Easy Freezy “JELLatO” May 30, 2009

Now that that’s taken care of, on to the recipe of the day. Apparently, heat waves don’t spur great ice cream renovations in the kitchen, “cold waves” do. It was most definitely noticeably colder yesterday, and…I discovered the perfect fat-free, sugar-free ice cream recipe. Well, okay, TECHNICALLY, there’s no such thing as “fat-free, sugar-free ice cream,” because ice cream is defined at being high in sugar and fat (some etymological thing). Who cares, though, right?

So, as I was cleaning (yes, I know, I know…me? cleaning?!) my pantry yesterday, I found a bag full of evaporated milk cans lying on the floor. I must have gone a little “evaporated milk happy” last Thanksgiving when I first discovered the plethora of uses for the stuff. I pick one up: “Best if used by 6/09/09″. Oh great, there’s like *counts* FIVE cans of this stuff. And most baking recipes call for only half a can if even that. So the itty bitty wheels in my head start turning, albeit slowly, and I move from evaporated milk to refrigerated milk to yogurt/cheeses to creamy substances in general to ICE CREAM. Yay. It’s summertime too and the Blue Bunny ones at Wal-Mart are getting expensive.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Add other ingredients: stabilizer, thinner, flavor….would it work? My god! It did!!!!

Just so you know, I gave up on my ice cream maker after wasting an entire half gallon of soymilk and half a container of peanut butter ($3.50-$4.00 worth of ingredients!) on a very botched batch of peanut butter gelato. Not to mention the huge mess I had to deal with afterward as I tried to salvage the doomed treat. So, from now on (unless I somehow acquire a semi-decent ice cream maker (does such a thing exist?)), all my “ice cream” recipes will be made using the “mix, freeze for awhile, mix again, freeze again, mix again and so on” method. I’m sure it would be better if you had an actual functioning ice cream maker that doesn’t annoy the shit out of you, so………..(I forgot what my point was), uh, always keep that in mind? I guess.

I’m beginning to think there may have been some brain damage in that car accident….
Anyway, on to the recipe whose secret ingredient, as I’m sure you’ve already deduced, is JELL-O!!!! pudding. Yay!!!!!

Cheery Cherry Cheesecake

Basic Recipe
1. 1.4 oz container JELL-O sf/ff instant pudding and pie filling mix
2. 1 cup milk
3. 1 12oz can evaporated fat free milk (NOT CONDENSED MILK)
4. sweetners to taste (for the basic vanilla, use about 2T of sugar and 2T of sugar substitute…the real sugar will help eliminate ice crystals and give it a better mouth feel).
→Simple: Mix well, chill and freeze by following your ice-cream maker’s directions or using the “freeze/mix/freeze/mix…” method described above.

Some Flavor Suggestions
1. Cherry Cheesecake: use cheesecake flavored pudding mix and stir in about half a can of no sugar added cherry pie filling (only 105 calories for 1 cup) before you began the freezing process.

2. Chocoberry: use chocolate fudge (or white chocolate) pudding mix and stir in some sugar free berry flavored jam as close to the end of the freezing process as you can (so it makes swirls). This one works a little better with an ice cream maker because you can add the jam in while the machine is turning.

3. (Orange) Chocolate Chip: use vanilla pudding mix and stir in sugar-free chocolate chips (the same way as in the chocoberry). Or, for an orange version, mix in some sf orange drink mix with the pudding mix.

4. I don’t know! I’m all out of ideas. But I bet you could turn any of your favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavors into a “Ben and Jerry’s like substance”!

A Question May 24, 2009

Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile. I have a good excuse though: I hit a tree. On the highway. Doesn’t leave much time for kitchen experimenting.

I do have a question for anyone and everyone who happens upon this blog though…

How do you feel about baby food? Like the pureed fruits that come in a can that you give to little kids. Not as a staple, but in the winter when there’s very little good fruit or if you live somewhere the climate isn’t generally conducive to fruit growing (like Michigan). I was super excited about it when I walked through the aisle at Meijer and tried some, but then I heard that it’s really not even that good for you.

SO before I start making up recipes with it….any thoughts?

Another Frozen Delight (Plus Fruit!) May 17, 2009

Here’s another one for the ice cream maker, designed for personalization. It’s actually frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, but since it seems probiotics are the new rage…why not?

I broke out my ice cream maker to make the peanut butter gelato and, annoying piece of crap that it is, I figured that I might as well make another recipe while I was at it. (I have one of the old fashioned ice and rock salt makers so it’s a pain to clean out the rock salt and takes up a ton of room in the sink).

