Chocolate Covered Cherry Pudding Cakes

For Valentine's Day, we stayed in and cooked dinner at home. Correction - Russ cooked dinner and I made dessert. I was on the hunt for a recipe involving cherries and chocolate (his favorite combo) that used ramekins (our were getting dusty in a kitchen drawer). Earlier in the week Google reader solved my quest: Fatfree Vegan Kitchen posted a recipe for Chocolate Covered Cherry Pudding Cake. It was meant to be!

So, I gathered my ingredients... (btw, the Dragoba cocoa is amazing and I think a good quality cocoa would make or break this recipe)

I have a bad habit of not reading a recipe all the way through beforehand, and this time was no exception. Apparently you have to let the frozen cherries sit for 1-2 hours. This gave me some time to do the dishes though...

Silly cherries waiting to thaw out...

Here are the cakes before I poured the cherry juice on top and popped them in the oven for 20 minutes

Fresh out of the oven!

My pictures aren't as pretty as those on FFVK, but the cakes were delicious! They weren't too heavy like some chocolate desserts and the ramekins make a nice portion (although we each had 1 and half...and only because I gave the 4th one away). The bottom was the best part (cherries and goopy chocolate pudding) and I loved how the cake part was marbled with moist areas of pudding throughout. I definitely recommend the cake, especially straight out of the oven, paired with vanilla ice cream.

Here are some other pictures from the night...

Cinnamon reading her Valentine card

Cooking a delicious dinner: bacon wrapped scallops and herb roasted potatoes

Peace out!

Low-Fat Whole Wheat (but still delicious) Carrot Muffins

I had 4 giant leftover carrots from the cake in the previous post. What to do?

I figured my options were:
feed them to my bunny (pictured mid-bite with her 2nd favorite treat) and/or make random dishes with shredded carrot.

Since both of these options would surely fail to use up 5 cups of shredded carrot before they went bad, I turned to baking. After searching for a healthy version of carrot bread, I came upon a recipe for low-fat carrot muffins using whole wheat flour on RecipeZaar.

After doubling the recipe to use up all the carrots, I had 23 muffins, half of which got a drizzle of reduced-fat cream cheese icing (about 2 T reduced-fat cream cheese, 3 T powdered sugar, 2 T milk - adjust ingredients as needed to make the right consistency):


Here's the recipe with a few adjustments:
* 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 2-4 teaspoons cinnamon**
* 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 egg, slightly beaten
* 3 tablespoons oil
* 2 teaspoons vanilla
* 1/2 cup nonfat milk
* 1 8 oz can crushed pineapple, well drained (I forgot to drain it and ended up squeezing moisture out of my carrot-pineapple mixture)
* 1 1/2 cups grated carrots
* 1/2 cup raisins

1. Set oven to 350 degrees.
2. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners or spray tins with non-stick cooking spray.
3. In a large bowl mix together first 7 ingredients.
4. In a small bowl whisk together egg, oil, milk and vanilla.
5. In a medium bowl mix the shredded carrots with the crushed pineapple.
6. Add in the oil/egg mixture into the carrot/pineapple mixture; mix well to combine, then add to the dry ingredients; mix JUST until combined.
7. Add in the raisins.
8. Divide the mixture between the 12 muffin tins.
9. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until the muffins test done.

**The original recipe called for 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon, but it's my favorite spice and I always add way more than I'm supposed to. Do whatever you feel is right ;)


Of course, the bunny (aptly named Cinnamon, a.k.a. Cinnabun) still got her treats too:

She's kinda spoiled ;)