Tyler's birthday card

Good evening. Has been a while I know. Sorry about that.

With my fitness at a low and my weight at another high I decided to get my health and fitness in check, thus I have stopped making good but naughty food in the effort to get to a place where I feel more comfortable with myself. 

I have however made a card for my eldest boy Tyler for his 8th birthday and of course he didn't even need to be told I made it as soon as he saw it. He loved it and knew I had made so made it even more special to him. I must admit this is an awesome card. I still have that colouring ability baby. Yay....!!!

I have had this image stamped out on card for a long time. This is one of my favourite all time Magnolia Edwin stamps. He is so adorable. Hope you like. 

Spaghetti Squash Lasagna

From my last post I am sure you have realized that I discovered Spaghetti Squash and I needed to use up all the leftover squash before it went bad in the fridge. I found a recipe for Spaghetti Squash here at Fort Mill SC Living and thought I would give it a try. Mine however is slightly different so will be posting up the recipe here as well. 

I love my vegies now so had to throw in a fair few as well as the one called for in the original recipe.

Spagetti Squash Lasagna (original by Fort Mill SC)

serves 6

327 cals

1 Medium spaghetti squash, cooked and prepared

500g lean beef mince

1 medium carrot, cubed

1/2 zucchini, cubed

1 cup kale, chopped

4 mushrooms, sliced

1/2 onion, chopped

1 can tomatoes

1 small tub tomato paste

1/2 cup beef stock

1 clove garlic

chili flakes

olive oil (I didn't use)

Cheese sauce

60g light tasty cheese

30g butter

2 TBS flour

nutmeg - dash

Preheat oven to 180/350 degrees.

Heat up a frying pan and add Spaghetti squash and cook on medium heat for 2-3 minutes until slightly brown. Remove from heat and set aside.

In same pan add carrot, zucchini, mushroom and onion and cook for 3mins until slightly tender. Add mince and beef stock. Cook until meat browns. Add garlic, tomato paste and canned tomato. Simmer all ingredients for 15-20mins until the liquid has reduced. 

In a saucepan melt butter and add flour 1 tablespoon at a time. Whisk both until smooth. Add milk slowly and whisk until thickened. Add tasty cheese until melted. Throw in your dash of nutmeg. 

In a square baking dish put in 1/3 of the meat sauce and add all of the spaghetti squash. Top the squash with 1/2 your cheese sauce. Add the rest of the meat sauce and the rest of the cheese. 

I actually added only 2/3 of the squash and then add 1/3 on top of the bulk of the meat sauce so it was - meat, squash, cheese sauce, meat, squash, cheese sauce. 

OMG this was so yummy. If you wanted to cut down the calorie count don't add the beef mince - it will cut you calories by nearly 150 cals. Enjoy.

Salmon, Snow Pea, Tomato 'Spaghetti'

Becoming addicted to Pinterest has it's downfalls and it benefits. One of the benefits is that you come across many foods that are healthy that you wouldn't think twice to look at at the Fruit and Veg shop. Well I stumbled across Spaghetti Squash on my surfing and thought I would like to try it. I finally found it at my local F&V shop. It has been sitting there for a week but I finally baked it in the oven (for an hour) and made my dinner with it last night.

If you know me you know that my favourite food is pasta but with my new lifestyle change I have removed pasta from the menu so finding this has been a godsend.

My favourite pasta sauce is one I created myself trying to have a healthier creamier sauce that didn't make me stack on the weight and this sauce is the bomb - at least for me it is. 

I made up one serving for myself and then could only eat half of it. This is a meal to serve two. I will be having the left over for lunch today I think.

Salmon Pea Tomato Spaghetti

1 small can salmon in springwater (95g), drained

5 cherry tomatoes, quaretered

5 snow peas, cut in to three

1 small can light evaporated milk

1 cup cooked Spaghetti Squash

1 Tbls olive oil

Fry the snow peas, tomato and salmon in the olive oil until just warm. Put in the milk and cook until it starts to thicken. Put in the Squash and cook to your liking. 

Total calories per serve is approx 250. 

Mine was 'al dente' so could have cooked longer but it I liked it. Easy Peasy. 

Nanna's 90th present

Question: What do you get a 90 yr old who requested no presents for her birthday...???

Nothing. You make something - to eat. 

My husbands Nanna turned 90 yesterday. She is the best Nanna you could wish for. Generous. Sweet. Loving and most of all she loves spending time with her great grandchildren. Because of this I decided she needed to have something nice to eat when she is having a cup of tea or wants a yummy bite. So I made Peanut butter cookies. These are roll out cookies and they taste divine. The second day around they actually don't taste too peanut buttery - they taste like shortbread. At least to me they did. 

