1.5 Pies... the art of impromptu (Ricotta Pie, Cappuccino Cream Pie)

I found myself with 2 small containers of cookie scraps today-- just enough for another pie! Thinking of some kind of filling that could complement the strength of the cookie flavors (dark chocolate, chocolate, and butterscotch pudding), I landed upon a ricotta pie recipe with almonds and tons of chocolate. Well that wouldn't do anything for me--other than give me more chocolate cravings-- but I figured a light, spiced ricotta filling wasn't such a bad match for a double-chocolate crust.

So I pulsed in a food processor:

1 1/2 15oz container, lightly packed cookie scraps (see flourless cookies)

until sandy, added 1 tbsp water and pulsed 5 times more.

Then I pressed the dough clumps into a pie pan and prebaked at 350F 5 minutes long

(Afterwards I left it to cool while I made the filling)

For the filling, I blended (by hand):

15oz pckg fat free ricotta

3/4 cup sweetener

and added

1/2 cup + 1 tbsp room temperature eggbeater, 2 tbsp at a time 

Then for the spices:

1/4 tsp butter extract

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

I poured the filling into the prebaked cookie crust and baked it (using an aluminium cover for the crust) for 40 minutes. Afterwards do remember to let cool for 1 hour and then refrigerate for 3 hours more (cheese filings need time for the flavors to meld). I had a slice and it was super yummy. The whole pie is around 870 cal (depending on the cookies you used for your crust, I used mostly the 10 cal chocolate fudge cookie recipe), which is quite obscene.

However, I ran out of chocolate ice cream--which I didn't think would be a problem as I had frozen yogurt (homemade, Dukan friendly) in the freezer to replace it. But when I tried out the froyo, i realized that it was absolutely disgusting! It was as if something was off... how long does yogurt last for in the fridge? I did have it there a week before making the froyo; perhaps yogurt doesn't last very long without preservatives. Well I was very annoyed because I want my pie with ice cream, and I didn't have any silken tofu in the fridge. But rummaging through said fridge I did find cream cheese and I had fat free cool whip in the freezer, so I decided to make a topping for my (one slice eaten) pie. Fashioning a partition with aluminium foil and part of the cool whip packaging in a very amusing way (wait til you see the picture), I blended

6 oz fat free cream cheese, room temp

1/4 cup sweetener

and added, 1 tbsp at a time

3 tbsp instant coffee mix (made with hot water and then cooled)

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa

1/4 tsp salt

and folded in 

1/2 8oz pckge fat free cool whip, thawed (4oz)

and poured it over my pie. Impromptu cappuccino cream topping in 15 minutes!

my make-shift partition, held apart by the plastic that sealed the cool whip container!

Yummy 'Garbage Casserole' and dark chocolate ice cream

I'll say it as it is: sorry Dr Dukan, but I highly doubt I will ever convert to a healthy way of life. I will just re-invent 'unhealthy' recipes so I can eat them whenever I want without getting fat. The thing is, I hate carrots quite as much as I like decadent pies warm and topped with slowly melting ice cream. Which is a lot. I have little doubt that I will be living off these dessert recipes... pretty much forever; except for the artificial sweetener, that is--due to general dubiousness, I will be subbing to Splenda Sugar Blend as soon as allowed.
Speaking of ice cream, I made one to top my pumpkin cookie dough pie. I love ice cream; I probably mentioned it already, but really you can't imagine how much I LOVE ice cream. The problem is I don't have an ice cream machine--but I was leafing through David Lebovitz's blog the other day and I came across his 'how to make ice cream without an ice cream machine' tutorial. The key takeaways?

my current frozen edition: homemade rose yogurt and silken tofu

a) remix the ice cream to break up the ice growing at the edges every 1/2 hour or so in the freezer (5 times)--but my freezer is sooo warm, it took an hour for ice to even start to form. Thus, 3 remixes and then I fell asleep.
b) use a thick ice cream base, which is less likely to become icy.

