Gorgonzola Honey Bites

Sounds weird right? Why would I want cheese and honey together? 

Because it's delicious. 

I found the recipe for these at 

The Girl Who Ate Everything

I didn't use a baguette like she did because I didn't have one. I used a loaf of multigrain bread and sliced it. Still delicious!

Ingredients: 

1 loaf of bread (unsliced) or a baguette

EVOO- I have a spray bottle of it, so no exact measurements from me!

A container of gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

Honey

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Slice your bread. 

Get some EVOO on your slices. Use a sprayer or brush it on, whatever works for you!

Toast the slices in the oven for about 8 minutes.

Take them out, add cheese, and back in the oven they go!

Let the cheese melt, it takes about 4-5 minutes.

Take them out, drizzle with honey and enjoy!

I've had these suckers for the past 2 days for lunch! Yummmmm.

Oh yeah, here's some nutritional info! It will vary depending on what kind of bread you use. This info is for my multigrain bread, about 3 thin slices like you see pictured above. 

Amazeballs Cakeballs

How can you not want to eat these every day for the rest of your life?

I don't like cake. But I love cakeballs! They're cute, they're little, they're tasty. And best of all, if you know how to make a cake, you know how to make cakeballs!

I am not even going to try to guess the nutritional info for these. Let's be honest. If you're going to eat cakeballs, you probably aren't concerned about the calories. Just do it. Just don't do it every day :p

Ingredients! 

One box of cake mix of your choice. I used yellow cake mix. 

However many eggs your cake mix calls for (mine called for 3)

Oil

One container of frosting of your choice. I used whipped buttercream. 

For the coating: If you want to do ALL vanilla candy coating, get TWO packages of it. I did some cakeballs in that (I only used 1 package), and some in semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used less than half a bag of those). If you only wanna do chocolate chips, get 2 bags to be safe. 
Optional: Food dye (oil based!). I used neon colored gel kind
 sprinkles

Not ingredients but necessary: 3 cake pans. Or 2 if you wanna do dishes between. 2 baking sheets. Wax paper. 

How to do it:

Bake a cake. Follow the directions on the box and bake your cake. 

Let said cake cool completely.

Get a BIG mixing bowl and mix together the entire cake with the entire container of frosting.

Form that mixture into cutesy little cake balls and place them in a separate cake pan (you'll probably need 2 cake pans), like so:

Pop those bad boys in the freezer for anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours. You just want them to get nice and firm. If they aren't when you dip them in the coating, it's gonna be bad news bears.

The coating part is the only somewhat challenging part of the cakeball process. On your container of candy coating or package of chocolate chips, there should be instructions on how to melt them. Follow those instructions, only melting about 1/4 of the package at a time. 


After you take your coating of choice out of the microwave, you'll need to stir it and add oil to make it liquid-y enough to coat the balls. Eyeball the oil, that's what I do. I add some, stir it, if it's not enough, I add more. Not real complicated stuff here. I also added my food dye at this point.


Once you have the consistency you want, drop in one ball at a time, swirl it around with a spoon, and get it out with either a toothpick or the spoon. Place each ball on a baking sheet that has been topped with wax paper. If you want to add sprinkles, do it individually, before you dip the next ball in the coating. Think about it, sprinkles won't stick if the surface of what you are sprinkling them on isn't sticky, kapeesh? 


Place the baking sheets in your fridge or freezer to let the coating get hard. Once it is, you can put them on a dish a stick them in the fridge. Make sure to keep the cakeballs chilled, they taste better that way and the coating doesn't get all weird that way. 

In case you didn't see the super obvious picture at the top, here's what these amazing balls of awesomeness look like. Doesn't get any better than that folks. 

Crepes with Strawberry/Raspberry Mascarpone Filling

Growing up, one of my favorite breakfast dishes was something our family calls "palacinkas." Pronounced palah-chinkas, these are basically crepes, but with an awesome Croatian name :) You fill them up with anything you want. My favorite fillings were cottage cheese, peanut butter, jelly, and some cinnamon sugar. 

This past week, an online "Biggest Loser" competition I'm participating in had a challenge of creating a healthy recipe using strawberries. The obvious choice was a low-calorie strawberry shortcake or something like that, but I decided to go outside my comfort zone and try to put a new twist on one of my old favorites. And that brought me to create these crepes. 

First thing you should know is I've never worked with three of the major ingredients, raspberries, mascarpone cheese, or crepes. I had never in my life made a palacinka, that's dad's job. But last night I made an attempt it, and it turned it deliciously! 

Here's the nutrition information:

Nutrition info for 2 crepes filled with about 1/5 cup of the filling (in each):
Calories-164
Carbs- 7
Fat- 13
Protein- 4
Sugar- 3

Ingredients you'll need are:

1 package of mascarpone cheese (you'll only use half of it, about 8 tbsp)

fresh strawberries and raspberries (as many as you want)

1/4 cup flour

1 cup of original almond milk (or whatever milk you want)

2 egg whites

1 tbsp of oil

1/4 tbsp of salt

and a juicer.

To make the filling: 

In a bowl, mix together the juice from about 4 strawberries and raspberries (4 of each that is) with the mascarpone cheese.  

Fold in any extra sliced strawberries or raspberries you'd like.

Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

To make the crepe batter:

Combine flour and salt, mix.

Whisk in milk, egg whites, and oil. 

Stir until well blended. M

My batter had chunks in it that looked like cottage cheese, I don't know why, nothing was spoiled, lol, but that's just how mine mixed!

