Low-Calorie Whipped Cream

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My friend went to Korea and all I got was pictures of food

Ok, well, that’s not entirely true. But aren’t there T-shirts that say something like that?

All of the pictures and descriptions in the slideshow were taken by my good friend, Susannah Hope. All I did was “enhance” them in iPhoto and crop some of them to remove background. Since this is a vegetarian blog, I removed all the photos of meat. (Sorry, Susannah, I love you, but I can’t approve of you eating animals!)

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I’m actually a little jealous because, judging by these pictures, she has a much better camera than my puny cell phone one.

Ice Cream Maker Review: Hamilton Beach Half-Pint

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Another Banana Split (and homemade ice-cream)

I’m in posting deprivation! Well, to be honest, it’s more like cooking deprivation due to excessive procrastination of the academic nature. Hopefully, I’ll make some progress in the food invention field when my summer classes are over.

I made this last night for dinner when I couldn’t think of anything else. I went out for a walk, not realizing it was 80 degrees outside (in Michigan?!!), and came back dying for something cold, creamy, juicy and cold. I swear if I had the 90-calorie/scoop brownie fudge ice cream from Wal-Mart in my freezer I would have just dug right in to that with my index finger. (I have modified the Weight Watchers core plan to include ice cream provided it has roughly the same nutritional content of prepared sugar-free/fat-free Jell-O pudding and some other food items that hard-core dieters would abhor me for….more on that later). To be fair, I didn’t actually end up eating it till midnight because I realized that I hadn’t taken my online exam which was due AT MIDNIGHT, but it was even better then.

This recipe has two parts: the first is the ice cream and the second is the banana split. I wish I would have taken a picture of the ice cream part because, in the final picture, it got covered up with all the delicious chopped fruit (as did the banana). Ah well, just use your “i-ma-gin-a-tion” (mental image of Spongebob Squarepants drawing a rainbow over his head) to see the three big scoops of vanilla “ice cream” that are under all the delicious fruit.

No room for cereal....

Banana Split (Part II)

See recipe notes for amounts.

• Fruit of choice: banana (obviously), strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, kiwi….yes, I’m a tropical fruit gal
• Cereal of choice (optional)
• Yogurt (I made vanilla ice cream so I used vanilla yogurt)
• Jell-O pudding mix (always sugar free/fat free), flavor of choice (mine was vanilla again)
• Milk (to make the Jell-O)

→Make the “ice cream”:
First, make the pudding (just follow the package).
Add yogurt to the prepared pudding (NOTE: the yogurt is optional…I dumped it in to add nutrition and bulk for fewer calories. Think about how much you want here: mine was a meal, so I used 6oz of yogurt and 2 servings of pudding, which was A LOT).
Stir the two together vigorously until well blended.
Put it in an ice cream maker or use the freeze-mix-freeze method described earlier.
Construct your banana split once the ice cream is ready:
Cut the banana in half lengthwise, so you end up with two strips. Put them in a dish and glob the ice cream in between.
Top with the toppings. Yummy!

Side Note: I know I tagged this with “quick” (even though it took ME 4 hours to make it). If you have an ice cream maker that you can figure out how to work, it’ll take less than 15-20 minutes. Plus, the hands-on time is really only about 5-10 minutes (depending on your chopping dexterity).

Mangoes: like better bananas (and an Indian drink recipe)

A recent statistic I read somewhere stated that the U.S. population eats a startlingly large amount of bananas each year (yes, I read a lot of random (and usually pointless) “statistics” and what not), which kind of bothers me because, well, I’m not really too fond of them. Although I do think one of the doctors I know makes up for the whole lot of us that aren’t particularly fond of the fruit.

It’s not really so much that I don’t like the taste, or the texture but it’s really more of a calorie/water content thing. When I think of fruit, I think of something that is a) water in chewable form (yes, I do love to eat plain crushed ice) and b) something that is sweet and filling, with hardly any calories for the amount of fullness. Bananas, because of their starchiness, are more like bread to me and, therefore, I always considered them more of a treat than a fruit.

