We aren’t a gluten free family. No allergies in our house other than the boy being allergic to every single tree in the state we live in. Seriously. It’s a nightmare for a kid that loves to be outside.

But at least we aren’t plaqued by gluten allergies like so many other families we know. This recipe wasn’t meant to be gluten free, but I needed to use up some over-ripe bananas and almond meal..so you go.

Gluten Free Low Fat Banana Bread

3 cups almond meal

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

3 very ripe bananas

1/2 cup sweetner of choice

1/4 cup applesauce or coconut oil

1 tbs vanilla

Mash the bananas up (fun part for the kid to do if you are brave enough)

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another. Fold in the banana mixture into the almond meal.

Pour mixture into muffin cups or bread pan. Next time I will use muffin cups as the applesauce / oil replacement made the bread hard to get consistent texture throughout the bread pan. You live and learn, right?

We used a bread pan and cooked at 350 for 45 minutes.

I really don’t like chocolate covered strawberries. I realize I might be the only person in the free world who doesn’t…but something about biting into chocolate and getting a swishy strawberry juice all down my chin is not appealing or sexy at all for Valentines Day.

But these sweet little Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries are. Easy. Delicious. And your sweetheart will think you are brilliant. I’m working on a Key Lime Valentine Desert too..so check back soon.

You Need:

16-20 smallish strawberries.

8 oz pkg softened cream cheese

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 sleeve of graham crackers

Mix all ingredients together (except graham crackers) and then pipe into cleaned out strawberry hulls. An apple corer or small paring knife is all you need to to make these cute little strawberry bowls.

Put your cheese mixture into a zip lock bag..trim off one corner and pipe the cheesecake into each strawberry. Dip the cheesecake end of the strawberry in graham crackers crumbs and easy peasey Japanesy you are done.

I think my sister said it best when she described this desert as ‘created in hell by the devil himself’.

It’s unbelievably easy and that’s what’s so dangerous. You can throw this together in about five minutes. Or, do what I did and use it as a busy project for kids. We just got back from a double-family vacation that included a 7 year-old, a 6 year-old and a 5 year-old. We had games and toys and even a hot tub, but after three or four days on a mountain with no internet access ..kids start getting punchy.

So we spent a while in the kitchen whipping this up for after dinner. Since there are three layers, there was one for each kid so it worked out perfectly.

No matter that all three kids completely ignored this desert after dinner in favor of Smore’s around the fire pit. The mommies and daddies chomped the **** out of this after the kids went to bed. Seriously..it was gone by noon the next day!

For a Chocolate Chip Oreo Brown Bake You need:

One package of chocolate chip cookie mix and the ingredients listed on the back of the package

One pack of Oreos

One box of brownie mix and the ingredients listed on the back of the package.

Then you:

Mix up cookie mix in one bowl and the brownie mix in another bowl.

Spray the bottom of a large casserole dish with spray oil and layer the cookie dough mix, the oreos then the brownie mix.

I cooked it at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes. But you time may vary..check it after 30 minutes.

You know you’ve eaten too much over the weekend when your child pats your belly and says, “Mommy, there might be another baby in your belly. No? What’s in there then?”

True story.

I ate way too much this weekend, mostly fat and carbs and that means major bloat. But boy, was is FUN. We had a fantastic Easter holiday but today I am getting myself (and my family) back on track and sugar detoxed.

While I suffer for the next few days on no carbs and tons of water please enjoy this SICK (and by sick I mean wonderfully decadent and delicious) Key Lime Desert. It was soo freakin’ good. Even my baby girl loved it. Really. She is eight months old and she was inhaling the pudding-like filling.

You Need:

1 pouch oatmeal cookie mix

1/2 cup firm butter

2 cans condensed milk (14 oz each)

2 containers cool whip (8 oz each)

2 containers of fat free Key Lime yogurt (6 oz each)

Few drops of green food coloring if desired

And then you:

Heat oven to 350°F. Spray bottom and sides of 13×9-inch pan with cooking spray.

Put cookie mix in large bowl and cut in butter until its crumbly. Press crumbs in bottom of pan.

Bake 10-12 minutes until golden brown then cool completely

In another (or the same if you feel like washing it right away) beat condensed milk and lime juice, yogurt with electric mixer on medium until smooth and thick.

Remove 1 cup of the cool whip and set aside. Fold remaining whipped topping into yogurt, add food coloring here if you want.

Spoon onto cooled crust and refrigerate for an hour.

Before serving place a big ol’ dollop of remaining cool whip on each piece. If you want to get real fancy you can serve with berries or lime peel..but we don’t roll like that at my house.

