Not the Normal Teenage Fare: Dessert first!

As always, I’ve been a dessert-making machine these days and wanted to share with you guys two treats I have made lately.

First up, Chocolate Coconut Banana Crème Pie!

I didn’t have a recipe for this pie so I just winged it. It is a vanilla wafer crust with a chocolate layer, banana layer, and banana coconut pudding layer. I used this awesome pudding mix I found at my local natural grocery store that was on sale for 99 cents!

All you have to do is blend one block of lite firm silken tofu in the food processor until creamy and then add the package and blend for a couple more minutes..done! I like the fact that you get the extra nutrition from the tofu and that the ingredients are short and understandable.

To make the pudding "banana coconut" flavored I added one banana to the block of tofu when processing and then added around 1/4 teaspoon of coconut extract after everything was all blending up. MMM!

I used these vanilla wafers that I got at Sprouts. I really like how you get a pretty big bag for only around $3 dollars and the ingredient list is much better than Nilla Wafers.

Nilla Wafers ingredient list: ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE {VITAMIN B1}, RIBOFLAVIN {VITAMIN B2}, FOLIC ACID), SUGAR, SOYBEAN OIL, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED OIL, WHEY (FROM MILK), EGGS, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SALT, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE), MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDE (EMULSIFIER), SOY LECITHIN (EMULSIFIER).

Sprout's Vanilla Wafers: WHEAT FLOUR, SUGAR, PALM OIL, VANILLA EXTRACT AND NATURAL LEMON FLAVOR, INVERT SUGAR, SALT, WHEY POWDER, EGGS, BAKING SODA, EMULSIFIERS (SOY LECITHIN, MONO- & DIGLYCERIDES), CORN STARCH.

Before making the pudding, I blended the wafers (most of the bag) with a couple tablespoons of Brummel & Brown butter. I patted the crumbs into a 9 inch pie shell and put it in the oven for around 8 minutes at 375.

After the pie crust looked good I threw in around 3.5 ounces of bittersweet chocolate chips into the pie crust and put the whole thing back in the oven to melt. My plan was to have a nice yummy chocolate layer on the bottom but I obviously forgot that the chocolate would harden once the pie was chilled.. DUH! So the chocolate layer was more..crunchy..as I would have liked. Next time I would instead melt the chocolate in the microwave and add a couple tablespoons of milk to it to keep it from hardening completely.

After all the chocolate chips were nice and melted I added a banana layer using one sliced banana right on top of the chocolate. On top of that was the last layer, the coconut banana pudding (be sure to tell people there's a whole block of tofu in there after they've taken a bite). I probably should have chilled this longer but I was impatient so it probably chilled in the fridge for about 2 hours. Overnight would be best so that all the flavors meld and the pudding can set.

The good thing about the obscenely hard chocolate layer was that you could lift the pie right out of the pie pan! AND you can eat it like pizza, no fork required!

After it had chilled I topped it with some crunchy toasted coconut. :D

YUM!

Okay I know you're asking for it, you want to see the inside already!

Uhm, hello! This was just amazing. AMAZING.

I don't know if this was because of the Brummel & Brown butter in the crust (instead of normal butter) but the crust tasted like a chewy (as apposed to flaky) sugar cookie that was all sorts of delicious. It contained all of my favorite flavors :D

This pie came together really fast, too.

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The other dessert? Carrot cake!

I bookmarked a carrot cake recipe I found a while ago over at All Recipes. It had so many great reviews and looked to be the best recipe that I could find. I also liked how it had less oil than some of the other recipes I saw. I wanted to have this cake as my birthday cake (August 5th! Mark your calendars :P) but wanted to test it out first. I reduced the recipe down to 5 servings (1/3 of the recipe) and the calculations seemed to work out perfectly.

Carrot Cake

Adapted from All Recipes

Ingredients:

1 egg

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/4 cup lowfat buttermilk

1/3 cup sugar

3/4 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/8 tsp. salt

1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/3 cup unbleached all purpose white flour

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1 cup shredded carrot

1/3 cup shredded coconut (toasted)

1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (toasted)

1/4 cup crushed pineapple, packed

2 tbl. crystallized ginger, chopped

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour an 8 inch cake pan.

2) In a small bowl, sift together flours, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

3) In a large bowl, combine egg, buttermilk, applesauce, sugar and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour mixture and mix well.

4) In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts/pecans, pineapple and ginger.

5) Using a large wooden spoon or a very heavy whisk, add carrot mixture to batter and fold in well.

6) Pour into prepared pan, and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Check with toothpick.

7) Cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto cooling rack. Frost with cream cheese frosting (below) if desired.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

3 ounces low fat cream cheese (softened)

1 1/2 tablespoons Brummel & Brown butter (or butter)

1/2 cup powdered sugar

scant 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix cream cheese,butter, and vanilla until smooth. Add powdered sugar and stir until no lumps remain.

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This frosting is to die for; I just love the combo with this cake.

Now I had to find a way to make THIS cake-

Turn into five equal pieces..it's harder than it looks.

After making many sketches on a couple pieces of paper, I finally came up with my game plan. Cut down the middle, 4 inches down, then cut one piece of cake with two cuts off of that line then cut the remaining two sections of the cake in half. Confused? So am I..

Anyways, I was quite proud of my cutting job.

Look at that evenness! :D

My piece-

hello, beautiful.

As you may have noticed, there's raisins in this cake even though the recipe does not list raisins. Turns out that I could do with less raisins and more carrot so I changed it up a little bit. If you really like raisins in your carrot cake than do 3/4 cup shredded carrots and 1/4 cup raisins (instead of 1 cup shredded carrot). This cake was SO good y'all! And good for you ;)

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Remember that pasta I made a while back? Well turns out no one in my house liked it (apparently) because I ended up having to eat all the leftovers! I hate throwing away good food, especially when it is tasty; however I like mixing up what I eat everyday (read: I don't like eating the same thing over, and over, and over). So over the past couple of days I have been bulking it up with yummy vegetables and extra sauce and am happy to say, it is all gone!