Recipe Diaries

You know it wasn’t going to be long before you saw someone make a fish taco cupcake. I don’t like the term cupcake because it really isn’t a cupcake. The taco isn’t baked with anything like flour, eggs or salt, so I prefer to call them cups. This is a really fun appetizer and if you’re still on the prowl to find something to make for the Super Bowl this weekend, you should give it a try. You can basically use your favorite fish taco recipe and just sub the shells with wonton wrappers. I prefer tropical fruits with fish tacos like mangoes, pineapple, or avocado but since the only fruit we had in the house were blood oranges, I decided to use those. Wonton wrappers are so versatile you can do anything with them pretty much. Still want to try making baked egg rolls.

I’m leaving for Jamaica on Friday, but don’t worry. I’ll be updating my blog with pictures during the week of what we eat there, drinks we have and whatever other picture I feel like posting. I’m so pumped, I can’t wait!

Fish Taco Cups inspired by Giada De Larentis

Servings 10 (one cup)
Calories 66 | Fat 1.36g | Carbohydrate 7.72g | Fiber 0.8g | Protein 5.78g

Ingredients
Jenna’s Weight Watcher Recipes

2 3 oz tilapia filets
old bay seasoning
10 wonton wrappers
2 cups of cabbage mix
2 tablespoons of green onion
1 blood orange, diced
2 teaspoons of chipotle en adobe sauce
lemon juice
1 tablespoon light mayonaise
2 tablespoons of light sour cream
salt & pepper

1. Place wonton wrappers into 12 cupcake tins. Bake at 375 for 10 – 15 minutes or until
crispy. Spray with cooking spray to get crispy if needed.

2. Heat a non stick skillet. Sprinkle fish with old bay seasoning or whatever your favorite fish seasoning is. Cook fish until they’re white in the middle.

3. In a bowl combine cabbage, blood orange, and green onion.

4. In another bowl combine chipotle sauce, mayonaise, sour cream, a dash of lemon juice.
Season with salt and pepper, just a dash of each.

5. Layer taco cups with cabbage mix, fish, and then sauce. Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip cheesecake is rich, creamy and chocolately. Is that even a word? Chocolately? If you’ve been craving cheesecake and chocolate give this a try. It’s only 6 points per slice. I was kind of hesitant to try this recipe because it had fat free cottage in it. Fat free cottage in cheesecake? That doesn’t sound right to me, but it works. When you blend it together in the food processor it becomes really creamy, almost like cream cheese. I’m tempted to try making a cheese cake just with cottage cheese and see how that turns out.

Since the husband doesn’t like cheesecake, I like to make it and then freeze the cheesecake. That way it won’t go to waste and I can take out a slice whenever I’m craving it. You don’t need that many oreos for the crust either, so you can put those away in the freezer as well and save them for next time you have to make a dessert with oreos for the crust. Make this chocolate chip cheesecake for your next party, and your guests will never know it’s a Weight Watcher recipes. Almost cheesecake factory worthy.

Calories: 240 | Fat 7.83 g | Carbs: 35.03 | Fiber 0.3 | Protein: 6.3g
Servings: 12
Points Plus: 6
Weight Watcher Recipes

Ingredients: from Weight Watchers

10 item(s) cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookie(s)
8 Tbsp fat-free cream cheese
8 oz low fat cream cheese, tub-style
1 cup(s) sugar
2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 cup(s) fat-free cottage cheese
2 tsp almond extract, or less to taste
6 large egg white(s)
3/4 cup(s) mini chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325ºF.

Lightly coat a 9-inch springform pan with cooking spray. Crush cookies and sprinkle cookie crumbs evenly over bottom of pan.

Using an electric mixer, beat together cream cheeses on lowest speed until well blended.

In a small bowl, combine sugar and flour. Add to cream cheese mixture and beat until smooth.

In a food processor or blender, purée cottage cheese until smooth. Add cottage cheese and almond extract to cream cheese mixture; beat until smooth. Add egg whites and beat until well blended. Stir in 1/2 cup of chocolate chips.

Pour into springform pan; top with remaining chocolate chips and bake until cheesecake puffs and center is almost set, about 60 minutes.

Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely. Run a knife around sides to loosen and release pan sides. Cover and chill overnight. Cut into 12 slices and serve.

