Lemon Velvet Cake

I've made this cake a lot lately....turns out lots of people really like lemon, so it keeps getting requested! I think I have perfected the recipe and as such it's time to record recipe for future bakes! 

Cake recipe adapted from Rock Recipes, with addition of lemon syrup soak, lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream. A fluffy yet moist cake bursting with lemony lemonness. You will need 4-6 lemons for all the components, depending on how big and/or juicy your lemons are.

Lemon Cake

·         1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

·         1 1/2 cups cake flour

·         1/2 tsp baking soda

·         1 1/2 tsp baking powder

·         1 tsp sea salt

·         1 1/2 cups sugar

·         2/3 cup vegetable oil

·         1/3 cup vegetable shortening (room temp)

·         1 tsp good quality vanilla extract

·         4 large eggs

·         1 1/2 cups buttermilk OR almond milk if you want to make it dairy-free

·         2 Tbsp lemon juice

·         zest of one large lemon

A few hours before (or the day before), put sugar in a bowl, zest lemon and rub zest into sugar. Cover.

Grease and flour 3 nine inch round cake pans.

In a large bowl, sift together both flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

In another bowl or measuring cup, measure out the milk and mix in lemon juice. Let sit for 15-30 minutes.

In the bowl of an electric mixer beat together the vegetable oil, shortening, sugar, and vanilla. Beat well at high speed with whisk attachment until light and fluffy.

Beat the eggs in one at a time.

Fold in the lemon zest.

Fold in the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk: Add dry ingredients in three divisions and liquid ingredients in 2 divisions. It is very important to begin and end the additions with the dry ingredients. Do not over mix the batter. As soon as it has no lumps in the batter, pour into the three prepared 9 inch cake pans.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 22 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. While cakes are baking, prepare lemon syrup:

Lemon Syrup

·         ½ cup lemon juice

·         2 Tbsp lemon zest

·         ½ cup sugar

·         1 tsp vanilla

Bring to a boil in small pot. Cool slightly.

When cakes are done, cool for 5 minutes then use toothpick to poke holes. Pour half of the warm syrup over warm cakes while still in pans. Cool for additional 20 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks and pour remaining syrup over other side of cakes. Cool completely.

Paleo Lemon Curd

from What the Fork

·         4 large eggs, room temperature

·         6 Tbsp coconut oil

·         2 Tbsp butter (or earth balance for DF version)

·         zest of 2 lemons

·         1/4 C honey

·         2 Tbsp raw sugar

·         1/4 tsp fine sea salt

·         1/2 C lemon juice, freshly squeezed ( 2-3 lemons)

Add all ingredients to a pot. Whisk together until all ingredients are combined, while gently heating (on 5 or so). By the time it starts to boil, it should be nice and thick, this takes about 8-10 minutes. Strain through fine mesh sieve and cool in fridge with plastic wrap on surface to avoid skin.

Lemon-Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

·         3/4 cup salted butter OR earth balance for DF version, cool but soft (out of fridge for 30 min or so)

·         ¼ cup shortening

·         1 tsp vanilla

·         2 Tbsp whipping cream OR coconut cream

·         4-6 cups icing sugar

·         Pinch salt

Beat all ingredients together until light and fluffy. Fold in ¼ of the lemon curd.

Assembly

If cake layers are not flat, trim them. On bottom cake, spread 1/3 of the remaining lemon curd. Dollop and spread some buttercream overtop. If you have done DF version, skip the buttercream as it will deflate with curd and get soupy, and then cause you no end of troubles.  Repeat with next layer and top with last cake layer. Cover with a crumb coat of buttercream and chill for at least an hour. Store buttercream in fridge but take out 20 min before next step.  Coat cake with a good layer of buttercream and decorate. Chill to set.

You can also make this as cupcakes, in fact the DF version is better as such, since you won't have to worry about the structural integrity of high-moisture-content buttercream (or lack thereof). Just cut the baking time to about 17 minutes (test with toothpick after 15). For decorating, fill a piping bag with the lemon curd, using a large tip. Now here's where you have to get intimate with your cupcake. Shove the tip into the centre of the cupcake, going about as deep as you figure the mid-point is, and force a squeeze of lemon curd in. The cupcake will resist a bit, but don't squeeze TOO hard, as you will suddenly feel it give and the cupcake will poof a bit. Pull out carefully and go on to the next.

I can't believe I said all that with a straight face. Ice with butter cream and decorate.

