dum lollipops using my favorite buttercream icing and rainbow nonpareils.

Balloon Bunch Sprinkle Cupcakes 

Balloon Bunch Sprinkle Cupcakes
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Materials: Cooled cupcakes, icing (store bought or homemade – see recipe below), rainbow nonpareils (round sprinkles) – any color would be fun!, dum dum lollipops, ribbon
I usually love a great homemade cupcake but on this particular day I saved myself a bit of time by using a boxed mix (a delicious lemon raspberry or homemade red velvet would have been very fun for this particular design!). To make things a little interesting, I split my cupcake batter into two different portions, half with a few drops of red food coloring and half as the original vanilla mix.
Plop of vanilla, plop of pink, plop of vanilla plus a toothpick to swirl it up! I recommend filling cupcake liners to just over half way so that you have a nice flat icing surface to work with.
While these guys are in the oven, it’s on to the frosting. I didn’t skimp here, this is my favorite homemade buttercream and it’s buttery delicious! Sweet enough to bring out a great flavor but a version that won’t immediately melt in the sun on you, which is important for buttercream icing + outdoor parties. Though I’m not sure I’d be daring enough to use it on a cake in direct sunlight…

Vanilla Bean Buttercream
a
2 cups unsalted butter (room temperature, cut into small pieces), 3 1/2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar, pinch of salt, 1 vanilla bean, scraped, 1 t pure vanilla extract, 1/4 cup milk
a
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until creamy. Slowly add confectioners’ sugar; beat to combine, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary. Add vanilla bean seeds and vanilla extract, and beat to combine. Slowly add milk and continue beating on medium-low speed until smooth and creamy, about 5 minutes. 
 
Pastry bags are wonderful, but I tend to use a gallon zip lock bag 99% of the time because of easy clean up (just toss that bag out when you’re through!). I simply cut a 1/3 of an inch off the end of the bag and fill it up with buttercream using a spatula.
 
These cupcakes involve two layers of icing, the bottom layer is a disk of buttercream and the top layer will be smooshed into sprinkles so that it is completely covered. To achieve that effect, pipe a single layer onto each cupcake by gently squeezing the ziplock bag to create an even spiral of icing, working from the outside in. You might try practicing on a paper plate if you’re limited on cupcakes.
Moving one circular ring from the outside in, I added a second smaller icing disk for that second layer.hen upside down it goes into the sprinkle bath. You really want to smooth that top layer flat so don’t be afraid to apply a bit of pressure. Of course you could also skip the idea of two layers and just smoosh it all the way around the icing for a fun look!
 
The last step is to add three unwrapped dum dums lollipops in a bunch, tying a ribbon around one before hand.
 
and Viola!
                                       




Santa's Helper Brownies!

 Santa Hat Brownies



Arent these Santa Hat Brownies just so cute?  Thanks to Ericas Sweet Tooth for the inspiration.  I was looking for a fun and easy holiday treat and I ran across a recipe on her website. Theyre so good and easy to create, especially since I bought Trader Joes Ready to Bake brownie mix (just pour the ready-made brownie batter in an 8X8 pan and bake for 22-25 minutes). You can use ready-made brownie bites or bake a pan of your favorite brownies. I whipped up some vanilla-mascarpone buttercream to simulate the white trim upon the hats.  Voila!  A festive dessert to profit everyone into the spirit of the holidays.  It really is beginning to see a lot like Christmas around here!

Yields 12-16 brownies

Ingredients:
1 pan of your favorite brownies, cooled and cut into desired size and shape (I used a round cutter)
12-16 small strawberries, cleaned and hulled
vanilla-mascarpone buttercream (recipe below)
Mascarpone Buttercream

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
8 ounces mascarpone cheese, room temperature
2-1/2 to 3 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Method:
Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, beat butter and mascarpone cheese until light and creamy, about 2 minutes.  Add vanilla extract and salt.  Add 2-1/2 cups of sugar, half a cup at a time and continue beating until smooth.  Add more sugar, if needed to reach desired consistency and sweetness.
To assemble, pipe a ring of vanilla buttercream on top of each brownie.  Cut off the base of a strawberry so it is flat and place it upside down on each brownie, pushing slightly to secure in place.  Top the tip of the strawberry with a dot of buttercream to finish his Santa hat.