Enter the mango: just as sweet as the banana but more refreshing, more colorful and, unfortunately, so much more messy. Equally saddening is the fact that, while bananas are available in abundance year round for a fairly cheap price, mangoes are a much rarer commodity but most definitely worth the hunt. So, in the spirit of the hunt (or, in most cases wait), I bring you my favorite mango smoothie, straight from India.

Mango Lassi Ice Cream

Mango Lassi pronounced la(like the note)-si (spanish)

• Mangoes (I used three medium ones, which gave me about 3 cups cubed)
• 1 cup plain yogurt (I used fat-free)
• 1/2 cup milk (I used 8th continent light soymilk)
• sugar to taste (about 3-4 splendas) *see note*

→Put all of the ingredients in a blender and blend on high until smooth. I used my Vita-Mix so I didn’t need to do anything to get it going, but if you’re using a regular blender, you might want to puree the mangoes in a food processor first.
 

Note: The proportion of sugar/splenda can be varied according to taste. I wanted a more mango-y flavor to my drink (because I love those mangoes oh so much), but you could easily increase the sugar and use less mango. The typical Indian drink uses close to 6T sugar (depending on who’s making it). If you’re not to fond of mangoes (is it possible?), you can eliminate the mangoes all together and make plain LASSI, but that will require quite a bit of sugar.

ALSO, don’t even think about using sweetened yogurt. Part of the charm of this drink is the sweet goodness playing off of the tang of the yogurt. Dare I reference a certain frozen yogurt chain in California….

Ice Cream-less Banana Split (with a cherry on top)

So I came home from work yesterday (around 8:30) and, the moment I stepped in the door, I had this incredible urge to be thin and binge all at the same time (I used to have these a lot when I was really overweight). It’s a strange feeling to stand there, with a million things on your mind, and be able to think about nothing more than being thin and eating a cookie.

I realized pretty early on in my life that “being thin” was never going to come easy for me. I figured that, school was easy and I was smart and creative, skinny being easy would just make life too boring.

The reason I tell this story, now (and here), is because a) it really was the feeling I experienced as I walked in the door and b) it is what led to the creation of what was to later become the first “like-substance” (I never thought to call them that originally). And. following the eternally cyclical form of the natural world, led to the creation of this one (which is highly adaptable).

Sadly, I didn’t have any cherries (I used all my no sugar added cherry pie filling on the Cherry Cheesecake “Jell(at)-o” I made awhile back, but I would have most definitely put a cherry on top had I had one (because it was just that kind of day).

 

Banana Split (without the cream)

 

Banana + Yogurt + Mmmmmm
1 banana (sliced lengthwise)
Yogurt/thickener of choice (see note)
Toppings (I used sugar free chocolate sauce and Fiber One)
1 cherry
→Put the banana in a dish. Blend the yogurt and thickener (see note) and, using an ice cream scoop (or spoon) glob a few scoops of that in between the two halves of the banana. Top as desired.

Note: This is highly personalize-able. I didn’t have very much on hand, so I mixed some Greek yogurt with Spiru-tein protein powder (cookies and cream flavor). It came out okay, but not the best, so I added one container of pre-made Jell-o sugar free pudding (for the middle two scoops) which helped a little. There are really two “best ways” to make this dessert and still have it be nutritious enough to count as a protein/dairy serving instead of a sugar serving (which would be the case with ANY type of store bought “low-calorie ice cream”:
1. If you have time: instead of the filling above, take any flavor of “light” yogurt (whatever you think sounds good in a banana split) and dump at least two to three 6oz cartons into a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth (you can usually find most of these at the local grocery store or mega-mart). Place the sieve (or cheesecloth) over a container so there’s something to catch the drippings and put the whole thing in the fridge (covered) for a few hours to overnight (depending on how thin your yogurt is). If you do this with plain yogurt, it’ll actually be cheaper, homemade “Greek yogurt”. Advantage: all you need ingredient-wise is the yogurt. Disadvantage: unless you start keeping this stuff around (which I might start doing), it takes a long time to get to the yumminess.