Chocolate Quinoa Cake

Chocolicious Quinoa Cake {gluten-free}
Adapted from Oh She Glows

 This recipe has so many great features – chock full of quinoa, gluten free, real whole ingredients – and seems pretty darn easy at first glance. Cook quinoa. Blend quinoa with some other stuff. Add to some sifted dry ingredients and mix. Bake. Easy peasy right? Well it is easy, but this recipe is one finicky lady. The tendency is to become a dense fudgey brownie-like brick. Not bad, but not really the intention; you should get a fluffy yet moist deeply chocolaty not-too-sweet cake. Here’s how!

 Ingredients
2 cups COOKED quinoa*
1/3 cup almond milk or hemp milk or whatever milk you like
4 large eggs (cage-free of course, otherwise you can taste the misery)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup melted butter (or vegan margarine, if you want it vegan/ dairy-free)
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1 cup organic raw cane sugar
1 cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 tsp baking powder (or 2 tsp if your powder is more than 2 months old)
1/2 teaspoon salt

 Instructions 
 1.Preheat the oven to 350°F and then line two 8” round cake pans or one large (14”) round springform pan with parchment paper.
 2.In a food processor or blender, combine the eggs, milk, melted butter and oil, and vanilla extract then blend for ten seconds to combine.
 3.Add the 2C cooked and cooled quinoa then blend the heck out of it until completely smooth, about three minutes (or three periods of one minute to let blender engine cool down in between).
 4.Sift together the dry ingredients in a large bowl (cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt).
 5.Add the wet ingredients** in the blender to the bowl with the dry and mix together until very well-combined.
 6.Spread into pans and bake for 37 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Larger pan will likely take a bit longer, depending on your oven; mine in convection and still takes 37 minutes. Remove the cakes from the oven and allow to cool.

For mini-cupcakes, bake 13 minutes.
For regular cupcakes, bake 15 minutes.
For smallish cakes, bake 18 minutes.

 Secrets to Awesomeness

 *Cooking the quinoa: approximately 3/4 cup dry quinoa will yield 2 cups cooked quinoa. I like to make a double batch: 1.5C quinoa and 3C water. Bring to boil, cover, and reduce heat to low so that it’s barely simmering at all, like for rice, for 35 minutes. Check towards the last 10 min to make sure it’s not getting crunchy on bottom, add a bit more water if bone dry but not too much. You want the quinoa fully soft, not at all crunchy, but dry at the end. Dry is important. Then measure out two cups of the cooked quinoa for the recipe and use the rest for a pilaf or something. I don’t know why but making a bigger batch helps it get drier and fluffier.

 **When extracting the quinoa mix from the blender, do not be tempted to add more liquid to make the task easier or to make the batter more like what you expect from a cake batter. It’s not. The batter is thick and uncooperative, you just have to show it who’s boss. Use a rubber spatula to remove from blender (watch out for blade!!) and use plenty of muscle when mixing into the dry ingredients. The batter should be very thick and you have to spread it in the cake pans rather than pour. It seems wrong but trust me it’s right! Oh She Glows also has a coconut milk-chocolate frosting to go with the cake. I cautiously recommend it…it’s heavenly when it turns out right and only has two ingredients (1 can coconut cream solids and 1 pkg (280g) semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips, melted then cooled) but the chances of it turning out right are actually pretty slim. The coconut milk has to be the exact right kind – it has to be chilled to 4 degrees, the solids must completely separate from the liquids, the chocolate must be melted but no longer warm, you must beat on med-high  and watch carefully for it to change, and the stars must align exactly right in order to achieve a fluffy yummy frosting rather than liquidy goop or worse. You may want a nice reliable buttercream. What, you say? You don’t know of a nice reliable chocolate buttercream icing recipe?? Guess what, it’s butter and cream and icing sugar. Ok a couple other things too.

 Nice Reliable Chocolate Buttercream Frosting: this one from Kitchen Magpie rocks. 

Add I confess. I lifted this pic from another blog , as it's uncannily similar to how this cake looks, and I don't have a pic myself yet. Kudos to Playing with Flour for a gorgeous cake. 

Amaretti Cookies and Cranberry-Pistachio Bark

More Christmas baking, and still more to come...so much for cutting back this year! Every year my mom and my sisters and I bake a bunch of cookies/treats and then do a cookie exchange, making up trays of delectable treats for friends, family and coworkers. This year I resolved to only bake two kinds, but that hasn't worked out for me. I just had to make these cute amaretti cookies from Alive magazine, not only are they made from healthy ingredients but they are also gluten-free, perfect for my mom (we try to make all our xmas baking gluten free so that they can all intermingle without concern). They turned out just like the picture in the magazine, and SO yummy!