It’s rare that I make two recipes in one day, but today I actually made three. I don’t know what came over me. A moment of mommy-madness. It’s 10:30pm right now and I just started the dishwasher and the kitchen is finally clean. But..the boy has Pumpkin Muffins to eat for breakfast this week, I’ve got these yummy Cheesecake Bites for when the evil sweet tooth monster rears it’s head around 10pm every night. And I’ve got some fantastic-uber-healthy- Turkey Breakfast Muffins for breakfasts on the go this week. I’ll post that recipe tomorrow.

But back to the cheesecake!

I missed a step when I made these today so they ended up being just Chocolate Cheesecake Bites with no swirl, but they were still really good.

:recipe tip: store them in the freezer until you are ready to eat..they get too soft in the fridge

You Need:

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp Splenda

5 Tbsp Fat Free Cream Cheese

1 Tbsp Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa

1 cup Cool Whip

1 Tbsp Mini Chocolate Chips

And Then You:

Mix cool whip, cream cheese, vanilla and Splenda with a blender until all creamy and smooth.

For chocolate cheesecake bites just add cocoa and stir in thoroughly.

**Here is the step I missed so pay attention if you want that pretty swirl..or at least send your high-strung kid out of the kitchen so you can think straight for a minute***

To create swirl cheesecakes, divide batter in half and the cocoa to half the batter, mix thoroughly then recombine batter swirling chocolate batter into plain batter.

Spoon into 10-15 slots of an ice cube tray ( I used mini muffin pan)

Top each bite with 5-10 mini chocolate chips, one teaspoon sugar free chocolate syrup, or Smucker’s sugar free fruit preserves.

Freeze for two hours. After fully freezing they should pop right out. You may have to run warm water on the bottom of the ice tray if that’s what you use.

***Safe for South Beach Phase Two

Nutritional Information per cheesecake bite…recipe makes 12 mini muffin cheesecake bites

Calories – 29.8g

Fat – 1.1g

Carbs – 3.4g

Protein – 1g

The hubs LOVES Pineapple Upside Down Cake. I can take it or leave it. If I’m having cake it better have some proper buttercream frosting. I am NOT wasting my precious calories on fruit and brown sugar. Plus..it just looks so ‘old lady’, doesn’t it?

But since I do try to make things he likes every once in a while, I decided to make one for him yesterday. I also decided to make it low-calorie because even though it’s not my favorite…there is no way that at least a little bit of it won’t find it’s evil way into my belly.

I haven’t tried it yet but it must have been good because only half of this cake is left in the house as I type this.

Here’s the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

Topping
1 tbsp. light butter
1/4 cup brown sugar (not packed)
pineapple rings packed in juice, drained
maraschino cherries

Cake
Half of an 18.25-oz. box (about 1 1/2 cups) moist-style yellow cake mix
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup no-sugar-added applesauce

And Then You:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a round cake pan with nonstick spray and set aside.

Melt the butter in the microwave and add brown sugar and mix well. Spread mixture evenly along the bottom of the cake pan.

Lay pineapple rings in an even layer in the cake pan, and place one cherry in the center of each pineapple ring.

Combine cake mix with baking powder in a large bowl. Mix well. Add water and applesauce, and stir until smooth.

Evenly pour batter into the cake pan over the fruit layer. Bake in the oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 30 – 35 minutes. Start checking batter at 30 minutes.

Once the cake is completely cool you can flip it out onto a plate.

Cut into 8 pieces. This version has only 190 calories per slice!

This maybe one of the most fun and cute cupcakes I’ve ever made.

And more importantly SIMPLE.

I got RAVE reviews from these last year and really all it took was some green food coloring.This year I’m hoping to find some pink bunny PEEPS. I’m sure they will really pop on the green coconut ‘Easter grass’.

You Need:

Box cake mix of choice

Frosting of choice – used chocolate in this picture because that’s what I had..but strawberry or white would be better.

Bag of sweetened coconut

Ziplock bag

Green food color

Bunny or Chick PEEPS

And Then You:

Back and frost cupcakes according to directions

Put coconut in a zip lock bag and squeeze in food coloring. (You’ll need to add a few drops of water to get the food coloring to cover the white coconut completely.)

Zip back and massage with your fingers until all coconut is covered

Place your snazzy green coconut on top of your frosted cupcake and then top with PEEP of choice.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!

I had fun telling the boy about St. Patrick’s Day this week. He was absolutely overjoyed to find out that there was another holiday that he didn’t know about. His excitement dwindle a bit when he found out there were no presents involved, but then when I got out the fortune cookies he got happy again.