I opened the fridge to see what I had left that could be turned into ice cream. Soymilk? No, generally too hard to improvise with due to lack of fat and consistency. Cottage cheese? No, I’d have to blenderize it first, meaning I’d have to clean the blender. And then there it was, the answer: My Kroger Carbsmart yogurts.

Now what to add? I could always make vanilla, but that would be boring. Anything chocolate chip has too many calories. Baby food! My new addiction has come to some culinary use…

Fruity Fro-yo Makes 1 Quart
1. 8 oz. yogurt of choice
2. 1 cup pureed fruit (I used about four containers of baby food)
3. sweetener (if you need it…taste the mix–it should be sweeter than you want it to be when it’s done)
4. a pinch of xanthan or guar gum (this is optional, but will give the fro-yo a creamier mouth feel when it’s done)
5. a tablespoon of vegetable glycerin or liquor (also optional but it will keep the ice cream from freezing up too hard if you want to store it for later)
→Mix it all together, chill it and churn it up in the ice cream maker. Yummy…

I know the liquor might be a problem for some who are opposed to alcohol. Keep in mind it’s only a tablespoon but, if you’re under 21, try to find the vegetable glycerin or just make enough so that you and whoever else is around can it it within a few hours.

Chick’n Parmigiano May 8, 2009

So this is one of those really easy recipes that don’t require much work. No story behind this one, just bored one day and needed something that didn’t require work. I had one veggie chicken breast left but I was out of the peanut butter I use to make the pb chick’n and broccoli, so, here it is.

Chick’n Parmesan Serves 1
1. 1 fake or real chicken breast
2. 1/4c. no sugar added spaghetti sauce (Hunt’s is great, or I might post a quick recipe for it later)
3. 1/4c fat free or low fat mozzarella cheese
4. a pinch of parmesan
5. garlic and or italian seasoning (as much as you want!)
→Spray a small (shallow) baking dish with nonstick spray. Season the breast (or fake breast preferably!) with garlic, italian seasoning or pepper. Put it in the dish and pour pasta sauce over it (you can use more sauce if you want). Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes (I did mine in a toaster oven, so I did it at 350 instead for 55 minutes). Sprinkle with cheese and bake for about five minutes. You’re done! Yummy italian with less than 10 minutes of work!

If you must, dip it in some textured vegetable protein, flaxmeal (ground up flaxseeds, oat flour (ground up oat bran), bread crumbs made from low calorie bread or oat bran before putting it in the dish. Use very little though because all of those things not only add calories, but also change the texture/taste of the food because they don’t act the same way as bread does (except the bread crumbs from low calorie bread).

Cheesecake May 1, 2009

So, at the request of one of my coworkers, I’m going to post a recipe for cheesecake. The filling is actually stolen off of the Jello website, but the crust is all my own.

Cheesecake Crust
1. 1 cup bread crumbs (the trick her is to use a low-density bread, any of the light varieties will do, or some kind of low carb product…don’t make the crumbs too fine and you’ll end up with a little bit of a courser crust but with a LOT less calories)
2. flavorings and/or splenda (be creative: if you decide to make the crust with cocoa powder and splenda, add some mint extract to the filling, which I’ll get to in a minute).
3. 2.5T I can’t believe it’s not butter LIGHT (or other low calorie butter-like substance) plus enough water to make it stick.
→Mix crumbs and flavorings. Mix in melted butter and press into a springform pan. Cool. Or don’t. Doesn’t really matter

Cheesecake Filling
2/3 cup boiling water
1 pkg. (3 oz.) JELL-O Sugar Free Gelatin
1 cup Low Fat Cottage Cheese
1 tub (8 oz.) Fat Free Cream Cheese
2 cups thawed Fat Free or Sugar Free Whipped Topping
→Add boiling water to gelatin mix; stir 2 min. until completely dissolved. Cool 5 min.; pour into blender. Add cottage cheese and cream cheese; blend well. Pour into large bowl. Gently stir in topping. Pour on top of crust. Refrigerate for awhile.

Okay, that filling was copied mostly from the Jello website, but, here’s my take on it. That cheesecake is good, for something simple that, unfortunately, tastes just as simple.

If you want to mix it up, replace some of the cool whip with jello sugar-free, fat-free instant pudding + milk–more flavor combinations, and less calories depending on the milk. If you really want to take control, use unflavored gelatin and just go wild. Whatever. Add fruit, add nuts, use lowfat cream cheese and fat free cottage cheese, do it without the crust, pour it in muffin tins, use the filling as a face cream…really, it’s your cheesecake, do what you want with it (unless, of course, it’s for someone else, in which case you should do what THEY want with it).