 The moment I read the word 'thick' a light bulb went off. Thick? Silken tofu is thick! I can make ice cream! So I got together my trusty (crappy) Hamilton beach (yes, that crappy) food processor and blended

16oz silken tofu
1/2 cup cocoa
1 cup sweetener
1 tbsp espresso powder
2 oz alcohol-- I used 1 tbsp vanilla essence (mine is 46% alcohol), 1 tbsp chocolate essence (also alcoholic), and--don't laugh-- 2 tbsp mirin. Which is, just so you know, a supposed to be a flavor enhancer.

until smooth. I poured the mix into an aluminium foil container, covered it with plastic wrap, stuck it in the freezer, and every hour (though the recipe said half hour) broke up the ice that formed at the edges and stirred the mixture until consistently creamy. Unfortunately, the one hour wait meant that 3 hours later, it was 1 am and I fell asleep. So my ice cream didn't freeze, and is very much ice cream--but is quite icy. Sigh. I still have it with my microwaved pie, though-- 2 slices of pie + 2 giant scoops of ice cream a day for only 340 calories: that's for lunch and dinner, and I must make myself race out the door in the morning so I don't have it for breakfast too!

oooh yum... just a side note, the green is the inside of the cookie crust (the pistachio section lol), that didn't bake until brown

As for the casserole, I found myself with 1/2 a vegan ground meat sausage thing which I couldn't tolerate just cooked on its own. And just over a cup of garlic pasta sauce and regular pasta sauce leftovers. And that 0 calorie shiratake fettuccine that Dr Dukan has on so many recipes (I get it from Olivenation). And so forth.

So I set the oven to 350 F, and took my only (very deep) frying pan and cooked:

1 lb ground 95% beef
1/2 vegan ground 'meat' sausage (Oh Lean or something like that)-- or you can just use turkey
1 medium onion diced thin


until no red showed and the onions were cooked through. Then I added

dried parsley, basil, pepper, and salt
12 oz pasta sauce (or if PP, use 1/2 cup milk with 1 tbsp cornstarch stirred in beforehand, and add 4 oz fat-free cream cheese--that's what I should have done)
7 oz package shiratake fettuccine, rinsed under cold water and chopped roughly in thirds
8 oz fat-free shredded mozzarella

Stir until combined (or until, like me, you decide it is 'combined enough').  Then wrap the handle of the frying pan (if not oven-proofed) with aluminium foil and bake for 40 min. Or you can use a casserole dish. But that's one more dish to wash!

It looks a bit strange but is yummy and creamy and super filling. I shall try next time with meatballs!

But no one told me pumpkin was a vegetable! (pumpkin cookie dough pie and asian frittata)

So I was flipping through the '100 safe foods list' to see if some vegetable (corn, I think) was a menu option. Well, it's not; but skimming through the okay-ed vegetable list my eyes suddenly caught the word 'pumpkin' splat in the middle of the page. Pumpkin is a vegetable? I'd always thought it was a fruit! This is an embarrassing and rather dumb thing to admit, but I'd always thought that fruits were the ones with the seeds. I could have sworn they told me that in elementary school...or something.

Anyway, if I had known the pumpkin was an okay-ed veggie, this recipe would have been up weeks and weeks ago (well, maybe not since I only thought of pie crusts as of last week--but it would certainly have been an incentive to piece a crust together sooner!), especially since I'm trying to replace dairy-dependent desserts with protein and veggie dependent ones: a tough job on a good day. The tofu-pie was fantastic-- dense and creamy (I'll be experimenting with pistachio and butterscotch flavors when bored), but pumpkin pies are something all on their own.

I also whipped up a frittata full of yummy Asian flavors, so in this post you actually get a brunch and dessert all in one!

Frittata:

1 package imitation crabsticks, diced
8 garlic cloves (I actually used canned habanero garlic... haven't been to the supermarket in a bit)
4 slices fat free Singles American cheese
2 packets (about 12 thin pieces) seaweed
4 eggs, beaten with
3 eggbeater eggwhites (9 tbsp)
3 tbsp thai garlic chilli (or any hot sauce, especially if you have Korean chilli paste?)
2 tbsp soy sauce (reduced sodium), 1 tbsp mirin 
salt, pepper

Preheat oven 425 F
1. 'grease' stove, cook garlic on med-high about 2 min (until soft but not brown)
2. lower heat to medium, add crabsticks and cook 2 min
3. add chilli sauce, soy sauce, mirin
4. add eggs, then layer with seaweed (fan on top), and then cheese--cook 2 min, making sure sides don't stick, until eggs are almost set
5. Wrap the handle of your pan (if not oven-proof) with aluminium foil, bake for 8-10 minutes until eggs are set.

