Diet Cravings

So I'm heading down to Dallas in a week or so for a work conference.  Of course I decided to use that as an excuse to jump start my New Year's resolutions and try and lose weight.  Now there's not a lot of weight you can lose in two weeks, but at least I can fit into my jeans now!  All I've essentially done is reduce my calories and try to cut out sweets and snacks.  Anyway, as is the case with most diets, I get cravings.

My most recent craving this morning was for scones. 

I used to eat scones all the time in college.  My thought process was if you don't buy it you won't eat it.  So my apartment was devoid of all calorie laden yumminess like chocolate or candy.  This didn't stop me from craving calorie laden yumminess though.  So my solution was to make scones.

Now these weren't any amazing scones or anything.  They were essentially just flour, sugar, baking powder, and some butter.  They were perfect because I had everything at my apartment and didn't have to make a quick run to the grocery store at 1am while studying for a test.  I could just whip up a batch and chow down into the night until I fell into a sleep deprived coma (always praying that I'd hear my alarm and wake up in time for the test (I also had my parents call me on those mornings to make sure I was awake)).  Pretty soon I got even lazier and just started making the strawberry shortcake recipe using bisquik.  So I guess I wasn't eating scones at all but instead shortcakes minus the strawberries!

Anyway, they were simple to put together, quick to bake, decently low in calories, and delicious warm out of the oven or cold out of the fridge for snack the next few days.  Ah how I miss that carby, sugary, buttery goodness.  So here's my craving recipe for you so you can make it if you're trying to be healthy too!  It's ok I won't tell ;)

Here is what you need:  Milk, bisquick (I use the heart smart), butter, and sugar.

Spoon the bisquick into the measuring cup.  If you've ever baked with Bisquick you'll know that it clumps.  So it's easiest to get the right amount by spooning it.

Add the sugar to the Bisquick.  Mix them together before adding anything else.

Next add the milk.

Mix it together till it forms clumps.

Now add the melted butter and mix it together till all incorporated.

Form the dough into biscuits.  You can make 6 for 250 calories each or you can make 8 for about 190 calories each.  

Recipe:

2 1/3 cups Bisquick® mix

1/2 cup skim milk

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons melted butter

Nummy nummy!  They're even better if you refrigerate them.  Happy snacking!

Sweet Potato Casserole

I know this is a bit late for the holidays, but we were busy on New Year's Day and didn't get to make it so we made it a few weeks later for our celebratory special New Year's dinner.  And hey Easter's almost here so you should make it then.  It's really good.  Well my family likes loves it.  If they had to choose their last meal I'm 83% positive that at least two of them would choose this dish and all four of them would have it in their top five.  I would choose a flaky pastry stuffed with cream.  But that's me.
But seriously this is a yummy recipe.  Last Thanksgiving (not the most recent Thanksgiving but Thanksgiving 2011) my cousin's high school band was playing in a Thanksgiving Day parade close to us so they came over for Thanksgiving.  Well my cousin could not stop raving about this dish.  He's the most rambunctious little kid and I swear he told us at least four times during dinner that the sweet potato casserole was so good were we sure it wasn't dessert?  And since it wasn't dessert could he have some more?  Lol at least something tasted like dessert because I forgot the sugar in the pumpkin pie . . . but ANYWAY, let's not dwell on my failures in entertaining and instead focus on this recipe so you can make it and your cousins can rave about it too :)

Ingredients needed:

Potato Mixture:

4 medium sweet potatoes (about 2.5lbs)
1/2 cup sugar
1.5tsp vanilla
1 egg white
5oz fat-free evaporated milk

Topping:

1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup butter

Start with the potatoes, sugar, vanilla, evaporated milk, and the egg.

Cook the sweet potatoes.  You can do this in the oven or you can prick them with a fork and microwave them for seven minutes, then flip them over and microwave them for another seven minutes.

 Next peel the potatoes.  If I were you I'd wait until the potatoes were cool before you peeled them.  But if you were me you'd have to peel them immediately because you were behind so you can either stick them in the freezer for 15 minutes or you can put clean dishwashing gloves on and peel them with the gloves.

Peeled potatoes!

Now mash the potatoes up.  You can do this with a fork but I find it goes faster to mash them with a pastry cutter.

Did you know I also use a pastry cutter to mash bananas for pancakes and banana bread?  Works really well.