I also bought some Reese's peanut butter cups and a couple packs of Nutter Butter biscuits. 

I surprised her by turning up when she wasn't expecting anyone to come over to visit. She loved it too. I am sure it will take her a while to eat them all but that is okay. She deserves something special for just herself. 

If you are interested in the recipe I got it here - Created by Diane. My tip is if you do use this recipe for roll out cookies you put he dough in the fridge. I could not roll out the first batch I made - it was too soft. Second batch was easy to cut out. Good luck. 

Dairy Free Caramel Ice Cream

The other day I said to a friend that she should be in the same city as me so she can come and try my Peanut Butter Ice Cream and she reminded me that she has to eat a dairy and gluten free diet. Oops. Totally forgot. So I thought I would look up some recipes for dairy free Ice Cream.

The first one I came across was this one. I don't know who it is by - I just printed it out. I will have to have another look but for now will just put the recipe on here. 

This is so yummy. I have acquired a taste for coconut milk and this is so creamy - very much like the dairy version. I reckon you should give it a try. 

Coconut Caramel Ice Cream 

Makes about 1 pint - I halved this recipe. 

Ingredients

2 cans of coconut milk (not lite)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

6 egg yolks

2 tsps vanilla extract

Method

Combine 1 can of coconut milk, brown sugar, and the salt in a saucepan. Set over medium-high heat and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally so that the sugar dissolves. Once boiling, reduce heat slightly and continue to cook until the mixture has darkened and reduced, about 20-30mins. It should be very thick - like - lava resembling caramel.

While the caramel is reducing, beat the egg yolks in a large, heatproof bowl and set aside.

Add the second can of coconut milk to the coconut caramel and heat, stirring to integrate the caramel. When the mix is very hot, but not boiling, temper the egg yolks: slowly whisk 1 cup of the caramel mixture in to the bowl. 

Turn the heat to low and pour the tempered yolks back into the pot. Cook, stirring constantly, just until the mixture has thickened, 1-2 mins. Remove from the heat and pour into a heatproof bowl. Stir in the vanilla extract. Cover tightly and refridgerate overnight.

Pour custard mix into your ice cream maker and churn to manufacturers directions. Freeze for 4-6hrs before serving. 

I took this out of the freezer at about 4hrs and was very solid mix but melted quickly. So yummy. Enjoy. 

Happy New Year

To all my blogging, crafty and online friends - 

Happy New Year.

May 2013 be a happy and prosperous one for you all.

Homemade Peanut Butter Ice Cream without a machine

My name is Tracey and I have a Peanut Butter addiction.

There I said it.....!!!!! I can't get enough of the stuff. Yummy is the only word I have for it at the moment.

So yesterday in my web surfing I decided to look up Homemade Ice Cream recipes as I bought a 'popsicle' molds for icy poles and thought it would be good to have frozen yoghurt in them - made - easy peasy but then I thought of myself. The banana frozen yoghurt is for the kids. So I looked up......you guessed it - Peanut Butter ice cream. I was feeling lazy and didn't want to wait for the ice cream maker to do it's work so looked up recipes that you can throw straight in to the freezer. 

Normally with a recipe like this you use full fat whipping cream but hey I wanted to create a lower fat version and I even omitted the butter that the recipe required and guess what - it turned out like normal ice cream so will include it in the recipe but you can leave out if you want to.

Here are the ingredients except the Reese's Peanut Butter Chips (OMG 

they are the bomb). 

Just out of the freezer. Was in there for 5hrs. 

Peanut Butter Ice Cream - no machine

Ingredients:

1 can Nestle Reduced Fat Cream

1/2 recipe of Homemade Sweetened condensed milk with Natvia 

1/4 cup Peanut butter

1/4 cup Peanut butter chips - optional

3 Tbs butter, melted

Whip the cream with a teaspoon of Natvia (just for taste). Whisk/mix together sweetened condensed milk, butter and peanut butter in a large bowl. Stir in the peanut butter chips. Mix cream mix and peanut butter mix together. 

Pour into a container and cover. Freeze for 5-6hrs or until you liking. 

If you want the full fat cream version have 1 cup heavy cream and whip it. Fold the peanut butter mix with the whipped cream. The can of reduced fat cream does not whip like normal cream. 

Toffee Cheesecake

I made this cheesecake a while ago. I bought the Hershey's Choc Toffee Bits from the US a while ago too and decided to make a cheesecake with it. Was so so so yummy. 

