Category Archives: Sweets
The Pumpkin Spice Muffin Top Making Kelley
The Caramel Corn Cooking Kelley
I thought it might be fun to share some recipes that I think would be great for the upcoming holidays. My husband and I have made this one a few times now, and I think it would be great as a Thanksgiving day snack, or wonderful to put into tins for Christmas gifts (it lasts up to a week of you keep it sealed).
I found the original recipe at Recipegirl.com. If you’re like me, and you need pictures to cook, I highly recommend this blog! My husband and I cut back the butter and salt a bit when we make this caramel corn and we don’t miss it at all! Give it a try, I bet you’ll love it as much as we do!
Caramel Corn
Adapted from Recipegirl.com
3/8 cup butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 cups popped popcorn***
***You may not need ALL 12 cups of the popcorn. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t.
-The Caramel Corn Cooking Kelley
The Applesauce Loving Kelley
I may live in Arizona now, but I’ll always be a Washington girl at heart. And you know what that means? It means I love me some apples! My favorite are by far granny smiths, but I bought some golden delicious a few days ago to add some pretty fall yellow to our home. Yes I use apples to decorate, I mean just look at these beauties!
Plus, it’s a win win situation. They made my house look pretty, AND I knew that I could make something yummy with them in a few days.
That day was today. I am currently eating up some homemade applesauce, and it is good! Who knew that something with no butter or added sugar could be so yummy?! You really should give this recipe a try. A snack that looks pretty, is quick and easy to make, tastes good, AND is good for you? What do you have to lose really?
Homemade Applesauce
(Adapted from Joy In My Kitchen)
2 lbs. of apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (about 6 apples)
3/4 cups of water
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 small dash of nutmeg
Peel, core, and chop those apples.
Now, throw them in a big pot with about 3/4 cups of water. Place over high heat and allow the water to start boiling. Once the water boils, turn your heat to a low setting, cover the pot, and let those apples soften for about 25 minutes. Stir them about every 5 minutes.
After 25 minutes, your apples should be soft enough to mash with the back of your stirring spoon, making them look similar to the photo above. If their not soft enough, just let them simmer a little while longer.
It’s time to get out your lemon juice and spices!
Add a tsp of lemon juice, 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, and a tiny little dash of nutmeg to your mashed apple mixture. Stir it all up! I tasted my apples at this point, and they were pretty sweet, so it didn’t seem necessary to add sugar. However, if you want to, feel free!
Now, scoop yourself a bowl of some YUMMY homemade applesauce!
-The Applesauce Loving Kelley
P.S. As always, I can’t vouch for the complete accuracy of the wonderful Sparks Recipe calculator, but here is what it says about this recipe:
The Muffin Cooking Kelley
I made a REALLY yummy dinner on Friday. It works REALLY well for creating leftovers too. I have a husband who will not touch leftovers, something about growing up on them and how they get too dry, or too watery. Anyway, with these leftovers it was like eating it for the first time, so even he agreed to eat it again on Monday. That recipe is one I will have to share later. Today I am going to share the little after dinner treat I made him for being such a trouper 
The recipe is so simple, I don’t even feel like it needs a recipe post, but I wanted to share it’s yumminess with the world. It certainly didn’t need pictures to go along with the instructions, but pictures make blogs more beautiful and interesting, don’t cha think?
This recipe comes from Pixelated Crumb. I want to give her a big THANK YOU for posting this. I found this recipe on Pinterest, and I then continued to search all over her site. I’ve found lots of great new recipes from her that I want to try. But, first things first. Healthy Carrot Zucchini Muffins. Don’t let the name fool you. These. Are. GREAT! Yea, less than half a gram of fat per serving AND great! I know people that make and eat healthy food often say this and it is a BIG FAT LIE, but I promise; these muffins are REALLY good and you completely forget that they are healthy when you eat them.
I’m really excited to make this my go to muffin recipe and start playing around with it. It’s GREAT on it’s own, but the thing that is the MOST exciting about it is I know it is going to be fun to add new things now and then. I want to try it with different berries, fruits, chocolate chips, and so much more!
Okay, I’ll stop talking about it and just give you the recipe now (slight slight changes made by me).
