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Healthy Remake: No-Bake Cookies (Vegan, No Sugar)

By on October 9, 2018 in Guilt-Free Treats

When I was a kid, I was basically a professional at making no-bake cookies. This was kind of awesome because my mom (who is a great cook) could not make them. Since she loved them so much, I got to make them a lot. My BFF and I still reminisce about how we used to come home from school and make no-bake cookies in my mauve and mint Formica-clad kitchen. Awe the 90’s.

Fast forward a couple of decades. I’m still a big fan of no-bake cookies. There are few better treats in my opinion. The problem is, the butter and milk are a problem for me. I cannot do dairy unless I want to spend the next week covered in rashes and acne. Since I don’t think it’s fair to have acne and gray hair, I try to avoid dairy (and I don’t really like scratching all day).

But being the amazingly caring wife I am, I told my husband I’d make him ANYTHING he wanted for his birthday dessert. His answer: no bake cookies. I looked at him for a moment like he’d just kicked my childhood puppy. How could he do this to me??? I couldn’t even lick the pan! I decided to put my wants aside and make him his treat… sort of.

Yes, I made him a batch of standard no-bake cookies full of butter, milk and sugar. They were fabulous, of  course, but I knew my self control would get the better of me. I got out a smaller saucepan and made some dairy-free no-bake cookies at the same time. The success had me almost in tears. I licked the pan, I ate the cookies and I was even able to keep them all to myself because they all wanted Daddy’s cookies. It was pretty awesome.

Since I was making my own batch and since sugar doesn’t exactly make me feel awesome either, I used Lakanto sugar substitute (monk-fruit/erythritol combination). You could use plain cane sugar instead, but I was very satisfied with the substitute.

The thing I really love about these cookies is that they are stable at room temperature. So often when I make a “substitute” it has to be kept in the fridge or freezer or it will just turn into a puddle. These stored fine at room temperature in a glass container. Not that they were around long…

This recipe is gluten-free and vegan so it’s versatile enough to take to events or share with friends. Now my husband can ask for no-bake cookies anytime and I can still be an awesome wife without sulking.


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Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Protein Bites

By on October 28, 2017 in Guilt-Free Treats, Healthy Snacks

I have one child who will eat almost anything and another who eats… almost nothing. Not in the sense that he doesn’t want to eat, but in the sense that the number of foods he’ll eat is very small. He has five foods he’d eat all day long. I’m working on a post to talk about that but in the mean time, I’m posting about a great success I had!!

I try to cram as many nutrients in him as I can, which is very difficult. This week I decided to turn his favorite flavor (chocolate chip cookies) in to a low-sugar, high protein and healthy fats treat I feel good about sending to school with him. I almost cried when he took a bite and said, “Wow! These are so good!” And he was right! These are good! Plus they are easy to make and store. I keep them in the freezer and pull a few out in the morning for his school snacks. These would be AMAZING with walnuts but walnuts are not one of the foods he’s willing to eat. Let me know if you try adding them!

One key to making these as nutrient-dense as possible is to buy quality ingredients. This recipe calls for both protein powder and collagen peptides. I use this protein powder (click here for link) as a good compromise with me and my son. He’s willing to eat it and I mostly approve of the ingredients. I also like Great Lakes Collagen Peptides (click here for link).

The healthy fats (and awesome flavor) comes from coconut butter. If you haven’t tasted coconut butter, you’re missing out. I use it on pancakes bread or just on a spoon. It’s that good.

For the chocolate chips I use Enjoy Life Brand (click here for link). Yes they have sugar, but the ingredients are minimal and all pronounceable. Plus with one 1/4 cup in the entire recipe, each protein ball has very little added sugar.

Hopefully your family loves these as much as we do.


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Granola Bars with Ingredients You Can Pronounce

By on October 9, 2015 in Healthy Snacks

Even though I really do feed my kids regular meals (Really! I swear!) My kids constantly proclaim to be starving. When i try to explain to them what it actually means to be “starving,” they look at me like I’m crazy and then once again profess that if they don’t get food soon they’ll surely die. This means, we need a lot of easy snacks in our house. The problem is, fast and easy often means processed, junk-filled food I don’t particularly want my kids eating. So while the solution is homemade snacks, as busy moms, we don’t always have a lot of time.

These homemade granola bars are extremely easy to make, very healthy and make me feel like Mother of the Year when I hand one to my kids. That warm feeling last all the way until they start fighting in the middle of the condiment isle of the grocery store and break a bottle of salsa. Small victories really do count.

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Let’s compare the ingredients in our homemade granola bars to the very popular Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. The Quaker peanut-butter chocolate chip bars contain artificial coloring, corn syrup, sorbital, artificial flavoring, and several other ingredients I can’t pronounce. In total, these bars contain 7 grams of sugar each and have over 30 ingredients. My granola bars have no added sugar (aside from the small amount in the dark chocolate bits) and contain 9 ingredients, all of which you’ve likely heard of.

Start by combining the oats, coconut, ground flax, almonds, dark chocolate and cinnamon in a bowl. If you can’t do almonds, just up the flax or coconut. No big deal. You can also replace them for another nut or seed you like better.

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Once you mix this together, stir in the coconut milk, peanut butter and vanilla. I finally gave up with the spoon and went in with my hands. It may be a git gooey, but it saves a lot of time. This just goes in a 9×13 pan and into the fridge to set.

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Even after I cut these into bars, I keep them in the fridge. They stay fresh and and stay set that way. But I will take one out, wrap it in plastic and put it in my purse for a trip to the grocery store. They will stay set for an hour or two without refrigeration.

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Try them out. I guarantee you’ll have that Mother-of-the-year feeling.

 

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Healthy Mulligatawny

By on September 18, 2015 in Main Dishes

Whenever my daughter and I are having one of those rough days where we butt heads and can’t agree on anything, we need something to help us unwind and have fun together. For us, that’s an episode of Pioneer Woman on the Food Network. It doesn’t always stop the fighting, but for half an hour, we agree on something. Sometimes, that’s priceless.

A few weeks ago, we watched her make Mulligatawny soup. It looked amazing, but had a few ingredients I’m not okay with including in a week night dinner. I came up with a healthy variation which our whole family loves.

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The entire dish comes together in one pan which is my kind of meal. It cooks really fast but is packed full of flavor.

Start by cooking the chicken. Then add the onion and garlic and cook it all together.

Add the curry, broth and coconut milk and cook just to heat it up. Then add the chopped apple and cook for another five minutes. This will cook the apple but keep it from getting mushy.

Top each serving with some chopped peanuts. This adds more great flavor and crunch.

I love this dish because it’s a great,warm soup for winter but the freshness from the apple makes it great for any time of year.

 

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Healthy Diary-Free Chocolate Peanut-Butter “Milk” Shake

By on August 21, 2015 in Guilt-Free Treats

For the most part, a healthy lifestyle is easy to maintain. The hardest part is when people are eating dessert. I can usually resist, but there’s always part of me that wants to grab the milkshake out of their hands and chug it down. But then I remember how horrible I feel after I binge on sugar and talk myself down. Rather than cheat and feel like death after, I try to come up with ways to have a treat without loading my body with processed, sugary crap. This healthy take on a classic milk shake was a huge success.DSCN0174

I bring this all together with my immersion blender. This is one of my favorite tools because it creates way less cleanup than using a blender.

Combine coconut milk, a frozen banana, protein powder and peanut butter with an immersion blender. I use this protein powder.  It tastes great and doesn’t have all the bad stuff some protein powders do.

This is so thick you’ll need a spoon. See! Eating healthy doesn’t mean you can’t indulge.

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