Hummingbird Bread

January 18, 2021 Amanda Plott

Since getting my knew kitchen appliances this past year, and with the weather being rather nice right now (as most winters are in Texas) I’ve spent my fair share of time recently with baking! Baking always used to intimidate me, but it’s become less and less of a fear as I’ve made my mistakes and learned from them as best I could.

This Hummingbird Bread is a delicious take on a Hummingbird Cake, but I’ve left off any sort of cream cheese frosting because… well, I just didn’t find it needed. This bread is perfectly sweet all on it’s own and it’s loaded with plenty of fruits; coconut, pineapple, and even banana!…

Lazy Valentine Cookie Bars

January 14, 2021 Amanda Plott

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We all reserve the right to be a little lazy every so often, and with a quick trip planned for the weekend (followed by two weeks of self-quarantine) I’m feeling the laze take over. Either way, my daughter asked for some more cookies after all the GIANT Valentine Cookies from last week disappeared. Gee… I wonder how that happened…

Being as I was out of special Valentine sprinkles, and again… I’m being lazy, I thought I’d try my hand at a ‘lazy cookie bar’ recipe that was passed off to me. I did make one small change to lower the calorie count just slightly, but other than that it’s pretty much the same-same…

Giant Valentine Cookies

January 8, 2021 Amanda Plott

Nothing says ‘I love you’ quite like a GIANT cookie. these big cookies are about 4-5 regular sized cookies in ONE. BIG. COOKIE. And do you want to know a secret? They’re made with HALF the amount of sugar as the originals. That’s right, I was able to shave off half the sugar by making a couple of simple swaps.

The first swap that I made was subbing in a brown sugar/stevia blend for the regular brown sugar. I also swapped half of the original sugar for a granulated stevia. the important part here is the granulated part. While you could use any other natural sweetener that measures cup for cup like sugar, I prefer the granulated one since it doesn’t have the usual fake sweetener taste…

Broiled Banana & Honey Grapefruit

December 23, 2020 Amanda Plott

It was pretty chilly here this morning, so I was looking for any excuse I could to turn the oven on to help warm the downstairs up quickly. Brrr...

Move aside pre-packaged 100 calorie snack packs! This is the real deal.

That's right. You can have all that you see here for 100 calories. Plus, it's clean, gluten free, vegetarian, paleo and has some nutrients to it. Plus, as an added bonus you get to warm up your kitchen on a frigid winter morning…

Buffalo Ranch Chex Mix

December 18, 2020 Amanda Plott

If you like standard Chex snack mix, you’ll love this spicy buffalo version even more. How do I know? My mom makes traditional Chex mix around the holidays every year, and this year is no different. But, when I made this Buffalo Ranch Chex Mix she immediately said I would need to make more and wanted to know if she could have the recipe.

There’s a whole lot of good stuff in this mix. Cereal, cheese wisps, pretzels, nuts, and a whole lot of flavor. This Chex mix is probably my new favorite. Cheesy and just spicy enough to keep you coming back for more with that delicious hotting inspired taste…

Healthified 'Lofthouse' Soft Sugar Cookies

December 13, 2020 Amanda Plott

I've basically taken that original tried-and-true recipe and trimmed it down as best I could without losing the amazingness of that cookie.

The first thing I did was swapped out some of the regular flour for some whole wheat white flour. If you're going to be bad, you may as well get some good in there too! At least you can say you had some whole wheat, right?

I also substituted in some sweetener for about 1/3 of the sugar originally called for. Why? Well, if you can get away with less sugar, then why not? For the cookie dough, I used a light butter rather than full fat. Again, if you can get away with it... do it!

I made a few other minor changes as well, and still ended up with a perfectly light and decedent cookie that has over 50 calories less per serving than it's store bought counter part. Plus, I know exactly what in these cookies since well... I'm one that put it all there!

I'm telling you, they taste almost exactly like the original…