Baking

I haven't been doing much baking over the past year, other than single serving items, because I don't have anyone to feed them to. We all know what happens if you make a couple of dozen cookies and don't have any plans for them, right?

Well, since my inlaws were visiting for the weekend and my mother in law likes to bake, we thought we'd try out a few recipes while there were people around to enjoy them. One of them turned out great- the other not quite how we intended!

I got an email from the Splenda Recipe Club for Raspberry Heart Cookies. They seemed very similar to a recipe I used to make for shortbread cookies filled with jam, so I wanted to give it a try. Of course, even though it is a fairly low calorie recipe, the protein count was far too low to be a substitute for a Nutrisystem dessert. I thought I could modify it by adding protein powder, and substituting whole wheat flour instead of white to lower the glycemic index count. I also substituted the remaining butter for margarine.

However, I forgot that while it's easy to play with ingredients and quantities in cooking, it's quite a different story with baking! Changing the ratio of ingredients can product a very different tasting recipe, let alone substituting so much of the original recipe. These cookies were absolutely nothing like what I had intended, but surprisingly, they still tasted really good!

Flex Meals (Dessert):



Accidentally Delicious Jam Cookies:

1 1/4 cups margarine
1 cup Splenda
1 tbsp vanilla
1/4 cup Egg Beaters
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup milk
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup SF strawberry jam
6 scoops protein powder (1 scoop = 120 calories, 23g protein)

Blend together margarine, Splenda and vanilla in a medium mixing bowl. Add egg substitute, water and milk. Mix briefly. Add flours, salt, protein powder, and baking powder. Do not overmix. Chill for one hour in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a cookie sheet with PAM. Spoon batter onto the cookie sheet into round circles, and use your thumb to make a depression in the centre of each cookie. Spoon jam into each depression. Bake for 14 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Makes 24 servings. Each cookie has 120 calories, 14g carbs, 4g fat, and 8.5g protein.

See, these were originally to be rolled out and cut into shapes but once we added the protein powder there was too much flour, and adding more liquid ingredients made it sticky instead of doughy so we switched to drop cookies. I was expecting to have to throw them away but they were actually yummy and got eaten right away!


The second recipe, also modified from the Splenda Recipe Club, came out much closer to what we expected, since we got smart and reduced the flour by the quantity of protein powder we were adding. This recipe is protein packed and delicious warm either with a drizzle of SF maple syrup or maybe with some FF cream cheese frosting.

Flex Meals (Dessert):



Pumpkin Loaf Cupcakes:

1/3 cup + 1 tbsp vanilla Greek yogurt
2 cups pumpkin puree
3/4 cup Egg Beaters
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 scoops protein powder
3/4 cup Splenda
4 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup dried cranberries (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together all wet ingredients in a bowl and the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir well. Pour the mix into a sprayed cupcake pan and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Makes 16 servings.

These came out really nicely. They aren't super sweet so if you'd like them to be, then either add more Splenda or perhaps some SF pancake syrup to the batter. As they are listed (with no cranberries), each cupcake contains 132 calories, 18g carbs, 4g fat, and 7g protein.


If you're looking for a new dessert to liven things up a bit, I would definitely recommend either of these recipes!