Pumpkin Cookie Dough Pie:

350F

Crust: (as per chocolate pie)
 process:
leftover flourless cookies* until sandy
2 tbsp skim milk (new addition to choc pie) until moistened and starting to stick together
press onto pie pan, poke holes with fork

Filling:

blend:
1 can (15oz) pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 cup silken tofu, or fat free half-and-half (which is what I did...heh)
2 cup sweetener
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tbsp vanille, 1 tsp butter extract (optional)

Pour onto crust

Cookie Dough: (as per flourless chocolate cookies)
1/2 cup unsweetened good cocoa
2/3 cup sweetener
1 tbsp chocolate extract (if you have), or vanilla (if you don't), 1 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp eggbeater 100% eggwhite
shape into 1 inch balls using wet hands (dip hands in water before forming each ball), press gently into filling so completely covered.

Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 (depending on sweetener), until the center is still slightly jiggly but the sides are firm. May crack. Not a big deal. Let cool 1 hour, then refrigerate 2 hours.



* cookies (about 24)
350 F
2 pckg fat free flavored Jello pudding (butterscotch, vanille, pistachio etc)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 cup sweetener
2 eggbeaters 100% eggwhites (6 tbsp)

Mix dry stuff, stir in eggwhites until moistened, use wet fingers and spoon to place on cookie sheet; flatten well with wet fingers as sweetener doesn't allow for spreading. It takes 10 minutes!
Bake til done (about 8 minutes, depending on type of sweetener)

P.S if anyone is wondering why my crust looks like there's too little crust for the pie.... it's because I ate a few too many cookies before processing them! (Just don't eat more than say.... 6....)

Dukan baking tip: save your cookies and make pie!

The reason that pie does not fit into the Dukan diet is mostly due to the Dukanly sinful crust. As all Dukaneers know, no wheat, no flour... and absolutely no pie crust. So it goes without saying that the only way to make a Dukan friendly pie is to first come up with a Dukan friendly crust.

Sound difficult? Well it shouldn't, really, as long as you're looking into dessert pies that complement cookie crumb pie-crusts. After all, what's a graham pre-made crust other than crushed up cookie bits? Well, flourless cookies you can definitely make (see my previous 10 calorie/piece flourless chocolate cookie), and once you get the basic recipe, simple inventiveness should lead you to sub the 1/2 cocoa powder in for different kinds of powder. For peanut butter cookies, sub 1/2 cup peanut flour (Trader Joe's old kind, which you can still get online under a different name) + 2 tsp salt; for vanilla cookies, sub 1/2 cup instant fat-free vanilla jello pudding mix + 2 egg whites (instead of 1 egg). Feel free to be creative: a yummy 15 calorie cookie will be your apt reward.

vanilla pudding cookie 17 cal each

So basically this is what I do: for every batch of cookies I bake, I save 1/2 of them and crumble them into a container, refrigerating them until I feel like pie. Then I process them and crumby and sandy in a blender; because of a moistness of flourless cookies, taking out the butter from the process still produces a cookie crumb. Press the dough into a pie mold, prick holes with a fork, and bake 5 min at 350F. Afterwards, let cool while you prepare your pie filling.

Chocolate Pie Filling:

1 lb silken tofu
1 pkg instant fat-free pudding mix (jello)
1/4 cocoa + 2 tbsp cocoa/espresso powder
1/2 cup sweetener
2 tsp vanille, 1 tsp chocolate essence

Turn up oven to 375 F

1. blend tofu until creamy
2. blend in the rest of the ingredients until fully incorporated
3. pour into pie crust
4. Bake for 25 min 
5. Refrigerate for at least an hour (preferably 3 hours)

Voila! Very easy!

Muffins!