The bark is, of course, a Christmas no-brainer. Cranberries, good...pistachios, good...chocolate, definately good! Yup these qualify as all good. And I must get it out of my house before there is none left for our cookie trays. I used craisins and pistachios for both kinds, both dark and white chocolate, but you could use any kind of dried fruit and nuts...cashews and flame raisins would have been nice in the dark chocolate. Next time!



Amaretti Cookies
from Alive magazine

1 3/4 cups almond meal
1/2 cup natural brown sugar
1/4 tsp almond extract
zest of 1/2 lemon, grated finely
2 large egg whites
1/3 cup sorghum flour
1/3 cup natural brown sugar
30 whole almonds (15 blanched and 15 natural)

Combine almond meal, 1/2 cup brown sugar, almond extract, and lemon zest in food processor until smooth (I just did it old-school with a wooden spoon). Refrigerate for one hour. Add egg whites and sorghum flour, combining well; dough will be soft and sticky. Scoop out a teaspoonful and roll between damp palms and then drop into a small bowl containing 1/3 cup natural brown sugar. Gently roll around in sugar, shake off excess. Place on a baking sheet lines with parchment paper and press one whole almond in the centre. Repeat with remaining dough, placing balls 1 inch apart.Bake in a 325F oven for 18 minutes or until golden. Remove to a rack and cool. Sotre in a sealed container at room temperature for up to a week, or freeze them.

Makes 30. The original recipe says 40, but they lie.



Cranberry-Pistachio Bark
This doesn't really qualify as a recipe, it's really just a cheat but man it's yummy and is always a favourite on the cookie tray. Just melt down a block of good chocolate that you've chopped into bits (I did two kinds, Callebaut dark and white). Stir in a good handful of craisins and another of pistachios, you should have about the same amount of nuts/fruit as chocolate. Pour it all onto a cookie sheet lined with wax or parchment paper, spreading it in a thin layer. Stick that in the freezer until it firms up, then take it out and peel it up off the paper. Break it into jagged peices. Done! And no one has to know how easy it was ;).

OPTIONAL: Just to be fancy, I decorated each kind with the alternate colour of chocolate. Reserve a couple of spoonfuls of chocolate after it's melted and before you add the fruit and nuts, then after you've spread the mixture out on the tray, just heap some melted chocolate on a spoon and wave it over the tray so that it drips in fine lines.I know I know, it's all very high-tech.

Lemon Bars, Dark Cocoa Cookies, and Cranberry Almond Macaroons

A trio of cookies for a departing coworker! I baked last night like it was my job.It was actually really fun, starting off with this big mess of bowls and spoons and ingredients covering every surface, then one by one completing a task and cleaning that part up, and in the end I had clean counters and neat rows of baked cookies. Of course I forgot to take picures, so instead my pics are of the remnants. The lemon bars were the biggest hit!

Each of the are made with a healthy component, like whole wheat flour or trail mix or yoghurt, but lets face it, cookies are meant to be savoured and enjoyed and to me that means real sugar and butter.I only made substitutions where I figured I could get away with it and not sacrifice taste, and they all worked out very well. And the last ones are gluten-free, to boot.

The first is a recipe I got from another blogger, Apples to Zuchinni, that came from a Cooking Light recipe.

Dark Cocoa Fudge Cookies
adapted from Cooking Light

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
5 Tbsp butter
7 Tbsp dark cocoa powder
1 cup raw (Demerara) sugar
1/3 cup fat free plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla

1.combine dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside
2.cream butter and sugars with the yogurt and vanilla
3.add dry ingredients until moistened
4.drop by level tablespoons full onto parchment paper
5.bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes or until nearly set in the centers
6.cool on the sheet for 2-3 minutes
7.transfer to wire cooling racks

Makes 18 cookies
Each cookie: 97 calories, 4g fat, 1.5g protein, 17g carbs, 1g fibre, 70g sodium.


These lemon bars were a huge hit. The recipe came from an online friend whose delectable description of them made me demand the recipe. They are super-tangy and sweet and delicious, and my addition of whole wheat flour gives them a bit of texture and nutty flavour. Watch out, these are pucker-licious!