Healthy Carrot Zucchini Muffins
Makes 12 muffins/servings
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup egg substitute (or 3 eggs)***
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup finely chopped zucchini
1 cup shredded and finely chopped carrot
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. This seemed low to me, but it worked just fine
Mix the first 7 ingredients together in a medium sized bowl.
In a larger bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and mix.
Spoon the batter into a greased muffin pan. I filled the tins all the way, rather than 2/3 of the way, and the muffins came out nicely. Put the muffins in your preheated oven (325 degrees F) for 20 – 25 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the middle of one of the muffins comes out clean. Mine were perfect after 24 minutes.
You know these were good because the hubs ate 3 of them. I only put 2 on his plate and he went back for another all on his own. He tends to make it pretty clear when he doesn’t enjoy something I cook, so I consider this a WIN!
-The Muffin Cooking Kelley
P.S. As always, I can’t vouch for the complete accuracy of the wonderful Sparks Recipe calculator, but here is what it says about this recipe:
*** Calculated with egg substitute, not “whole eggs”.
The Sweet Low-Fat Lemon Cake Cooking Kelley
Doesn’t that look good?! We’ll talk about this later 
First of all, this was not the post that I was planing on putting up on the ‘ol blog this morning. The problem is I’m a little slow on the uptake and I forgot that Everybody Everywhere always puts their monthly challenges up on Tuesdays… and Tuesdays are NOT Monday… Whoops. So, look out for that fun pattern mixing post tomorrow. I am excited (obviously a little too excited as I tried to get ready a day early) to see how everybody mixes up their prints as this is one of my FAVORITE fashion trends right now.
Anywho, rather than leave you postless (I know that my blog is like coffee to you on a Monday morning isn’t it? No, no it isn’t…) I decided to share with you a little treat that I made this weekend to give your week a sweet start
I have recently set up a budget for our household that requires that we eat out and spend lots less money overall in the food department. Being able to be home and cook our meals is a HUGE deal for me and I am very grateful. But too often the hubs and I find ourselves craving snacks and sweets. This is the time when we want to go to the store and buy everything in sight that may tame the hungry food monsters that live in our bellies. But then I remind the husband that we already spent our grocery budget for the week, he pouts, and then he tells me that he doesn’t like being an orphan and he wants a treat.
So, when this happened this weekend I turned to Pinterest for a solution (because it may just be the solution to everything). Thankfully I found this, which originally came from the wonderful recipe blog Craving Chronicles.
And thankfully, because we are no longer eating take out and frozen pizza every night… anymore, I now buy real groceries every week so I already had everything that I needed to make this recipe. I altered it a bit of course to make it and little healthier and therefore fit our needs. All said and done this treat has less than 1/2 gram of fat per serving! So without further ado:
Low-Fat Lemon Cake
1 5/8 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plain fat-free yogurt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup egg substitute
6 2/3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
⅓ cup apple sauce
For the glaze:
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
Enough lemon juice to mix with the sugar until it forms a glaze
Okay, to get started, preheat that oven to 350 degrees.
Mix up the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl.
In a larger bowl, mix together the yogurt, sugar, egg substitute, lemon juice, and vanilla.
Now, pour the dry ingredients in with the wet ones and mix them all together.
Add the applesauce and mix it throughout your batter.
Pour your mixture into a greased loaf pan and place in your preheated oven. Check on it after 60 minutes. It will be ready to take out when you can stick a toothpick through the middle and it comes out clean.
YYUUUMM… I know you want to eat it, but don’t touch it yet. Let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes.
If you’re like me and you don’t have a cooling rack now is the time to invent a make-shift one haha. Mine is made out of an old pan and our microwave rack sitting on top of four glasses. Classy huh?
Place your loaf on a cooling rack until it is warm, but not HOT. If you can pick it up without yelling “HOT POTATO!” it is probably time for the glaze. While you wait mix up your sugar and lemon juice glaze.
Once your loaf has cooled, put some tinfoil over your cooling rack, pour your glaze over the cake, and let the glaze drip down the sides.
Let it sit for about 5 minutes and then slice it up and start munching!
All of this yumminess for under 1/2 a gram of fat per serving?! Yes please!
-The Sweet Low-Fat Lemon Cake Cooking Kelley
P.S. Please note that I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the wonderful Sparks Recipe calculator, but here is what it says about this recipe:
Not too shabby ah?
