Lemon-Raspberry Pancakes
My favorite flavor combination is lemon and raspberry right now. Between the Lemon Curd with Berries and the Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes I made a few weeks ago, I’m just obsessed.
After yesterday’s fiasco I still wanted to try making lemon raspberry pancakes and they were a total success! I used my usual pancake recipe but added an additional tablespoon of sugar, the zest and juice from one small lemon, and about a dozen raspberries (cut in half).
They were SO good.
I don’t know what’s up with Hurley lately, he’s been trying to eat everything I make!
This ACTUALLY happened to me yesterday…
This story is just the most ridiculous thing to have ever happened in the course of 15 minutes, and since it was kitchen related I thought I had to share:
It was about 3:30 yesterday afternoon and I had just gotten home from work. I didn’t really have lunch so I thought I would make some lemon-raspberry pancakes. I needed to make some iced tea, too. I went ahead and mixed together the milk and vinegar to let the milk curdle. I set this on the counter near my sink and proceed to start my iced tea.
I placed a large pot of water on the back left burner, turned it on and left it alone. A few minutes later I smell smoke and see smoke coming from the FRONT left burner…I turned the wrong burner on. This might not have been such an issue, however, we have burner covers over all of the burners and this one looked like it was about to ignite if it sat on that hot burner any longer.
My reflex was immediately to move the burner cover from the hot burner…without oven mitts. So, I scorched the center of my two middle fingers. At the time it didn’t hurt that badly, but the worst was yet to come…
To get the smell of smoke out of my kitchen I turned my microwave vent on full blast and put a box fan in the window above my sink. This seemed to be working but now my fingers were on FIRE. I dunked them into my glass of iced tea and the pain almost immediately went away.
So, there I was in my kitchen with my hands stuck in my glass of iced tea; anytime I took them out of the water the pain was just excruciating. And I have a really high pain tolerance so that’s saying something.
Just when I think that this can’t possibly get any worse, a huge gust of wind goes by and the fan falls out of the window, bangs on the counter knocks my bowl of curdled milk ALL over the kitchen floor, and breaks the PUR filter off of my faucet. Meanwhile, I’m paralyzed with my hands in my iced tea.
Somehow I mustered the strength to deal with my nerve endings being on fire and mopped up my kitchen the best I could, but man…what I nightmare.
This is what my fingers looked like this morning. Ouch. I never realized how much I use my hands, cooking has been tricky since this happened!
125 Calorie Jello Cake
My freshman year of college one of my friends introduced me to Jello Cake. I’d never heard of it, but I knew I liked cake, I liked jello, and I LOVED whipped cream. So what could be bad about it?
Nothing. Jello cake is awesome. I rarely ever make Jello cake, but the other day I thought it might be nice to have some. Then I remembered the ridiculously low calorie cupcake recipe that I made in the winter, and thought I might combine the two for a super low-calorie cake. The result was pretty damn tasty.
125 Calorie Jello Cake
What You’ll Need:
1 box Dunken Hine’s Classic White Cake mix
12 oz (1 1/2 cups, or 1 can) of Diet Cherry 7Up (or Diet Cherry Sierra Mist)
1 small box Sugar Free Jello (flavor of your choice)
1 tub fat free whipped cream
Much like the super low-cal cupcakes, you’re going to ignore the instructions on the back of the box of cake mix. Combine your diet soda with the powder cake mix in a large mixing bowl. Mixing this by hand can be kind of tricky, so I recommend using a hand mixer.
Pour the batter into a greased standard cake pan and cook in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. The top will be slightly browned.
Set the cake aside to cool completely. When the cake is cooled you’re ready to poke holes in the cake for the jello mixture.
I find that the best thing to use is the end of a plastic or wooden spoon. The hole is large enough for the jello to seep all the way through without drowning the cake.
Next, prepare your jello according to the package. For most jello packages, this means 1 cup of cold water and 1 cup of boiling water. Omit the step where you place the jello in the frige to set, and pour the liquid over the cake. You can either dump it straight from the bowl or pour it gradually over the cake. I like to use a turkey baster and put it on a little at a time.
Let the cake sit in the refrigerator for an hour or so before applying the whipped cream as your frosting. Then, voila! It’s done.
The lime flavor is really great with the tiny hint of lime you pick up on from the diet soda. The best part about Jello Cake is that the Jello makes the cake particularly moist. However, too moist can be a problem. My cake was verging on the point of “too moist”, which is why I recommend letting the cake cool completely before adding the jello (I think I was being a bit impatient during this part).
If a standard cake pan makes 20 small pieces of cake, each piece is only 125 calories! Super yummy, and you don’t have to feel too guilty about having a piece…or two.
Make sure to store the cake in the refrigerator.
Even Hurley likes it!
Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt
Yesterday, I was stopping to get some lunch after an awesome, but exhausting day of shopping (I was coming down from my retail high and feeling famished). I saw a little frozen yogurt place called Orange Leaf and thought “what the hell? I’ll give it a shot”. It was so good!
I’d never heard of this place before, but they have tons of different flavors, and a lot of fruit toppings you can add. They have cereal, and chocolate chips, and sprinkles, but I was trying to make this as healthy as possible.
I decided to get a cup of the peach frozen yogurt with some strawberries, blueberries, and kiwi. It was delicious!
The peach frozen yogurt was 32 calories per oz. That means this 8oz cup was 256 calories. I definitely didn’t need to put THAT much frozen yogurt in my cup, so I would remember that in the future. Still, this is a far healthier choice than a chocolate sundae!
