Dungeon Dinner Date Night- Cajun Sweet Potato Zucchini Fritters + Chocolate Mousse Cake

Tuesdays in my life have been known as Dungeon Dinner Date night for a while now.  Why?  Well, because on Tuesdays I cook dinner and tote it over to my boyfriend's office....which is decked out to look like a dungeon.  I've never been quite clear on why.  But it has been this way since before his or his boss' time there, I am told.

It's, uh, well....I'm sure there are people who would find it romantic....

I mean, there's rusty shackles on the wall and everything....

Yesterday I decided I was going to rush home and whip up this recipe for sweet potato zucchini fritters with the stuff I picked up at the local farmer's market last week, and my new favorite recipe for single-serve (67 calorie!) brownies, adding a dollop of cookie butter in the middle as a special surprise treat.

And let me tell you, I hated making these things at first.  My spiralizer wasn't cooperating to slice up the veggies as I had planned, so I begrudgingly used a small hand-held grater to grate the majority of the veggies. I also added a special Domestically Impaired ingredient in the form of my thumb nail, which got sliced off by the spiralizer and lost in the zucchini.  At least it wasn't my finger!  

So, nothing was going terribly well.  I thought about quitting and throwing it all out in rage before driving to Panera, but I decided I really wanted to see if these were worth it.

And oh boy, they WERE.

They were smelling pretty amazing by the time I got to this point.  Startlingly so for globs of veggies and spices.

The original recipe calls for chipotle seasoning, but the Ms. Dash Cajun seasoning I used was on sale, and I have no regrets.  They may not look like anything amazing, but these were mind-bogglingly delicious!!!

All crispy and cooling off while I whip up the chocolate cakes!

I mixed up some zesty sour cream to top them with using a package of Old El Paso zesty seasoning mix and light sour cream, but they were so moist on the inside that they really would have been great just plain, I believe.

Loading everything up to head to the Dungeon!

The Boyfriend was very quiet as he took his first bites, so I was nervous that perhaps he wasn't thrilled with them, but I am learning that this is indicative of just the opposite with him.  He later announced that I need to spread the word about these fritters like gospel to people in every land.  They are just that freaking amazing.

Loaded up with sour cream!

The absolute glory of these fritters was further evidenced by the fact that neither of us discussed the molten chocolate cookie butter cakes much.  We were still in awe of the fritters.  And people, let me tell you, Boyfriend and I love us some cookie butter real hard.  

Delicious cookie butter goo!

I'll be making more again very, very soon.  Hopefully minus the thumbnail this time.

-Dungeon Fritters-

What You Need:

1 large zucchini

2 medium sweet potatoes

1/4 cup unsalted butter

2 tbsp all-purpose flour

1 tbsp Egg Beaters egg replacer

2 tsp Ms. Dash Cajun seasoning

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 pepper

makes 6 big ole' average burger patty sized fritters

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with greased parchment paper.  Grate/chop/spiralize/somehow dissect the zucchini and sweet potatoes and add them to a big bowl.  Melt the butter and add this along with the remaining ingredients to the bowl.  Goosh it around then scoop out handfuls and make them burger patty shaped.  Plop them on your parchment paper and bake for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, lower the heat to 350 degrees and pop them back in on the same side for 15 minutes.  Flip them carefully (they may still be goopy on the underside at this point) and bake for another 15 minutes on the opposite side.  Remove and let them cool and set for about 10 minutes before removing them from the parchment paper.

Nutrition Facts:

Calories- 113

Fat- 8g

Carbs- 8g

Fiber- 1g

Sugar- 2g

Protein- 2g

-Zesty Sour Cream-

1 package Old El Paso zesty sour cream seasoning

8 oz light sour cream

Just mix it together! Per 2 tbsp serving- 46 calories, 4 carbs, 2 g fat, 2 g protein, 2g sugar.

Since I really made no changes to the single serve gooey brownie, other than using a no-calorie sweetener and dolloping some cookie butter in the middle for this version, I'll just let the link to it above suffice :)  I have a feeling a post about microwave mug cakes will be happening soon though...it's a growing addiction for me....

