Liquid Cake!

50-90 calorie Liquid Devil's Food Cake

Today I’m not posting a recipe so much as a suggestion.  It’s probably obvious at this point that I have a bit of a sweet-tooth, and that’s been my biggest challenge to overcome so far as striving to maintain a healthy diet.  I’ve found a brilliant alternative to cakes, and cookies, and all that other sweet stuff though: TEA!

I’ve always been a tea lover, but a while back I started venturing into the world of loose leaf teas and varieties beyond what you’re going to find on the shelf at the local grocery store.  I’d tried a few supposed “chocolate” flavored teas and such in the past, but was pretty disappointed.  Now I know though that not all tea is created equal, and if you go for the right thing, brewed correctly, you’re going to be pretty amazed by how extravagant tea can taste.

Some of my favorites from Tattle Tea.
French Toast Chai, Honeybear Green Chai (salted caramel honey), Blueberry Lemon Cake Rooibos, and Forbidden Love Oolong Chai (devil's food cake).

My current favorite sources for tea are Tattle Tea and The Spice and Tea Exchange.  There are so many creamy tasting or right-out cake flavored teas to choose from!  On a whim a few months ago, I tried steeping the Black Chocolate tea from Spice and Tea Exchange purely in milk, and to my surprise wound up with the most decadent tasting hot chocolate I have ever had!

What you need:
Yummy tea of your choice
Milk or milk alternative of your choice
Sweetener of your choice...or no sweetener; whatevs.

To create my liquid cake, I heat the milk on high in a sauce pan just until it starts frothing, then pour it over tea leaves into my cast iron tea pot and steep it just as I would in water.

Using regular dairy milk and sugar still made for a fairly high-calorie treat for me though, so I started looking to alternatives that might make this a treat I could enjoy more often.  I love my raw sugar, but I’ve found Truvia to be an acceptable alternative, and I’ve found out I’m quite a fan of soy and almond milk, which have way fewer calories than dairy milk.  Yes, I know skim milk is also an option, but...yuck.  Go for it if you want some watery-bleh-icky tea, but I'm telling you there are better options.  Silk vanilla soy milk is my personal favorite!

Cookie Butter is NOT a part of a balanced breakfast...but a teaspoon of it can be on some double fiber wheat bread paired with low-cal almond milk tea.

Recently, I brewed up the Forbidden Love (devil's food cake flavored chai) tea from Tattle Tea in Silk Vanilla Almond Milk and added two teaspoons of Truvia baking blend sweetener.  The result: 90 calorie cake in a glass!

And last night?  Decaf French Toast Chai in Silk Unsweetened Almond Milk + 2 tsp Truvia baking blend = 50 calorie liquid French toast glory.  I mean, seriously.  You can have three cups of this and still come out healthier than a single tall chai latte at Starbucks (and having once been an addict of those, I can attest that this alternative is actually tastier).

The options for creating liquid cake are endless, and I'm having a pretty great time experimenting.  For anyone else with a disastrous sweet tooth, it's worth a try, and cheaper than a slice of cake, too!

Most importantly, liquid cake is Weebie-approved!

90 Calorie Fudgy Brownies

I was faced with an interesting challenge this weekend:  make a holiday dinner for my family- one that they can enjoy and so can I- without everything tasting like crazy “health” food.  I succeeded by using lots of vegetables, baked chicken, and being a little more generous with the butter than I would if I were cooking purely for myself, but my favorite thing I made?

90 calorie brownies.

And I didn’t tell anyone what they were until after they’d taken a few bites, because you’d seriously never know.  Here’s the recipe: http://www.eat-yourself-skinny.com/2012/04/diet-coke-brownies.html

Here's what you need:

12 oz Diet Coke

1 Package Pilsbury Sugar Free Brownie Mix

Makes 12 servings

Yes, for real, you just need a can of diet coke and some brownie mix.  The original recipe is 115 calories per brownie, but by using the sugar free mix, I was able to cut it down to 90 calories! 

My Domestically Impaired Requisite Cooking Goof-Up this time was using a special brownie pan that has a lift-out sleeve for cooling once the brownies are done baking.  Don’t use those for this recipe, folks.  The mix is going to be more liquidy than usual, and it will leak.  And your kitchen will smell like burnt stuff.  And it’ll take you three rounds of soaking your oven with 409 and scraping with a spatula to remove the burnt gunk.  But your brownies are still going to taste amazing!

On to the instructions….

Just mix the diet coke with the brownie mix, pour it into a (non-leaking) pan, and bake according to the instructions.  It might take a little longer than the package says for them to bake if you don’t like your brownies as gooey as I do.  Either way, the result is going to be a rich, fudgy wonder akin to the flavor of a flourless chocolate torte. They're still not particularly nutritious (yeah, check out that carb content), but they're a pretty awesome alternative to your average calorie packed brownie!

Nutrition Facts:

Calories- 90

Fat- 2.5g

Carbs- 23.1

Protein- 1

Fiber- 3g