Ice Cream And Cake

Hi

This past weekend was my birthday. Naturally that means cake. I chose to make a carrot cake with classic cream cheese frosting. Sweet (16).

I didn't do a lot for my birthday, just a few friends over for cake, ice-cream, and oddly, dinner. So it was a birthday dinner party. We ate dinner, cake, ice-cream, watched hunger games, and then everyone left. Bangin' party right? You can tell whats important to us :)

For dinner we had mushroom and spinach & cheese ravioli, in a walnut butter sauce that was (very unfortunately) sub par. :( The cake as is said, was carrot cake and delicious. We had butter pecan ice-cream with it. One thing I cannot stand is foods that don't 'match'. It took me forever and a day to figure out what meal would complement the cake, and then what ice-cream went with the cake.

I learned something that weekend though. I don't like cake and ice-cream together very much. I like cake, and ice-cream, but not together(except for melted ice cream soaked into cake crumbs)(which doesn't really count). I also learned that cream cheese frosting does not like me, and I'm glad that I opted to eat toffuti ice-cream instead of the real stuff to avoid any more discomfort.

Carrot Cake
(serves 20)

2 c flour
1 1/2 c sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
4 eggs
3/4 c oil
3 c grated carrots
3/4 c walnuts


 preheat oven to 350 and prepare two cake pans. mix flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. add eggs and oil, beating until well blended. mix in carrots and nuts. bake for 30-45 minutes. best made one day in advance.

Cream Cheese Frosting
2-3 oz cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp butter
2 C powdered sugar
1tsp. vanilla extract

cream the cheese and butter with an electric mixer, add sugar and vanilla and beat until fluffy.

Nutrition Info:
(nutrition info is calculated including the frosting)

Calories: 295
Fat: 15 g (6g are unsaturated- from the nuts)
Carbs: 39g
     sugar: 27.8g
Protein: 4g

Question of the Day:
Do you have any weird foodisms?
I cant do the texture of beef either, it's just not right.

Chocolate Covered Banana Pancakes

Hey

Here're some delicious pancakes, a variation on my Chocolate-Chip Banana Pancakes.
I turned them inside out, instead of chocolate chips and banana pancakes, we have banana chips in chocolate pancakes.

To make these use a chocolate pancake recipe(I used Chocolate Covered Katie's) and put freeze dried banana chips in like you would chocolate chips. The banana gets kinda soft but not too gooey and more banana-y then chip-y as it cooks. You could also just use fresh banana slices, Witch should work fine, I just wanted a "chip/chunk" like texture.

Chocolate Covered Banana Pancakes
serves 1-2

1/4 cup spelt flour (or all-purpose or Bob’s gluten-free)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa or dutch cocoa (You can sub regular cocoa, but I haven’t tried it in this recipe and therefore can’t personally vouch for the taste)
1 and 1/2 packets nunaturals stevia or 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp sugar (I think I used 1/2 a packet tru-via.)
1/16 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 tbsp applesauce or oil (I omitted)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
5 and 1/2 tbsp milk of choice

freeze dried banana chips

Mix dry ingredients very well, then add wet. Wait until ready to flip, then add banana chips and flip.

Nutrition Info:
Calories: 170
Fat: 2.6g
Carbs: 35g
     sugar: 2.5g
Protein: 8g

Question Of the Day:
whats your favorite fruit?
 mine would be grapes :)

Sugar, Sweet, Sugar

     One thing that I have recently become aware of is how much unnecessary sugar is added to food. Every time my aunt is over we somehow land on the topic of how when she was my age(70's) things like katcup didn't have sugar added to them. I think she's right, these things don't need sugar in them.somewhere I read you can cut a recipes sugar by like 1/4-1/2 and not really change the result of the food. It makes sense to me that lazy food colonies just keep adding sugar to everything we buy, they want a product that sell, we want one that tastes good. What tastes good? Sugar. So put some sugar in the katsup, put some sugar in your yogurt heck put some in the bread, and the juice, put it in tomato sauce."everything is better with sugar" they think. And all this results in is sugar being the omniingredient, put into everything. Even if it has no real place being there. It fosters our sugar addiction,raising our threshold for what we deem "sweet". Well I called the seventys, to see if they'd take me. I want some old fashioned sugar free food.