Cheesey Veggie Polenta Lasagna- a 272 calorie dinner

I wasn't even sure what polenta is until a week or so ago, but it kept cropping up as a main ingredient in healthy recipes I've come across, so I had to try it out.  If you don't know, it's a bland, corn-meal substance that can easily be transformed into a gluten-free substitute for pasta noodles, dough, and a variety of other things. Recently The Boyfriend has suspected he might be gluten intolerant, so we are trying out some recipes to work around this!  I was pretty thrilled with the results on this one, and it still boggles my mind that it is under 300 calories.  I've added everything up and run it through my recipe calculator serveral times just to make sure I'm not leaving something out.  It is so filling!  And you can have a HUGE slice, 1/4 of the whole dang lasagna, for 272 calories!

To avoid making it sound like an awful, scary "health food" meal, you could call it corn meal lasagna.  Or just present it as regular lasagna, and I bet people won't ask many questions after they taste it and figure out it's glorious.

I had seen a few different recipes out there for Polenta lasagna, but decided to kind of wing it and use up some things I had in my fridge to make my own.  To make the true Domestically Impaired version, be sure to entirely forget to include the garlic and balsamic vinegar you see here in my ingredients picture.  I'll toss those in next time, maybe.

Cut the polenta in half, then slice it into about 1/8" thick slices to completely line the bottom of a baking dish.  Add a layer of sliced zucchini.  

Then a layer of sliced tomato.  

Another layer of zucchini.  

Then spoon your pesto over the top.

Then add half of the vodka sauce.

 Next, slice up the other half of the polenta and layer it on top.

Spoon the remaining vodka sauce over this and pop it in the oven for 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

After 25 minutes, carefully remove the burbling vat of  lava that is your lasagna at this point and spread your mozarella cheese over the top.

Put it back in under the broiler and broil until the cheese starts bubbling and browning!

Enjoy and join me in the amazement over NOT missing pasta noodles at all!

What you need:

16 oz polenta

1 large zucchini

1 large tomato

1 cup Monte Bene Vodka Sauce

1 cup Kraft Fat-Free Shredded Mozarella

1/4 cup pesto

Makes 4 servings

What to do:

Heat your oven to 375. Place a layer of sliced polenta in the bottom of a large baking dish, then layer zucchini-tomato-zucchini over the polenta.  Spoon the pesto and half of the vodka sauce over these layers. Top with a second layer of sliced polenta and the remaining vodka sauce.

Bake for 25 minutes, remove to add the cup of mozarella shreds, place under your broiler, and broil until the cheese starts to brown.

Nutrition Facts:

Calories: 272

Fat: 8g

Carbs: 31g

Fiber: 3g

Sugar: 6g

Protein: 19g

Blueberry Basil Grilled Cheese- 110 calorie breakfast

A delicious, quick, and easy breakfast treat!

I don't normally do any cooking for breakfast on the weekdays, but after seeing a recipe for blueberry grilled cheese somewhere out there on the interwebs yesterday, I decided to get up a bit early and try making my own version!

What You Need:
- 1 tbsp blueberry preserves (I used some locally made blueberry-lemon-thyme preserves, but highly recommend Bonne Mamman Wild Blueberry spread as an easy-to-find alternative
- 2 slices Nature's Own Double Fiber Wheat Bread
- 1 slice Borden Gouda Cheese
- 3 big basil leaves
- Olive oil cooking spray

What to do:
Toast the bread slices and top with blueberry spread, cheese, and basil. Spray lightly with olive oil cooking spray and transfer to a panini grill.  Grill until the cheese is melted.  Enjoy!!

Nutrition facts:
Calories- 110
Fat- 3g
Carbs- 19.8
Fiber- 4.5g
Sugar- 6.5g
Protein- 5g

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!

50 Calorie Chocolate Miracle Muffins

These are by far my favorite "diet" recipe that I have given a whirl, and actually what inspired me to start recording the recipes I've tried, edited, or created.  These are so freakin' good that they made me want to share them with the world!  People have laughed at me, rolled their eyes, and don't for a second believe that a 50 calorie muffin could taste like anything better than soggy cardboard.