2. Find an extremely thick variety of yogurt (preferably a healthy one) and pick three flavors you like (they can all be the same or any combination). Freeze them just a little bit (unopened, in the carton) until you hear a tiny bit of cracking when you squeeze the outside of the containers (as if there’s a ring of frozen yogurt around the inside of the container). Open the yogurts, hold them upside down over the dish with the banana halves in them and squeeze gently. The entire container of yogurt should fall out at once, forming a container shaped mound. If you do it with all three, you’ll have three “scoops” of frozen yogurt.

You could also make your own yogurt from scratch, but that’s a whole different post.

Easy Freezy “JELLatO”

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”!

Another Frozen Delight (Plus Fruit!)

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.

Peanut Butter Gelato

In the spirit of the (probably short-lived) streak of good weather we’re having, I thought I’d post another ice cream recipe. This one needs an ice cream maker to really get the feel you’re going for, but on the plus side, it’s a great way to stretch that peanut butter flavor farther for fewer calories.

Ice cream like substances are one of my favorite pseudo desserts. Not only for all the same reasons kids scream for it, but also because it seems so apt to pseudo-izing. See, ice cream/frozen yogurt isn’t like cookies or chocolates…it’s not DESIGNED to be unhealthy. In fact, the basic principles behind ice cream are the same as a smoothie and, like most other healthy foods gone bad, the difference between diet friendly ice cream and ben and jerry’s is the same as the difference between a smoothie and a milkshake.

Every ice cream starts the same: dairy, to which is added sweetener and flavorings (there are some ice creams where you add eggs and what not but that’s just too much of a pain for me). You do need a minimal amount of fat for texture, but, as in my other frozen yogurt post, this can usually be worked around by using some chemical additive.

Or, you could just keep the fat and use this necessity as an excuse to get a peanut butter fix for fairly fewer calories than the peanut butter alone would cost you. This is the excuse I used when making this gelato…

Just like Ice Cream
1. 2 cups soymilk (I like 8th continent light original)
2. 1/4c. brown sugar substitute (sugar free maple syrup or splenda…but you might need more-remember when you’re tasting the batter that foods lose flavor as temperature decreases)
3. 1/4c. peanut butter (try to use good stuff, not jif or skippy)
4. 1tsp vanilla

Mix everything together and let the machine do the work. Or you could pour it into a tray, put it in the freezer and stir it every 30-60 minutes.

If you use the 8th Continent Light Original, calorie free maple syrup and Naturally More peanut butter the entire pint comes out to 450 calories….not bad for a pint of ice cream.

Ice Cream…well, more like creamy ice

I don’t know if I’ve done my spiel about frozen yogurt/ice cream yet, but I’m absolutely in love with the stuff. When I was in high school, I used to eat fat-free, sugar free frozen yogurt all the time (this stuff called Only 8, only had 8 calories per oz!), but with this economy, I don’t really have the resources to shell out that much for ice cream as often as I’d like.

And, although they claim to be low fat and low sugar and low blah blah, the “reduced” gallon ice creams you buy at the store aren’t really that low anything. I mean, I could do some serious damage if I ate half the container. Not to mention the fact that it goes down so easy…like, spoon to mouth, barely taste and swallow: before you know it, the whole thing’s gone.

Well, not this stuff. And the best part is you don’t even need one of those fancy-shmancy ice cream makes…just a little blender magic.

Creamy Almost Ice Cream Makes about half a blender full
1/2c cottage cheese (any fat %)
Water and Ice
Flavorings
xanthan or guar gum (I know this sounds scary, but they have it in the baking aisles of both Kroger and Meijer…don’t be scared away by the price because you’ll never use more than a 1/4 TEASPOON at a time)
→Put cottage cheese in the blender
Add about 10 ice cubes and start blending (you might need to add a LITTLE water to get the blades moving)
Put the flavoring in
This is the tricky part: keep adding water and ice until you get the consistency you want…if you go overboard on the water and it becomes too runny, at some of the gum but go VERY slowly because it takes awhile to thicken.

There are so many flavor possibilities to this. Think of your favorite ice cream flavor and you’ll probably be able to recreate it. If you want something like mint chocolate chip, just add mint extract and some sugar free chocolate. If you want something a little more complicated like strawberry cheesecake, toss in some jello sf/ff cheesecake pudding mix with some strawberry chunks. Chances are, if you can think it, you can make it.