Lemon Bars

Crust:
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup butter
¼ cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
2 Tbsp ww flour
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ cup lemon juice – about 3 lemons

Preheat oven to 350F.
Prepare crust: beat flour, butter, powdered sugar and vanilla extract. Press dough into 9in x 9in pan. Refrigerate 30 minutes. Prick crust with a fork and bake for 25 minutes.
Just before crust is done baking, prepare the filling: Beat ingredients for 3 minutes with an electric mixer. (Don’t make this ahead of time).
Pour filling onto hot crust, and bake 25 minutes more. Dust with powdered sugar.

Makes 20 bars.
For each bar: 119 calories, 5g fat, 2g protein, 17g carbs, 1g fibre, 70mg sodium.

And last but certainly not least, my personal favourite, coconutty yumminess in the form of macaroons. The recipe is from my mom, who has been making them as a Christmas treat for years. I left off the red and green glace cherry decorations and used craisins and cranberry-almond trail mix as the fruit and nut component, but you can use any dried fruit and nuts/seeds in this. Dates and walnuts, sour cherries and almonds, apricots and pecans, figs and cashews, the possibilities are endless. And a few mini-chocolate chips thrown in wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings either.

Cranberry Almond Macaroons

1 cup fancy shredded coconut
1 cup finely shredded coconut
1/2 can sweetened condensed skim milk*
1 egg white, beaten until frothy
3/4 cups cranberry-almond trail mix, finely chopped
1/2 cup craisins, chopped
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp almond extract

Method
Add all ingredients to a large bowl a stir thoroughly.
Dollop teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheet. Bunch together with finger so the drop is solid.
Preheat oven to 300F.
Bake at 300F till lightly golden- about 25 min. They burn easily, so watch them during the last 10 minutes. Turn oven off and leave in oven for another 30 minutes. This prevents them from going soggy.

*If you realize at the last moment you don’t have any condensed milk, a perfect substitution is 1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp dry skim milk, 6 Tbsp sugar, and 2 Tbsp hot water. Combine all and whisk or blend in blender until well combined (I had to give it a shot in the microwave to dissolve all the milk and sugar). Chill for 30 minutes to set.

Makes 25 cookies.

Per cookie: 106 calories, 4g fat, 2g protein, 16g carbs, 1g fibre, 40mg sodium

Trail Mix Cookies

These cookies are adapted from a Clean Eating recipe...I was skeptical that one could make a whole batch of cookies with the only fat being one tablespoon of nut butter, but it worked great! I tried a few different versions before settling on this one. It's a pretty flexible recipe, as long as you keep the same proportions of liquid to dry. I added in a bunch of seeds and nuts cuz that's just how I roll. What you end up with is a deliciously crunchy cookie that is healthy enough to eat for breakfast. Well, almost!

Have you tried these yet? If not, you really should!

Trail Mix Cookies

1 1/4C wild oats
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp ground flax
2 Tbsp sunflower seeds
2 Tbsp pumpkin seeds
2 Tbsp finely chopped walnuts
1/4C dark chocolate chips
1/2C golden syrup (or honey or agave syrup)
1 Tbsp peanut butter (or other nut butter)
1 large egg white
1 tsp vanilla
olive oil cooking spray

Combine the dry ingredients (oats through chocolate chips) in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients until well-combined. Add them to the dry ingredients and stir it all together. Form into 20 cookies (about one heaping tablespoon each)and place on a cookie sheet sprayed with olive oil. If you like a flat, crisp cookie, flatten them out to desired thickness, as they don't flatten during cooking at ALL. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

Nutritional values: For one cookie (1/20 of recipe): 97 calories, 3.2g fat, 2.6g protein, 15.9g carbs, 1.5g fibre, 50g sodium.

Coconut-Lime Meringue Cupcakes

I bet you are thinking, Wow have her photography skills ever improved since last post! Nope, I just had to borrow a picture from another, much more talented food photographer as I did not get a chance to take a picture of my cupcakes before they were inhaled by coworkers. I did have one lonely cupcake to bring home, but well there was a sudden sunshower, a lack of umbrella, and a fear of ruining hairdo so my cupcake carrier ending up subbing as umbrella and the poor last little cupcake got a little mangled in the process. Just imagine this is what my cupcakes looked like, except greener...for St. Patty's Day!

These cupcakes were a huge hit. Everyone raved about the lime curd, which was my own invention. The cupcakes were inspired by a fellow food blogger's Lemon Merigue Cupcakes, and a love of that song that goes "put de lime in de coco-nut". Lime and coconut, what a delicious combo! So I morphed together a modified lemon curd recipe from Cooking Light magazine, a recipe for Swiss meringue from Martha Stewart, and a recipe for low-fat chocolate cupcakes that I modified to coconut instead. Lots of modifying, which can end up distastrous, but these were pure success! The lime curd was the big star, so tart and tangy and a perfect foil for the coconutty cake and sweet meringue. So much taste got packed in there it pushed out lots of calories ;)...they ended up being just 147 per sweet delicious wonderful cupcake. A few people commented that the petite size was the perfect amount.