Now add half a cup of sugar.

Open the can of fat-free evaporated milk.

Realize after you poured a little bit in the bowl that you only need 5oz and you have a 12oz can.  Freak out because you almost ruined everyone's favorite dish, then measure out the correct amount.

Pouring, pouring, pouring.

Add the vanilla.  And if you're like me you'll add more vanilla than the recipe calls for . . .

Separate the egg yolk from the white.

Add the egg white.

 Mix it all together.

Drop it into a 9x13 pan sprayed with cooking spray.  Hey look those are my hands!  As in two of them!  That's because Sarah was home and she was taking pictures for me :)

Keep plopping.

Then spread the mixture out evenly.

Now for the topping.

Add the brown sugar.

Add the flour.

Now the chopped pecans.  You can chop them up more but we just dumped them in.  The bag said chopped pecans so we believed them.

Mix it all together.

All mixed.

Start dicing the butter.

Now Sarah's dicing the butter and I'm taking pictures.  She dices very slowly.

Or I should say precisely.  You should see how long she takes to chop vegetables!

Add the butter.

Start mixing.

You can use a pastry cutter but hands work well too.

Now sprinkle it on top of the sweet potato mixture.

Spread it out so that everything is covered.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes until the top is caramelized.
Now go make it!  And see if my cousin was correct and if your family will love it as much as mine does!

Christmas Parties/Craziness

Wednesday last week was the culmination of days of baking and weeks of planning in a massive amount of Christmas parties!  I baked close to ten dozen cookies (and decorated them all) and missed Small Fry's Christmas concert (no worries I went last year and the parents went this year) so I could decorated a gingerbread house for my mom's office dessert competition!

Did I mention they were all on the same day?

Did I also mention that I'm a perfectionist and no one else can touch my cookies?!

Yes well.

Here are all the gingerbread men.  Dad needed six sets of six for his office cookie exchange and I needed some for my office Christmas party.

At this stage I had made the dough, cut out the cookies, made the frosting, and outlined the cookies.  I also added a cute little scarf.  Then I just had to fill in the cookies with their respective frostings.  Have I mentioned how much I appreciate having an outlined cookie to decorate?  It's a pain in the buttocks but I can fill that cookie full of tons of icing and it doesn't cascade off the cookie like a waterfall!  So not only do you get a thicker layer of frosting, you also get a pretty cookie ;)

Here's the beginning of the gingerbread house.  I've never made a gingerbread house before so let's just say I used A LOT of frosting to "decorate" (cover my mistakes).  Here I've cut out the walls and the steeple and the front is cooling and waiting to be cut out.  I cut the shapes after the cookie had baked because that meant straighter and flatter edges.

Here are the sugar cookies!  Not outlined our decorated.  I'm slacking I'll admit it.

Alright, here the sugar cookies, or should I say santa cookies, are halfway decorated.  Squeeze bottles are SOOOO much less messy than using a spoon for frosting btw.  And they're super cheap at craft stores.

Oh and don't you just love my nativity?!  It's my favorite because the emotion Mary is showing is so realistic to new moms :)  It makes me realize that even though the Holy Family was pretty much the holiest family ever they were still human and the love of a mother for her new baby and the love of a father for his wife and new baby is universal.

And now . . . THE BIG REVEAL!

Days upon DAYS of frosting coolies till my hands cramped have finally paid off!

Here are the finished products :)

The santa cookies!

Aren't they just adorable?!  Is santa supposed to be adorable?
(I used the same hard frosting I used to outline the cookie to make the texture in the hat.  Just start squeezing and plopping frosting all over to make it look 3-D).

Now the gingerbread men!

I used a powdered sugar and water icing for the brown body because that makes the cookie the softest and then used the harder meringue frosting for the red and green scarves.  They were delicious!


And the piece de resistance!
My gingerbread spanish church! (mom's office theme was a Southwestern Christmas)

I totally blew the competition away to win best themed cake! (there was cake inside holding up the walls . . . don't tell).

I also don't think many people entered/took it too seriously . . . but it was a competition and I had and idea and by golly I was gonna try and make the best possible entry!

The roof is my favorite part :)

So Merry Christmas Eve everyone!  I'm off to go to the gym so I can fit in my Christmas dress for mass tonight ;)