So I've been dabbling with muffins.

The one thing I love about breakfast--more than pancakes, french toast, even croissants-- is muffins. I love breakfast muffins; the savory muffins, large or texas sized and none too sweet. Since I've been on the Dukan Diet I've tried at least half a dozen muffin recipes, with very limited success; they look good, but taste flat. They taste like that oatbran galette, plus whatever flavoring you put in, and stick terribly to the paper liners (I started greasing the papers in the end, but that didn't solve the taste!). I need a muffin to taste wholesome, full of body--more like quick bread than like held-together oatbran. Well, I was leafing through some middle eastern baking blogs yesterday (trying to figure out what to do with my rosewater), and found a recipe for yeast-based muffins. Well the recipe wasn't Dukan adaptable, but the idea stuck. I'd just made homemade butterscotch yogurt (google 'homemade yogurt in a thermos', and add 1 tbsp extract to your milk before heating; the alcohol in the extract will evaporate because alcohol has a lower boiling point), and thought it would be a perfect solution for my leftover whey (the liquid from the yogurt)--if you don't have leftover whey from the homemade yogurt you just happened to be making, use warm water; that's what normal people use.

Anyway, this is the recipe for soft, non-wet-and-sticky, wholesome, filling savory muffins:

For 3 large-sized (jumbo?) muffins

6 tbsp oat bran 120

6 tbsp wheat bran 72

1 tbsp corn flour 30

6 tbsp milk powder 90

2/3 tsp baking powder

ultimate test: what does the inside look like?

2/3 tsp salt (I used 1/2 tsp of hawaiian black sea salt--sounds fancy huh... I'd say 2/3tsp normal salt, or 1/2 tsp sea salt)

1 tbsp cocoa 15

1 pckt active dry yeast

3 tbsp warm whey (or warm water), mixed with 1 tbsp yogurt

2 tbsp yogurt 20 (mine was non-fat buttermilk yogurt, not greek--use whatever flavor appeals to you)

2 eggs 160

1/2 tsp each extracts: chocolate, butter, butterscotch--again, be inventive! If you use plain yogurt, try vanille-chocolate-butter; or, try maple syrup and butter; or, just 1 1/2 tsp of vanille!

Preheat oven 390F

1. sprinkle yeast onto the warm whey/water and yogurt mix, leave for 5 minutes and then whisk to dissolve

2. add all other ingredients and mix--first dry, then yogurt, then eggs (room temperature!), then extract

3. mix in yeast 

4. pour into 3 large-sized baking cups

5. bake for 5 min, lower heat to 350F, bake 10 minutes more

look ma, i don't stick!

p.s: each muffin is 170 cal--daily allowance is 1 muffin on cruise phase

p.p.s: you can make 6 normal sized muffins if you want

On what to do after you've broken your diet--chocolate, gummies, cookies

2.5lb off from my true weight! Whoot! But that's not actually what this blog post is about; I actually want to write about breaking your diet.
So on Easter Sunday I made a few dozen toffees for a potluck, with matzo, sugar, butter, chocolate--all the good stuff. And I went through the whole potluck without touching it (I knew they were good, I'd made them before), and the Monday after as well as I gave away leftovers as Easter gifts.

These were the culprits, don't they look good?

Well the problem were the leftovers--on Monday night I had 4 toffees left, lying in the fridge, that I simply couldn't bear to waste by throwing away. I already knew on Monday that leaving them in the fridge was just asking for trouble. But they didn't fit in the gift jars so I left them anyway. Well by Tuesday morning they were gone. All four of them--because you know, once you cave, you can't just stop caving--once you have a chocolate you'll have the whole lot.

So on Tuesday I was understandably terrified, because now that my body realized that I could cave I knew that my dessert and junk food cravings would become simply uncontrollable. I had to do something about it, and fighting wouldn't work. See, the thing is that willpower is like a muscle; there's no such thing as infinite willpower--sooner of later you will overexert it and it will sprain. That's why the trick to dieting is to deny yourself of unhealthy things without your body realizing that it's being denied of unhealthy things. Which is extremely complicated and difficult because, well, your body just isn't stupid.