Let’s face it, oatmeal can be very boring. Every morning, I’d have one of those quaker oatmeal packets for breakfast and that got to be very boring. For breakfast now, I like to have one of those sausage, egg and cheese muffins….  Once you try this, oatmeal won’t be boring anymore.

It was so easy to make. It’s like baking. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, all the wet ingredients in a bowl, pour, mix it up a little bit and bake. So easy! The bananas on top, I didn’t really care for, but I just loved the combination of blueberries and cinnamon together. Just think of all those oatmeal flavors that you had and all the different possibilities you could do with this. Think I’m going to try apples next.

Calories 232.8 | Fat 3.5 g | Carbohydrate 43.4 g | Fiber 4.1 g | Protein 7.7 g
Points Plus: 6 (figured out by WW Recipe Builder)
Servings: 6 (cut 6 equal pieces)
Weight Watcher Recipes

Ingredients from Inspired Taste

2 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon grated orange zest
1 teaspoon Chinese five spice (used cinnamon)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup walnut pieces, chopped (left out)
1 cup sliced strawberries (used blueberries)
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I left out)
2 cups milk (used 1%)
1 large egg
3 tablespoons butter, melted (left out)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ripe banana, peeled, 1/2-inch slices

Directions

Preheat oven to 375°F and generously spray the inside of a 10-1/2 by 7 inch baking dish with cooking spray and place on a baking sheet.
In a large bowl, mix together the oats, sugar, baking powder, orange zest, Chinese five spice, salt, half the walnuts, half the strawberries and half the chocolate. (Save the other half of strawberries, walnuts and chocolate for the top of the oatmeal).
In another large bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, butter and vanilla extract.
Add the oat mixture to prepared baking dish. Arrange the remaining strawberries, walnuts and chocolate on top. Add the banana slices to the top then pour the milk mixture over everything. Gently shimmy/shake the baking dish to help the milk mixture go throughout the oats.
Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until the top is nicely golden brown and the milk mixture has set. For an extra tasty top, sprinkle a tablespoon or so of extra brown sugar on top then place back in the oven under the broiler and broil for 20-30 seconds. Serve warm with an extra sprinkle of sugar or drizzle of maple syrup.

This is a great dish to make if you’re a fan of breakfast for dinner. I’m not a really big fan of quiches, but I thought having hash browns as a pie crust was a pretty good idea and I love hash browns. Food Network has been having a lot of shows about brunch lately, and there’s so many things I want to try now like making making own Hollandaise sauce and Dutch Baby. I saw Paula Deen making this dish on her show and just had to try it.

Speaking of Paula Deen, her son Bobby is going to have his own show on Cooking Channel now and it looks pretty good. He’s lightening up his mother’s meals. Which, I already try to do anyway and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I think that’s pretty awesome too. Going to have to watch that. Just wish the Cooking Channel was in HD.

The husband decided to subscribe to Weight Watchers online this weekend in order to help him lose a few pounds. I’m still trying to get a hang of the recipe builder on the website and it’s nice to be able to look up an ingredient to find out how many points it is. Oh yeah, and we’re also doing 30 Day Shred by Jillian Michael’s everyday up until we go to Jamaica. I took my waste measurements to see how I’m doing too. So maybe I’ll give some updates on here too. We just finished day 2 tonight and my muscles arm muscles are really sore.

mix unthawed hash browns with butter in a bowl and press them down into a pie plate. Bake 450 for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Meanwhile brown bacon while the pie crust is baking.

Mix the eggs, cheese, bacon, milk, salt, pepper, green onions, and parsley into a bowl.

Browned hash brown crust. Sorry these pictures are quite bad.

The finished quiche, and it was so so good. Makes me change my mind about quiches.

Ingredients from Paula Deen

7 points plus

serves 8

3 cups, shredded frozen hash browns, thawed and drained
2 tablespoons butter
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup 1% milk
3/4 cup diced cooked ham
1/2 cup diced green onions
1/2 cup of reduced fat cheddar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Gently press the drained hash browns between paper towels to dry them as best as possible. In a 9-inch pie plate, toss the hash browns with the melted butter into the plate. Press them into the bottom and up the sides to form a crust. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown and starting to crisp.

Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. When the hash brown crust is ready pour the egg mixture over it and return to the oven.

Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for about 30 minutes until the quiche is light golden brown on top and puffed.

I know, I’m not really a huge fan of red velvet cupcakes but I had one the last time I went to Minneapolis and it changed me. It was so huge and you could see the specs of vanilla bean in the cream cheese frosting. I wish I would have had my camera to take a picture. You can buy them at Macy’s for all places. They had them at this little cafeteria I went to and so I decided to get a red velvet cupcake. Man, was it good.

I have been trying to make my own baked goods using agave nectar and these actually turned out really good. The first time, I tried baking anything with agave nectar was when I tried making a batch of meringue cookies. Agave nectar and meringue cookies don’t work well together. I did a little research on agave nectar and the source I used had a nice little chart to go buy. From Herbs, Love to Know. This site also tells you how to reduce the amount of liquid when baking too. Pretty nifty site. The only sugar I’d like to learn more about replacing ingredients with is confectioner’s sugar. That still has a lot of carbs and it would be nice to find a substitute that works. I read that you can take Splenda and pulverize it in the food processor until it looks like confectioner’s sugar with some corn starch, but I don’t like splenda because it has a weird after taste. Wonder if you could do the same with Stevia?

Anyways, these cupcakes only came out to 5 points plus a cupcake. Hurray! No cake mix boxes or diet soda used. It was a recipe I adapted from Paula Deen and had to change a lot of the ingredients. They kind of puffed up a bit in the oven but overall it was a good first try baking with agave nectar. I hope you try these and like them yourself!

Ingredients from Paula Deen

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup agave nectar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk , room temperature
1 large egg , room temperature
2 tablespoons red food coloring
1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces low-fat cream cheese
1/8 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners’ sugar

Directions:

1.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 (12-cup) muffin pans with cupcake papers.
2.In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. In a large bowl gently beat together the oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla with a handheld electric mixer. Add the sifted dry ingredients to the wet and mix until smooth and thoroughly combined.
3.Divide the batter evenly among the cupcake tins about 2/3 filled. Bake in oven for about 20 to 22 minutes, turning the pans once, half way through. Test the cupcakes with a toothpick for doneness. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.
4.In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla together until smooth. Add the sugar and on low speed, beat until incorporated. Increase the speed to high and mix until very light and fluffy.
5.Garnish with chopped pecans and a fresh raspberry or strawberry.
6. Cook’s Note: Frost the cupcakes with a butter knife or pipe it on with a big star tip.

It’s pizza and pasta combined into one easy dish. Rotini pasta, pasta sauce, italian turkey sausage, low fat cheese, and turkey pepperoni. The original recipe for this had 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and by reducing the amount to 2 teaspoons, that reduced the fat greatly. I don’t get why people think they have to use a ton amount of olive oil when sauteing vegetables or browning a big hunk of meat? I successfully browned chicken breast thighs with only 2 teaspoons of olive oil.

If you like pizza and pasta then you’ll really like this dish, and it almost reminds me of hamburger helper. I’m going to come up with my own taco pasta casserole using this method. Just think of all the different combinations you can come up with.

Ingredients from food.com

Servings: 10

Calories 254.3 | Fat: 8.4 g | Carbs: 24.5g | Fiber 1.9 g | Protein 19.7g

*If using 8 servings instead of 10, it is 9 points.

Points Plus: 6

1 lb ground lean turkey sausage
1 medium onion , chopped
1 clove garlic , minced
1 teaspoon italian seasoning
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 (26 ounce) jars spaghetti sauce
8 ounces rotini pasta , cooked and drained
2 cups shredded reduced fat mozzarella cheese (20 oz)
32 slices of turkey pepperoni

Directions:

1.  Brown ground beef, onion, garlic and seasoning in oil.
2 .Drain.
3.  Stir in pasta, spaghetti sauce and 2 cups cheese.
4. Place mixture in 2 greased 9x13x2 inch baking pans or 4 square pans.
5.  Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella.
6.  Top with pepperoni.
7.  Cover and freeze up to 3 months.
8.  To cook now: Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until heated through.
9. To bake frozen casserole: Thaw in refrigerator overnight and bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes, till hot.