I know, I know, I shouldn't be eating it and to tell you the truth it was so long ago that I can't even remember when it was. But it was a hit with me and my middle child. Old fashioned toffee bits are awesome. 

So here is a super duper 'sugary' but so so so yummy cheesecake. 

Next time I will have to try it with some Natvia. What do you think....???

I only made a third of this recipe from the Hershey's site. If you get a chance to buy the Toffee Bits buy them. They rock. Mine are the chocolate ones but it still tastes yummo. 

By the way - I used Digestive biscuits as my base. See ya.

Easy Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk

I know I didn't want to post this up just yet but couldn't help myself as I am super duper excited.

There are a lot of recipes - especially my no bake cheesecakes that require a can of sweetened condensed milk. Not only is that (of course) packed full of sugar it is too sickly sweet for me and tends to give me a sugar headache if I do so thought I would get a recipe for Homemade Sweetened Condensed milk and use Natvia instead of sugar.

There are many floating around but I used a really easy version. 

Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk - Sugar free

Ingredients:

1/3 cup water - boiled

1/4 cup Natvia

1 cup skim dry milk powder - sifted

3 Tbs butter

Method: 

In a small bowl mix all ingredients with an electric mixer or wire whisk. Make sure you add water last. Mix until nice and smooth. Refridgerate until you need to use. Best used on day that you make it. 

If you don't sift your milk powder you may get lumps, like I did. I actually used just under 1/3 cup of Natvia but found it was a little too sweet for my taste so I will reduce the quantity to 1/4 cup next time. 

Enjoy making you sugar free no bake desserts. I can't wait to get started using it. 

Update ****** Troubleshooting: I used this and the sugar wasn't quite dissolved so next time I will dissolve it in the boiled water first and then add the water and sugar mix to the milk powder and butter. 

Cinnabon Muffins with cream cheese glaze plus a party

Sorry for the lack of posts recently - it seems this time of year just gets to me and I always feel incredibly stressed and I also had a couple of parties (see below for a couple of pics of my DD's 5th party) to organize - oh and I also have been going to the gym a lot lately so that has taken a lot of my time. 

Ever since I made the Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Cake recipe from Six Sisters' Stuff  I have been meaning to make muffins or at least single serves of the cake so they could be frozen. Of course, I have no idea whether they will freeze well but can only try but with a huge fan in my husband I don't know whether they will last long enough to freeze anyway.

I tweeked the recipe so it contains Natvia and wholemeal flour instead of white flour. Of course apart from the sugar being substituted it isn't really low in fat or sugar as it has a lot of butter and brown sugar but you know what when you want to indulge I think this is my go to recipe.

Just before going in the oven. 

 With glaze

Cut in half. 

Cinnabon Muffins Recipe - adjusted from Six Sisters' Stuff

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of flour (I used wholemeal but you could use white)

1/8 tsp salt

1/4 cup Natvia (1/2 cup if you use proper sugar)

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup milk (i used skim)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 Tbs butter, melted

Cinnamon mix:

1/2 cup butter - 125g - softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 Tbs flour

1/2 Tbs cinnamon

Glaze:

2oz cream cheese (1/4 block of cream cheese)

1 TBS milk

3/4 cup icing sugar (confectioners sugar)

4 Tbs butter

1/4 tsp vanilla (I didn't use this)

Directions:

With an electric beater or mixer, mix flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, milk, egg, and vanilla. Once well combined, slowly stir in the melted butter. Will a tablespoon, spoon mix in to a 12 cup muffin tray. 

In a large bowl, mix the softened butter, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon until well combined. Drop a tsp size ball on to the cake mix and with a toothpick or knife swirl the cinnamon mix in to the cake mix. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 15 minutes. Will be cooked when toothpick comes out clean from center.

In a small bowl mix the cream cheese, milk, butter, icing sugar and mix with an electric beater. mix well and put on to the top of the warm muffins. Will melt.

Trouleshooting: I made 10 1/2 muffins but the cinnamon mix on top bubbled and spilled over the muffin tray on to the bottom of my oven. If you can maybe try putting the cinnamon mix in first or put smaller amounts in the muffin tray and make more of them. The mix actually went hard like toffee so was an added bonus. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

My little missy is celebrating her 5th birthday this month and we had a party really early this year so her friends could come. Here is just a couple of her. 

Rolling the cake balls for the cake pops. Unfortunately I forgot

to take photos of the finished product but they tasted good. 

 The candy table that she wanted. Not as fancy as I was hoping but 

the kids barely touched the lollies they were happy playing 

with each other. 

 Ashley posing with the huge lollipop cases we found at the $2 shop.

They contained 8 little lollipops.