     Speaking of sugar free, when I was in elementary school, and everyone brought lunch, my friend and I wouldn't eat our pudding cups if we saw it said 'sugar free' on the label. We wanted that stereotype of kids loving sugary things and having sugar highs and bouncing off the walls(something I couldn't achieve no matter how much sugar I ate) its sad to think that we refused a food simply because it didn't have sugar in it.(we certainly weren't concerned with the artificial sweeteners I'm sure were in our sugar free puddings) now I know that I feel energized only if I don't  eat a ton of sugar. I don't count exactly how much sugar I eat, but I know the recommendation is 25g. And I think usually double that. So here's to less sugary baked goods, that still taste yum-dili-umtious!

I'm Not Dead, I Promise

     Oh my gosh it's been soo long since I've written! (thanks to super busy holidays). So while I was gone I cooked about a billion different things (unfortunately due to the holidays very few got a photo shoot) so it looks like the last thing I blogged was my Pumpkin Cream Parfait, which was just after thanksgiving, which I meant to put up like 3 weeks before that(like I said, super busy). so here's a list of stuff I've made with a quick rundown of what it is:

Roasted Acorn Squash with Caramelized Chestnuts: cut and roast the squash, melt butter on the stove and add brown sugar and stir, as chopped chestnuts stir, and toss on squash to coat.

Healthy Egg Nogg: vanilla milk(I used soy) egg substitute, vanilla extract, and nutmeg. blend and refrigerate 

Turkey Tetrazzini: I'll probably be doing a post on this soon so check back to see it.

Gumbo: although I made gumbo twice during the holidays both were failures, once the crock pot didn't turn on, and second, I think I just don't really like gumbo.

Spinach Souffle: just don't

New England Stew: turnips, carrots, celery, potatoes, beef chunks, milk, cornstarch... I'll probably make this again too, so watch for it

Gingerbread Cookies: the best gingerbread I've ever tasted, thanks to the guys at sortedfood. Sorted Gingerbread

Sugar Cookies: there was a sugar cookie fiasco in our house this year, we lost our recipe. our ages old so yummy recipe. which we were making on the 23 of December. once over the shock of that, we quickly found a recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook, which turned out cookies exactly the same as ours, except we had to add about and extra 1/2 c flour for them to work (I think we made a mistake when halving the giant recipe)

Gingerbread House: I used a healthy gingerbread recipe first this year, but they tasted really gummy and bad. they went largely uneaten, but my ginger bread house was beautiful. I actually have a picture of this, somewhere.

Chocolate Lace Cookies: my new favorite Christmas cookie via Chocolate Covered Katie. recipe here, I ommited the extra chocolate chips at the end, and didnt even miss them!

Red Velvet Pancakes: part of Christmas breakfast, made from Chocolate Covered Katie. recipe here. i just added red food coloring because I like these more then her red velvet cakes

Blondie Pancakes: these are really just Katie's chocolate pancakes with flour subbed in for the cocoa, and maybe a little extra vanilla. they went with our red pancakes to make festive candy cane stacks.

Banana Pancakes: made to go with Christmas morning leftovers Katie's original recipe

Fruit Cake: my great grandmas fruit cake recipe, made with my grandma on Christmas day <3

Apple Stuffing: this too will likely get its own post in the future

Oreo Truffles: vanilla cake crumbled and mixed with vanilla frosting, crushed oreos, and cool whip( a gift to my oreo addicted cousin)

Healthy Doughnuts: my aunt got me a doughnut pan for Christmas!! the very next morning I used it to make Chocolate Covered Katie's cake batter doughnuts I used sucanant for sweetner(a first) and this was the first time i used the flax egg method, and boy am I a beliver!

Spinach Artichoke Dip: never try it with fresh artichokes when you've never prepared artichoke before.

Corn Meal Pancakes: delicious and a bright cheery yellow, great on gloomy winter mornings. my normal pancake recipie with 3/4 corn meal instead of flour. great with raspberry syrup

Cornmeal Mush: after I made cornmeal pancakes the next morning I had cream of wheat, which inspired me to mix the two using the method of cream of wheat with cornmeal, I also added in some chopped dates.

and

Whatchamacallit: yet another Chocolate Covered Katie recipe, her cinnamon roll pie. but the chickpeas give it a totally different flavor, and I've never tasted anything like it before. its good, but i cant name one thing it tastes similar to.

As you can see I've been busy, and next weekend is my birthday, so I'll hopefully have some recipies and pictures to share with you then :)

Questions of the Day
are you super busy over the holidays? you know my answer ;)

what was your favorite Christmas present? I got an Indian cookbook, but my favorite would be tickets to my favorite band, muse

what was your new years resolution? mine was not to abandon this blog. also I'm trying to be healthier, which for me means activity and more vegetables :p

Oh And By The Way:   WELCOME TO 2013!!