In a well sprayed pan, pour just enough of the batter to make a very very thin layer. These should be like super thin pancakes. Let the batter brown on one side, flip, and let it get browned on the other side. Badabingbadaboom you have a crepe/palacinka. 

This is what mine looked like

Take those, fill them with the filling, and top with raspberries and/or strawberries and enjoy!!

Pan Seared Peaches

Does it get any better than fresh summer peaches?


Yes, it does, believe it or not. 


Imagine those delicious peaches simmered in butter, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and sugar. 


Just thinking about that makes me drool almost as much as this does:

Back to the topic at hand, these peaches. 

Here's the damage from these bad boys:

And your ingredients

I left out the vanilla extract in the picture because that was a last minute addition, but SOOOO neccessary, so don't forget it!!

Here's what you do!

Optional: Peel your peach. I don't like feeling like I'm eating a mustache so I peel mine.

Not optional: pit your peach. 

Slice your peaches. *See note at bottom! You can either halve them or do lots of little slices.

Put the butter and vanilla extract in a pan, set it on medium high heat and let the butter melt.

Toss in those peaches!

Sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar. 

Let them simmer in all that goodness and then pour it on a plate.

Devour. 

They'll look like this:

And taste like this:

*Note:This recipe is called pan seared peaches because originally I just halved the peaches and placed them face down in the pan and let them get seared. They looked like this:

See the golden goodness on top? I wanted that all over the peaches so I sliced them and got that goodness on both sides of all my slices. Yummmmm.

English Muffin Melt

I have a confession.
I have a deep, passionate love for flatbreads.


I looked in the commissary yesterday at some flatbreads. And guess how many calories there were in ONE. 250. Yep. 250 calories. For one flatbread. With no toppings. 


No thank you. 


I've used pita bread before, but today I decided to try out English Muffins as flatbreads. I was pleasantly surprised! I think you will be, too :)

Here's the nutritional info:

And in case you can't read, here's a visual of our ingredients

I accidentally ate the last slice of tomato I had, hence the sign, lol.

Preparation:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. Slice your tomato so you have two slices. Or you can dice them, whatever tickles your pickle!
3. Slice or open your english muffin.
4. Okay, now you're prepared. 

Directions:

1. Spread one wedge of the cheese on each half of the english muffin.
2. Place 1 slice of tomato on each half.
3. Place as much spinach on each half of the muffin as you like. I did two leaves per half. 
4. Sprinkle as much parmesan cheese on top as you like. I did about a tbsp. 
5. Place on baking sheet, in a casserole dish, whatever you want, and put it in the oven.
6. I cooked mine for about 7-10 minutes. I just kept checking on it and took it out when I felt like it was ready :p 

And when you take it out, it'll look like this:

JK, I don't know who that is. It'll look like an english muffin flatbread. 

This was so cheesy and delicious, I loved it, I hope you do, too!

Zucchini Chips

We all do it!

At some point, we all have bought TOO MUCH of one vegetable. You see it in the store, you think, wow, I love this stuff! I can make so much with this! So you scoop it up, take it home, and it sits in your crisper until...well..who knows how long! 

I have this problem with zucchini. But tonight I found the PERFECT way to get rid of my zucchini. 

Zucchini Chips

See my yummy cucumber salad and tofu along with it?

Nutritional Information:

Ingredients:

1 zucchini

1/4 cup breadcrumbs

1 raw egg white

1-2 tbsp of almond milk or any milk

Optional:

Seasoned salt, onion powder, pepper, Parmesan cheese (the kind you shake out)

You should also have a wire rack to bake the zucchini chips on.

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 475 degrees.

Slice the zucchini

Mix the egg white and milk together in a container, then dunk your zucchini slices in this.

Mix the breadcrumbs and any spices together in a bowl, then dredge the zucchini chips into this  mixture so they are fully covered.

Place zucchini chips on a greased wire rack, place that onto a cookie sheet*, and bake for 25 minutes.

*If you want to add Parmesan cheese, I would add it at this point.

These were even better than I could have imagined! And for the calories they are a nice treat and seem naughtier than they really are ;) 

Cucumber Salad

Looks yummy, right? It is! This cucumber salad is a great side dish that's light and crisp and delicious all over! 

Nutritional Information:

 (now you can see about how much I used of everything! Everybody wins!)

Here are some of the ingredients we'll be using for this:

• Mayo (optional, I wanted my salad to be slightly creamy. I used about 1/2 a tbsp.)
• Rice vinegar
• Dill weed
• Red onion 
• Tomato
• Cucumber
• Egg

I also added salt and pepper to taste. 

Note: If you don't like eggs, don't put them in your cucumber salad! I LOVE eggs and love any excuse to include them in a dish. When added to this salad they give a pretty significant egg flavor so keep that in mind!

While I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to make this salad, I'll tell you how just in case.

Preparation:

1. Hard boil your egg.
2. Peel your cucumber if you want. You don't have to! Slice it. I sliced mine into circles and then sliced those again to make more bite-friendly pieces.
3. Dice your tomato into small pieces.
4. Slice your onion. I sliced my onion into rings and then sliced the rings four ways.
5. Once the hard boiled egg is cooked and cooled, slice it also.
6. Mix the mayo and rice vinegar in the bowl you plan to serve the salad in. 
7. Mix all sliced ingredients in the bowl.
8. Add dill weed and salt and pepper if desired. 
9. Mix it all together!
10. Serve chilled and enjoy!