Coconut-Lime Meringue Cupcakes

For the cake batter:
1 2/3C cake flour, preferably whole wheat
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2C raw sugar
1/4C applesauce
1 egg, separated
1 egg white
1 T oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 C light coconut milk
1 C skim milk
2 tsp coconut extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 12 muffin cups with liners (I use silicone ones). Combine flour, baking powder and soda, and salt.

Beat the sugar with the applesauce, egg yolk, oil and vanilla.

Beat egg whites until fluffy.

Stir in flour mixture into applesauce mixture alternately with milk until just combined. Fold in egg whites. Pout the batter into the 12 muffin cups and bake for 22-25 minutes, or until golden on top and toothpick comes out clean.

For the Lime Curd:
1/3C raw sugar
2 tsp cornstarch
pinch salt
1/3C freshly squeezed lime juice (about 1 large juicy lime. It's hard to tell which ones will be juicy, so I'd have back-up limes just in case.)
2 egg yolks
2 tsp butter
1/2 tsp lime zest

Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a heavy saucepan andwhisk in juice and egg yolks. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, a simmer one minute (it should thicken nicely). Remove from heat, add butter and lime zest. Transfer to a bowl to cool to room temperature before using.


For the Swiss meringue:
1/4C raw sugar
1 egg white
1 tsp lime juice

Combine the ingerdients in the metal bowl of your mixer, andsuspend over a pan of simmering water, stirring until sugar is dissolved (about 3 minutes). Remove from heat and transfer to mixer stand, beating wit whisk attachment on medium for 10 minutes then on high for 10 to 15 minutes, or until glossy and high peaks form.

Assemble: Cut a shallow reservoir into the top of each cupcake, removing a 1/2 cm disc. Fill each reservoir with about 1 Tbsp of lime curd. Put meringue into piping bag and pipe onto each cupcake, or simply spoon a dollop on and form into peaks by whacking lightly with the back of a spoon. If you have a blowtorch, singe the meringue a bit, if not just leave them white. They are super-cute either way!Refrigerate until ready to devour.

Did you make it through all these steps (whew!)? Trust me, it's worth it.

Nutritional values per cupcake: 147 calories, 3g fat, 3g protein, 27g carbs, 1g fibre, 120mg sodium.

Biscotti: A Trio for the Holidays

I came up with Project Biscotti as a means of sending good will to some colleagues, as well as getting in some Christmas baking without having the results hanging around to tempt me. I settled on biscotti because they travel well, won't go stale for a long time, and hey everyone loves things to dip into coffee! I made a plan to bake three kinds of biscotti and send little presents of them to folks I work with on a couple of projects. The tidy tins of yummy treats are all lined up, ready to head to locations all over the province.

Biscotti are, by nature, crunchy. The recipe I based mine on was low-fat, meaning no butter and using only egg whites. This made an uber-crunchy biscotti...I ended up using whole eggs because I dislike wasting egg yolks, and the results were actually better. Even coated in chocolate, the cookies are just 80 calories each, so I won't begrudge them a few egg yolks!

I went a little crazy and made my own candied orange peel for them, so I've included that recipe at the bottom. I had a lot of fun with Project Biscotti....and aren't they cute?

Basic Biscotti recipe

modified from The New Best Recipe:

2C flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1C sugar

3 extra-large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients until light yellow. Pour into dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. The dough should be very wet and sticky.

For Candied Orange Peel, Almond, and Dark Chocolate Biscotti:

Fold in 1/3C chopped candied orange peel and 1/3C roasted almonds.

For Cranberry, Pistachio, and Dark Chocolate Biscotti:

Fold in 1/3C craisins and 1/3C pistachios

For Double Chocolate Almond Biscotti:

Use 1/4C less flour and replace with 1/4C cocoa. Fold in 1/3C toasted almonds.

Form each batch into two logs, about 3" wide, 13" long, and 1" tall. Bake at 350F for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, lower oven temperature to 325F and allow the logs to cool for about 5 minutes. Cut into 3/4" slices and lay flat on the baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, turning once (or if you want to avoid turning them, bake the slices standing up.)

