2 Ingredient Pumpkin Spice Cake with Maple Glaze

Well, I'm sitting in a tree stand, waiting on a deer, so I figured I could be productive. I'm doing this from my phone, too, so I will probably have to edit later.

Josh has been home a little over a week now and I am enjoying my time with him immensely. It's like he never left, we just fell back in stride and picked up where we left off. If anyone that is bored enough to be reading this has a military man, then you know how important that is.

So our life is back to normal and e missed my cooking, so I have spent a good deal of time in the kitchen these past few days. I came across a recipe on Pinterest for a 2 ingredient pumpkin cake, and I had jut ordered some organic Pumpkin from Vitacost... So I figured "tis the season."

The recipe called for a yellow cake mix, but I decided to go with a spice cake instead. 2 ingredients & it is absolutely incredible.

Ingredients:

You will need a spice cake mix and a can of pumpkin. Mix ingredients with hand mixer or fork until well blended. Pour mixture into 9x11 Pyrex or cake pan. Bake at 350 for about 30-35 minutes, or until you stick a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean.

Take out of oven and let cool for 5 minutes or so.

For the glaze:

You can make this while you are waiting on the cake to bake.

1 stick of butter, melted
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/8 cup powdered sugar

Stir together until there are no lumps of powdered sugar.

Poke holes in slightly warm cake as pour glaze over top.

Let cool for a few more minutes and serve. This cake is absolutely divine!!!!

Baked Apple Slices (hCG)

CRAVING something sweet. I am very much so in the mood to bake, so that means there will probably be some newly posted non-diet goodies this weekend, because if I can't eat them and be fat and happy, I will make sure everyone else is. I'm thinking nutter butter and/or peanut butter truffles. Thoughts?

Anyhoo, here's something I can eat: apples. This is not my normal baked apple. It would usually be in the form of a crisp with massive amounts of butter, brown, sugar, cinnamon... ok I'm drooling... BUT this is a really good substitute for those flavors that am really missing right now. You know, all calorie loaded sweet ones?

If you're watching your waistline, (bikini season is right around the corner), try baked apple slices!

Ingredients:


1 apple (macintosh apples are my fave)
I can't believe it's not butter... spray (in my best Fabio voice)
1 stevia packet
cinnamon

Instructions:


Preheat oven to 400. Slice apple, spray with butter spray, sprinkle with stevia and cinnamon, bake on foil (or a in a baking dish if you are so inclined to have a dirty dish to wash. Foil works fine as you can see above) for 15 minutes.

I'm not going to lie, it's pretty yummy.

The calorie count is somewhere around 80-95 depending on what size apple you use.

Oreo Balls

A friend (who happens to be an amazing cook) made Oreo balls for Christmas. I had no clue what they were, but they were so yummy I had to put them in the back of the fridge so that I wouldn't grab one every time I opened it. As I was trying to come up with ideas for goodies to send over to the "sand box," I came across a recipe on Pinterest for Oreo truffles... little did I know, that these were the infamous little treats that Misty made us for Christmas. Since I never seem to be satisfied with doing something the easy way, I went one step further and made golden Oreo balls in addition to the regular ones. I really can't decide which are my favorite, but both are addictive and I'm glad that the majority of the batch was sent overseas. I tried to convince Josh to take the rest to work, but they never made it there.

Ingredients:

Whether you want to make regular Oreo balls, golden Oreo balls, or both, you will need:

one package of Oreos

8oz cream cheese, softened

candy coating or bark

(tsp. vanilla extract for golden Oreo balls)

Instructions:

In a food processor, ground Oreos until very fine. 

The hard part: Mash Oreos and cream cheese together until completely blended. I did this in a large bowl using a fork to continuously press the Oreo crumbs and cream cheese together. It took less than ten minutes, but I am convinced that there has to be a better/easier way. If anyone has input on that, please feel free to share. If you are making golden Oreo balls, you would add in the tsp. of vanilla while combining crumbs and cream cheese.

Roll into balls up to 1", mine were various sizes. Freeze for about 20 minutes.

Melt bark according to package. You will probably only need to use about half, unless making a large batch. I used white chocolate for the regular Oreo balls and milk chocolate for the golden Oreo balls. 

Remove Oreo balls from freezer and dip into melted bark/candy coating. I used toothpicks, but a dipping tool would be even better.

Place dipped balls on cookie sheet and refrigerate.

And because I couldn't help myself...

Mom's Fudge

My mom has been making this fudge since I was born and probably before. In my recent baking endeavor to send goodies to Afghanistan, I decided to give it a whirl. This isn't a super thick fudge; instead, it's creamy and melts in your mouth. In other words, it's absolutely fan-fudging-tastic.

Mom's Fudge:

Ingredients:

4 1/2 cups of sugar

12oz evaporated milk

18oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 sticks unsalted butter

1 tbs vanilla 

Instructions:

In a medium pot, combine sugar and milk; bring to boil and stir constantly for 6 minutes. Remove from heat & add all remaining ingredients. stir until completely blended & butter is melted. Pour mixture into greased 9x13" glass baking dish. Cool in refrigerator over night. 

The chocolatey goodness left behind in the pot? Well, that's up to you... 

Banana Puddin

Oh banana puddin, I do love it so. There is nothing in this world like it!

You will need:
2 LARGE Bowls
mixer & bowl (hand mixer works best in this case because you need it twice)
whisk
measuring cup
scooping spoon

Ingredients:
1 pkg. Jell-o instant pudding VANILLA 5.1oz
1 pkg. Jell-o instant pudding Banana Cream 3.4oz
1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk 14oz
2 1/2 cups milk
2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
8oz PHILADELPHIA cream cheese (softened)
1tbs vanilla extract
1tsp banana extract
1 box NILLA wafers
3 bananas

Instructions:
In your mixer bowl, combine heavy whipping cream and extracts, whip(on high sped) until very stiff, a little bit thicker than the texture of regular whipped cream. Refrigerate until ready to use. In a large bowl, combine milk, pudding mixes, and condensed milk. Whisk for a few minutes until partially stiff then let sit. Break up cream cheese and spread evenly over pudding. Use hand mixer on medium speed to combine pudding and cream cheese. Mix for 5 or so minutes, making sure that all clumps of cream cheese are gone. You may see very tiny cream cheese bits, which you can mix until gone, or leave in. Either way is fine. After cream cheese & pudding are mixed, fold in half the whipped cream. Slice 3 bananas into rounds. It is up to you on how thick, depending on if you like it chunky or not. Fold banana slices into pudding. Fold in other half of whipped cream so that you see the white marbling. In the other large bowl, line bottom with one layer of nilla wafers. Ladle/dollop pudding mixture over wafers until covered. Add another layer of nilla wafers, then repeat with pudding. Top with final layer of wafers.

I know you're looking at it right now and you just want to gobble it up because dang it is just so fantastic, but we all know that banana pudding is best served cold. SO make your pudding at least a couple of hours before serving. It's even better after chilling over night.

I won't claim to have the best recipe ever... try it for yourself and tell me if you've had better! Remember to like/share my posts & blog!!