My little monster LOVES fortune cookies. Even before he could read he would take mommy and daddy’s fortunes at restaurants and make up stuff. It was cute and we laughed. And then he would eat everyone’s cookies. Which is cute too..but I really love them too so it kind of sucks. But you sacrifice for your kids.

Here is how we spent the afternoon yesterday. I omitted the entire-hand-in-the-chocolate-bowl-meltdown-pictures so you would all think it was a peaceful and memory making Saturday.

We used:

1 box of store bought fortune cookies

1 package of semi-sweet chocolate chips

8 graham crackers

green spinkles

And then we:

Melted the chips in a microwave safe bowl ..bout one minute and stir well

Put the sprinkles on a plate

Ideally you would have parchment paper, but that’s not something I keep in my house all the time so we used aluminum foil sprayed with cooking oil

Dip half of the fortune cookie in the chocolate and then sprinkles. Put on the foil to harden.

Repeat with graham crackers

:notes: Now that I see that the green sprinkles don’t show so well on the chocolate, if I make  this again I’ll use white chocolate

Spent the weekend at Mimi’s house with the kids for a family birthday party. There was cake, fried chicken, homemade french fries, cream corn and lots of sweet tea.

But most importantly there was old school Southern Banana Pudding. Mimi makes the BEST banana pudding. It’s so good that she has to make it every birthday, holiday and family function we have and then we all fight over it.

Actually, there is always enough. What we fight over is the cookies. The gooey Nilla Wafers are always the best part and there are a few of my family members who shall remain nameless (starts with a C and ends with a Y) that always pick out all the cookies and leave bananas and pudding behind. It’s such a family joke that I had to send this picture to that certain family member to show him that I was getting all the cookies this time!

This is not just your normal banana pudding made with box pudding mix and cool whip. No my friends. This is from scratch and not really a Real Mom Recipe…but it’s so good it’s really worth the extra time it takes to make it. It looks easy enough but somehow when I make it ..it never tastes as good as Mimi’s.

You need:

I don’t like to toot my own horn…but TOOT TOOT TOOT.

I found a low fat recipe for Coconut Cream Pie on line ages ago and have been dying to try it. I printed it out and had it hanging on the fridge for months and when I flipped the month from February to March it came falling out and screamed, ‘make me for petes sake or throw me away.’

I don’t like when my recipes yell at me so I made it right away. I did have to tweak it a bit to make it work for my fam…meaning it has to taste great and not low calorie for the hubs…it has to look yummy for the boy and it has to be low calorie for me. The original recipe made a much thinner crust and I am a crust gal…it also had more coconut mixed into the pudding mixture which I omitted. I also used almond milk because no one in my house drinks regular milk.

(I had to leave the coconut off the top of part of the pie because while the boy likes the taste of coconut ..he does not like how it looks :sigh:)

Thank goodness it was low calorie because I ate an obscene amount of this scrumptious-surely-it-can’t-be-low-calorie-coconut-yummy. Of course it’s not low calorie if you end up eating 1/3 of the pie but while I was eating it I cared NOT.

So here’s how you make it.

You Need:

For Crust

3 cups fiber one cereal

4 sheets of graham crackers (broken into small pieces)

3 tbsp Splenda or other sweetner

1/4 cup light whipped butter

For Filling and Topping

2 cups milk (I used almond milk)

1 large box of sugar free fat free instant vanilla pudding

1/2 tsp coconut extract

2 cups thawed and divided Cool Whip

shredded sweet coconut flakes

And Then You:

Preheat oven to 350 and spray pie pan with no stick spray

Grind fiber one and graham crackers into crumb like consistency in a blender or food processor

Add sweetner

Melt butter with 2 tbsp water ..add to crumb mixture and press into pie pan

Bake for 10 minutes and set aside to cool

To make the filling pour milk into a bowl, add pudding mixture, coconut extract and beat with whisk until smooth

Fold in 1 cup of Cool White and 1/4 cup coconut into pudding mixture

Once crust is cool spread filling evenly on top of crust. Spread remaining cup of Cool Whip on top of filling. Top with as much coconut as desired. Can be toasted.

Let the pie chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

It should make 8 servings at about 180 calories a piece. Since I’ve already eaten a third of it that leaves 5 slices of creamy coconut goodness taunting me from the kitchen.

I think I’m safe though because hubs loves coconut pie even more than I do so I’m hoping there will be zero slices of creamy coconut goodness left in the morning.