Cool biscotti on baking sheet. Meanwhile, heat some bittersweet chocolate in a small pot (I just put mine on the element that vents the oven and it gently warms the chocolate as the oven cools, no need for fancy double-boiler here!). I use 3 baking squares per batch, being moderately stingy with the chocolate coating....not as thin as a summer coat but not a thick winter one either, I guess more like a light fall coat. Just dip the tops into the chocolate and push the excess off with a spoon.

And whatever you do, don't fall asleep on the couch watching CSI while you are doing the second baking. That makes for VERY crunchy biscotti. Not that I know about that.

Yield: 36 biscotti per batch

Nutritional info: Each cookie has 81 calories, 3g fat, 2g protein, 13g carbs, 1g fibre, 16 mg sodium.

Candied Orange Peel:

This is a bit laborious but totally worth it.

2 thick-skinned oranges (like valencias)

1C sugar

1/4C water

Score orange skin into six or eight segments and peel off orange. Reserve orange flesh for other use. Place peels in a pot and fill with cold water. Bring to a boil on high heat and drain. Repeat this process two more times.

Cut orange peel segments into thin strips. Bring sugar and water to a boil over medium heat, and let simmer for 8 minutes, or until it starts turning light brown. Add in orange peels and cook for another 5 minutes or so, until the sugar has absorbed into the orange peels. Remove from heat and place orange peels individually on a rack or plate to dry. Coat each one with sugar if you like, but I like them plain. If you leave them in a big heap, you will have one SUPER-ORANGE PEEL. Not as pretty, but just as tasty.

Sherylyn’s Amazing I-Can’t-Believe-it’s-Reduced-Calories Frozen Peanut Butter Fudge Pie

It may be a bit iffy to call this recipe "healthy", due to the inclusion of some fat-free Cool Whip (what is that stuff anyway???), but people who are watching their calories can enjoy this low-cal treat and not break the calorie bank, so to speak. It's been very popular whenever I have made it, with both dieters and non-dieters, as it's so delicious and rich-tasting!

Sherylyn’s Amazing I-Can’t-Believe-it’s-Reduced-Calories Frozen Peanut Butter Fudge Pie
(the name’s a bit wordy, you think?)

*Before you start, even the night before, put a cup of yogurt to drain...it should drain at least 2 hours but as long as overnight is ok. I just line a strainer with a coffee filter or paper towel and suspend it over a bowl, and put in the fridge just like that. The best yogurt for this, IMO, is Astro BioBest 1% plain yogurt in the blue container.

First prepare the fudge:
1/4C raw sugar
3T cocoa, sifted
1T cornstarch
1/4C water
2T skim milk powder (or replace water and skim milk powder with 1/4C evaporated milk)
1/2tsp vanilla

Whisk all ingredients together in a small pot. Bring to a boil on medium-low heat, stirring often. Simmer for about a minute, should be thickened at this point, remove from heat. Cool completely (I transfer into a bowl and put in the fridge to hurry it along).

Next prepare the crust:
120g chocolate graham bears or bunnies
1T ground flax seeds (optional)
Egg white

Grind up the bears or bunnies in the blender (ignore the screaming). Dump into a large bowl, add flax. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg white. Add about half of it to the crumbs and work in with your fingers to incorporate completely. The mixture should still be crumbly but should stick together when squeezed. Add a bit more egg white if it’s too dry, be careful not to add too much, it should not be wet. Spray a pie plate well with cooking spray. Dump in the crumb mixture, distribute evenly, and press onto bottom and sides of pie plate. Bake at 375F for 10 minutes. Cool.

Then make the filling:
7 Tbsp drained yogurt
1/2C (half a small tub) reduced-fat cream cheese
5 Tbsp condensed non-fat milk (the sweetened kind)
6 Tbsp reduced-fat peanut butter
4 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
3 C 95% fat-free Cool Whip (it comes frozen so defrost in the fridge before using)

In a large bowl or mixer, beat the cream cheese for a minute. Add in the condensed milk and beat again. Add in the peanut butter and beat again, until smooth. Stir in the lemon juice and vanilla. Fold in the Cool Whip gently, you want it completely incorporated but not deflated.

Then assemble!
Using half the fudge, dab over the bottom of the baked pie crust, smoothing carefully (if you are rough the crust will break up). Pour in the filling, smooth the top. Using a spoon, drip the rest of the fudge over the top in a lattice pattern or however you want. Freeze for at least 4 hours. Enjoy!

Nutritional values: 1/12 of pie is 194 calories, 7g fat, 4.8g protein, 29g carbohydrate, 1.4g fibre, 144 mg sodium.