Red Velvet Funnel Cakes

What could be more fun than red velvet cupcakes? Funnel cakes of course! When I found out the state fair was offering Red Velvet Funnel Cakes, I immediately knew I wanted to make my own this weekend.



Ingredients:

• 2 eggs - beaten
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon red food coloring
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• Oil for frying- I used coconut oil because I have a surplus but vegetable oil works great too!
• Confectioner's sugar

Mix eggs, milk, brown sugar, vinegar, and food coloring in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder together and slowly add this dry mix to the egg mixture whisking until smooth. It should be the same texture as pancake batter.

Pour the batter into a pastry bag, I like to cut a small hole in a gallon sized ziplock bag and place an icing tip through taping it in place if needed. Be sure to position the bag so that the tip points upward while you are filling it up so the batter doesn't leak out.

Fill a deep skillet with oil, about 1/2 to 1 inch deep and heat to a medium-low heat. Squeeze the batter in a squiggly pattern making a 4-5 inch circle. Let the batter fry about a minute on each side. Usually you would want your funnel cakes to be golden brown but its hard to tell when the batter is red.

With a slotted spatula, move the cakes to a rack to cool and allow the excess oil to drip off. Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar and enjoy!

Makes approx. 16 four to five inch funnel cakes.

Notes: I liked the look of the thin squiggles created by the thin icing tip, but you can definitely use a funnel or a measuring cup to pour the batter into the oil.

My Mom pointed out these look a bit like brains and would be fun for a halloween or zombie themed party!

Waffled Orange French Toast with Brown Sugar Bacon

Since we discovered how fun cooking cinnamon rolls in a waffle iron is thanks to pinterest, I've been wanting to make waffled french toast. This morning I was feeling particularly fancy and decided to make orange flavored french toast using orange juice and orange liqueur. We paired it with some baked brown sugar bacon, because I can't say no to bacon.

Waffled Orange French Toast

Ingredients:

6 pieces of texas toast
4 eggs
1/2 cup orange juice
1 1/2 teaspoons orange liqueur
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk eggs, orange juice, orange liqueur, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a wide bowl.
Set your waffle iron on medium heat.
Dip bread in the egg mix, turning over to soak thoroughly
Place bread in waffle iron and close the lid, cooking for 4-5 minutes or until golden brown.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and top with your choice of syrup

Baked Brown Sugar Bacon

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and cover with bacon.
Sprinkle with brown sugar
Cook at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until desired crispiness.
We ended up turning our bacon over for some extra crisp.
Do not preheat oven, just put the bacon in and let it heat up with the oven.

Cheesy Grilled Stuffed Burritos

Ingredients:

• 1lb of lean ground beef

• 1/2 medium onion

• 2 peppers (I used one green and one red) 

• 2 cans of refried beans

• 2 cups of shredded cheese

• 1/2 cup of taco sauce

• Hot sauce (to your preferred level of heat) 

• 20 soft taco sized tortillas 

Instructions: 
Heat ground beef, onions, and peppers over medium heat  in a large saute pan until beef has browned. Add refried beans, cheese, taco sauce and hot sauce to the beef and peppers and reduce heat to low. Heat until warm. While the mixture is warming up, heat a skillet to low heat. Spoon mixture onto tortillas and wrap tightly. I used about one wooden spoonful of mixture per tortilla. Place burritos onto warm skillet and heat until golden brown on each side. This recipe makes about 20 soft taco size burritos that are perfect for leftovers! 

Barbecue Chicken Quesadillas

When anyone in my family orders a quesadilla at a restaurant, they tell me "I don't know why I order quesadillas, they are never as good as yours." This week, I thought I would share my secrets for my infamous quesadillas. Some of my family members are rather picky eaters, so these are simply meat, sauce and cheese. Feel free to add onions, peppers and whatever else you'd like to this recipe! 


Ingredients: 

• 1 1/2 cups diced chicken breast - I used frozen, pre-cooked chicken
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce 
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce 
• 1 and 1/2 cups shredded cheese
• 4 soft taco sized flour tortillas
• Sugar (to sprinkle)
• 1-2 teaspoons of spreadable butter 

Instructions:

For the chicken: 

• In a small sauce pan, cook the chicken, barbecue sauce, and hot sauce on medium heat until warm. If you are working with raw chicken, cook the chicken first then add the barbecue and hot sauces. 
• I like to cut my chicken into smaller pieces as its cooking to give it a shredded texture. 
• Take off heat and set aside while you prepare the tortillas.

For the quesadillas:

• Pre-heat a non stick skillet to medium heat. 
• Take 4 tortillas and spread a thin layer of butter onto one side. Alternatively, you can use a few spritzes of spray butter, it doesn't sound very fancy but it definitely works.
• Lightly sprinkle sugar onto the buttered side of the tortilla. This is going to lightly caramelize the outside of your quesadilla! 
• Place your tortilla butter side down onto the skillet, add 1/4 of your chicken and 1/4 to 1/3 cups of shredded cheese. 
• Fold in half and cook on each side until golden brown.