And unlike the diet coke brownies from my last post, these are not only low calorie, but also have nutritional value!  They've got protein, are pretty darn low carb considering this is a chocolate muffin, and aren't high in fat or sugar either.  This is mostly accomplished by substituting out the usual unhealthy culprits in the ingredients list: oats in place of flour, unsweetened applesauce in place of butter, Splenda in place of sugar, and egg whites in place of whole eggs.  I'm typically not a fan of artificial sweetners such as Splenda, but for the results, I can deal with it.

The recipe I used can be found here:  Joe and Sue's Double Chocolate Muffins

This time, I actually highly recommend following the recipe as is.  The only adjustment I've made is using Hershey's Dark Chocolate morsels, the ones that are slightly larger than your typical chocolate chips.  I just prefer dark chocolate, and the larger chips make for more of a fudgy bite than normal sized chips, even if you are using the same amount of chocolate in the end.  The bigger gooey pockets are nicer and pack more flavor than the smaller ones.

Before baking...

...and after baking.  Yes, they look almost black before they cool.

What I'm most amazed by is that the nutrition facts actually check out!  So long as you're using about 3 tbsp of batter per muffin, they're going to be around 50 calories.  Of course, this also depends on how generous you are with sprinkling the chocolate chips on top.  I stuck to five per muffin, but I think 3 would be fine.

Nutrition facts (per 1 muffin- recipe makes 24):
Calories: 50~60ish, depending on size and amount of chips
Protein: 2.6g
Carbs: 7.8g
Fiber: 1.8g
Fat: 2.1g
Sugar: 3.2g

Things to potentially try: replacing the chocolate chips with butterscotch chips.  The results of this weren't bad, but they had a distinct coffee flavor (I have no clue why), and I am not a fan of anything coffee flavor.  My best friend enjoyed them at least!

Things not to try:  editing this into a lemon muffin recipe.  We tried.  It was a monstrous failure.  Even though the results look pretty ok here....they weren't.  We just tried to salvage the batter any way we could, and mini lemon pancakes resulted.  Still yuck.

At least The Boyfriend Food Disposal System still took care of them.

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

3 Ingredient Banana Pancakes!

I've had this recipe saved on Pinterest for a while:  http://www.recipebyphoto.com/3-ingredient-pancakes/

Looks too simple to be true, right?  I was skeptical, too, but over the weekend I found I really needed to do something with the blackened banana in my kitchen, so it felt like the right time to give this a try.

And OMG....it was SO much better than expected!

146 calories per pancake!

Even as I was mixing up the ingredients and pouring them into the pan, I was still skeptical.  I was skeptical up to the moment I cut a piece off and stuck it in my mouth.  They taste like delicious, moist banana crepes!  I only had some atrociously unhealthy uber-butter flavored pancake syrup around the house from my pre-diet days, so I was worried about having nothing to douse it in, but it turns out these really don't need anything extra.  I put two teaspoons of blueberry jelly on the top of mine for the sake of trying it out, but it would have been just as yummy alone.

Here's what you need:

1 very ripe banana

2 eggs

a smidge of cinnamon (like, 1/2 a tsp perhaps)

Makes 2 pancakes

Cut the banana up, add the egg and cinnamon, mash it all up with a potato masher (or an assortment of ineffective kitchen utensils if you've forgotten you own a potato masher, as I did). Let the mixture sit for about 3-4 minutes to get a fluffier pancake than the one in the picture (I figured this out on the second go-round). Heat a skillet over medium-high heat with a sliver of butter, add half of the banana goo mixture, and watch the magic begin.  Just cook it and flip it like you would a normal pancake.

Nutrition facts:

Calories:  146 without toppings (I did figure in 1/4 a tsp of butter per serving with this- if you use an alternative you could adjust accordingly)

Fat: 5.7g

Carbs: 16.5

Protein: 6.8g

Fiber: 2.4g

Sugar: 6.8g

....and just one is pretty darn filling!

In the true spirit of my cooking style, I did, of course, burn the second one.  Because I didn't add more butter to the pan.  My dear boyfriend still ate it like a champ and turns out they still taste pretty awesome even burnt!

It's an abstract piece, ok?