So on Tuesday I started on a 'bad food' making spree to ensure that the risk of breaking again at this critical stage was at a minimum. The first things I made were chocolate bars.

Now I've been making Dukan nutella, and the thing you realize with it is that the more milk powder you use, the firmer it gets--to a point. And at that point you can't mix it anymore and then it's neither a paste nor a solid, and you're kind of nowhere. But once you nuke the mixture in the microwave for 20 seconds it gets softer and then you can stir it again. I'm not saying this is like a conventional chocolate bar, but there's something about eating a rich, solid chunk of 'chocolatey something' that satisfies my cravings completely.
 Anyway, here's how I did it:
1. mix:

1 tbsp cocoa

5tbsp milk powder
1 tbsp sweetener
1/2 tbsp milk

 few drops vanilla and imitation butter

2. Separately, mix:

1/2 tbsp. milk with ½ tsp cornstarch

and combine with first mixture

3. nuke 20 seconds in the microwave, mix again while soft

4. heap onto aluminium, roll out and shape like a chocolate bar, lift aluminium off and sprinkle with sea salt

5. stick in the fridge to harden

The finished product (and my half-baked rolling out attempt)

 One bar (one recipe) is about 80 calories

Next I made gummies, which is a very good study snack. You can find all sorts of recipes online; I made it with 2 (0.3 oz) pckt fat-free jello, 3 pckt knox unflavored gelatine, and 1/2 cup water and used candy molds sprinkled with corn starch (to keep them from sticking) to set them with.

 Finally, I found a King Arthur flourless chocolate fudge cookie recipe and adapted it into the Dukan guidelines. They were amazing: rich, gooey, and decadent.

1 1/3 cup powdered sweetener (just put granulated sweetener in a blender and pulse until powdered-- I used my usual Splenda--Equal--Stevia blend of artificial sweeteners)
1/2 cup unsweetened baking cocoa--use good ones, and very dark: I used 1/4 cup Hershey's Extra Dark, and 1/4 cup Droste unsweetened.
a pinch of salt
1 large egg
1 tbsp essence--use what you have, I used 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp chocolate essence, 1 tsp butter (more suggestions would be coffee, rum... be creative! We have to add complexity and flavor with what little means are available to us--good quality essence can really make the decadence in a recipe)

1. Preheat oven 350 F
2. Mix together--don't give up! At first it seems like a dry mess but be very ungentle and it will suddenly turn into a stiff chocolatey dough
3. Using a spoon and wet fingers (dip your fingers in water before handling every cookie), shape into 1/2 tablespoon (as in the ones you use to eat) balls on a cookie sheet. They should make 18.
4. Using wet fingers, flatten as artificial sugars do not allow cookies to spread.
5. Bake until done. I don't give a time because the recipe said 8 min, but mine took 4 min. The thing with artificial sweeteners is that you can't really predict how much faster they will bake. Take them out when they are still soft in the centers.

It's Bread!!!

Actually I don't have time to post! Just a quick update and the recipe--I can't believe it, it's actually bread!

Ingredients

• 6 tbspn oat bran 132
• 10 tbspn wheat bran 120
• 4 tbsp corn flour 110
• 10 tbspn skim milk powder 140
• 1 tspn baking powder
• 1 tspn salt
• 1 tspn ginger powder, cinnamon
• ½ tspn nutmeg
• 1 pkts active dry yeast
• 1 tbspn no fat plain yoghurt 10
• 3 eggs 240
• 2 tbsp sour cream 25
• 4 tbspn warm milk 20
• 1 tsp butter extract, vanilla
• 800
• 1/5=160, 1.2 tbsp oat bran

Preheat over 390 F

Use 2 bowls.  In the first bowl mix the milk, sour cream and yeast; let stand 5 minutes and then whisk to dissolve yeast.

Mix all the other ingredients together in a larger bowl.

Add the yeast mixture to the other ingredients and mix til just all combined.

Pour mixture into lined (important, they stick) 8 inch loaf pan and bake for 10 minutes.  

Reduce temperature to 350 F and cook for a further 20 minutes.

*Play around with the spices--you never know what you might come up with!