Nutritional Info: I use the recipe builder on MyFitnessPal to calculate this

Total: Calories: 1388 Carbs: 135 Fat: 51 Protein: 70 Fiber: 4

Per Serving (4): Calories: 347 Carbs: 34 Fat: 13 Protein: 18 Fiber: 1

WW Points+ Per Serving: 9

Cookie Dough Ice Cream Muffins

After seeing this rage comic on Reddit, I knew I had to try this out!

Ingredients: 

1 pint of Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream, softened. 

1 1/2 cups of self raising flour 

If you don't have self raising flour, you can make your own with 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt. This will be a little courser than your store bought self raising flour.

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line muffin tin with your favorite muffin cups.

 
Mix self- raising flour and softened Ice cream together until smooth. I did this with my electric mixer. You can substitute your favorite pint of ice cream, we didn't want to go too crazy for our first try. 

 
Spoon the batter in your muffin cups, about 3/4 of the way full. 

 
Bake in oven for about 20 minutes. 

 
Let cool on a wire rack and enjoy! They were so tasty! We tried to make them again with a low fat ice cream but the consistency was a little off.

Nutritional Info: I use the recipe builder on MyFitnessPal to calculate this
Total: Calories: 1580 Carbs: 207 Fat: 72 Protein: 29 Fiber: 5
Per Serving (12): Calories: 132 Carbs: 17 Fat: 6 Protein: 2 Fiber: 0
WW Points+ Per Serving: 4

Chocolate Peanut Butter Granola Bars

These granola bars are so delicious! They are the perfect little snack to sneak in your lunch bag. 
The recipe I adapted this from called for making the granola in an 8x8 inch pan, but to be honest that's just not enough granola bars for me so I doubled the recipe. The first time I made them, as you can see, it wasn't enough to fill the whole cookie sheet. So I adjusted the recipe and made a second batch (in a different flavor) and it fit just right!

Ingredients: 

• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 3/4 cup crushed pretzels
• 2 to 3 cups Cocoa Krispies - you can use any cereal! If you use a smaller cereal lean toward 3 cups. 
• 1 cup chocolate chips
•  3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup honey
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spread oats on a cookie sheet. Bake until the oats are lightly toasted, shaking the pan halfway through, about 10-15 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl. Add cereal, pretzels, and chocolate chips; toss to combine.

Combine peanut butter, brown sugar, honey, vanilla and salt in a small saucepan. Over medium-low heat, stir frequently until the mixture bubbles lightly, 2 to 5 minutes. If you prefer your granola bars to be less sweet, omit the brown sugar. 

Line a cool cookie sheet with aluminum foil and coat with cooking spray.

Immediately pour the peanut butter mixture over the dry ingredients and mix with a  spatula until well mixed. Transfer onto the cool cookie sheet and press the mix down firmly to make an even layer. Refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes; cut into bars. 

OR Build your own!

The base recipe of these granola bars is oats and the peanut butter mixture. If you would prefer to mix it up you can replace the cereal, pretzels, and chocolate chips with the following:

• Nuts
• Dried Fruit
• Sunflower seeds
• Flax seeds
• M&M’s
• Marshmallows
• Graham Crackers –Goldfish makes a whole line of Grahams even a vanilla cupcake flavor!

My second batch was a PB and J flavored granola made with extra oats, honey graham goldfish, and raisins. -adapted from Eating Well. 


I decided not to include nutritional information on this recipe because there are so many ingredient options. If you would like to find out, you can use the recipe finder on myfitnesspal.com

Quiche for One

I love Breakfast for dinner! I combined 3 different quiche recipes into my dream quiche. This recipe is for delicious single serving quiches with a hash brown crust! These make great left overs, if there is any left. 

Ingredients:

•  2 tablespoons butter, softened. Plus some to coat the muffin pan.
• 1 lb frozen hash browns, thawed
• 7 large eggs
• 1 cup reduced fat sour cream
•  ¾ shredded gruyere cheese
•  6 pieces of bacon
•  1/3 cup onion
•  Coarse ground salt
• Black pepper

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 and coat large muffin cups with butter. We used the muffin tins that make 6 large muffins.

Cut raw bacon into ½ to 1inch strips. In a nonstick pan cook bacon to your preferred crispiness; keep in mind that it will cook up more while in the oven. Half way through cooking your bacon, add 1/3 cup onions and sauté in the bacon grease. I used frozen onions because that’s all we had at the time.

Squeeze extra moisture from hash browns. Mix in a bowl with 2 tablespoons butter, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon coarse salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Pat into bottom of muffin cups.  Use a moistened measuring cup if needed. Bake until set, about 15 minutes.

In a large bowl whisk sour cream, 1 ½ tablespoon coarse salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper and 6 eggs together until well combined. 

Sprinkle bacon and onion mixture into the bottom of cups, distribute evenly. Pour in about 1/3 cup of mixture into each cup adding more if needed. Sprinkle gruyere cheese on top. Bake 20-25 minutes until set.

Nutritional Info:

Total: Calories: 2214 Carbs: 114 Fat: 133 Protein: 115 Fiber: 11

Per Serving (6): Calories: 369 Carbs: 19 Fat: 22 Protein: 19 Fiber: 2

Weight Watchers Points Plus: 9