Vanilla Protein Crepes

full recipe nutrition: 286 calories / 29g carbs / 4g fat / 34g protein / 2g fiber / 18g sugar

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I'm going to pretend you're a crepe and wrap yummy things inside you.
That has a ring to it.
A vanilla-y, cinnamon-y, ring to it.
Oh you can't hear taste? That's good because Paprika just called your mother a slut and your face a blemish on society. Oh Paprika. You spicy little bitch.

So I set off this morning trying to make protein-y yogurt based pancakes-for-one using the stuff I already have in my fridge. This consisted of these extremely specific, fine, fine ingredients...

3oz Vanilla Siggi's Icelandic Style 0% Skyr (similar to Greek yogurt)
1 tbls Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
1.5 tbls Egg Whites
1/4 cup Vanilla MusclePharm Combat Powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 packet truvia
A dab of crunchy peanut butter

I combined my dry ingrediens and combined them with my mixed together wet ingredients, added that little bit of peanut butter because I add peanut butter to everything (next up: body wash!) and proceded to expect great things.

I only have one kinda-stir-fry pan and one saucepan (I'm that kid who can't be trusted to clean pots if she has more than one pot but mostly in the year I've lived in my current place, I've consistently forgotten to buy a second pot) so I got my stir-fry-y pan nice and hot and ready to go.

It started out beautifully. They were plump and cute little pancakes. The things I was expecting! Such great things!

Then I flipped them over.
Deflated. Both myself and the pancakes.

I quickly added more baking soda because I'm pretty sure baking soda heals all wounds and time can go suck it but it was to no avail.

All hell broke loose.
Actually, if hell is anything like what happened to these pancakes, I'm going start kicking puppies more often for the first time ever I swear.
The little flat, deflated, still-moist and soft disks I made were not pancakes anymore. They were better. They were crepes.

And crepes are entirely more fantastic than pancakes. You can roll crepes up with all sorts of goodness and that bitch just got portable. I still sat on my couch to eat them, however. But I did move them from my plate to my face pretty frequently. Held up like a champ.

Stuffing:
2 oz Vanilla Siggi's Icelandic Style 0% Skyr (the rest of the cup)
40g banana, sliced
1 tsp of crunchy peanut butter

Spread some peanut butter. Slather some yogurt. Slip in some banana (that's what she said?). I'm pretty sure you can dress your own crepe but I went to a small private school founded by three French sisters with a name that ends in "ehhh" when it reads like "et" SO I'M KINDA AN EXPERT.

RATE ME!!

TASTE: 4/5 This are the yumz, guyz. Save for the tasting I do of my own baked goods, I don't typically eat many refined carbs or nothin so that means I don't eat much in the way of breads, or pastas, or cereal. Or crap. I also don't terribly like those things so for me to a) eat these crepes and b) like these crepes is saying a lot about them. Also with goodies like that inside of them, how could they not be tasty? Plus 34g of protein is not fucking around so they are very filling.

EASE: 4.5/5 Every ingredient I used was already in my fridge and since Whole Foods employees are starting to judge me with their eyes, that's nice.

FILTH OF THE KITCHEN: 2/5 Shrinking down this recipe to what I have it at now, it only makes enough to serve one person. Less ingredients, less chances for horrible, horrible messes. I mean I still made a mess but then I said "Bless this mess!" and that was that. I don't clean much. I mostly just let idioms take care of things.

DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH? Um, it was breakfast time. The dog hadn't gotten out of bed yet. FOR THE NEXT THREE HOURS.

IMPRESS-O-METER: 1/5 OR 4/5 Ok two scores here. These are the least impressive pancakes you have ever seen. However, crepes are French and French sounds fancy and 34g of protein and only 29g of carbs for a typically carby kind of meal is enough to impress me. And I am all that matters. In the world.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes Three Ways

Hey there.

Are you sick and tired of having only one way to enjoy your peanut butter cupcakes?

Are you tossing and turning night after night, wrestling with the idea of settling down with just one peanut butter cupcake topping?

Are you pretty sure peanut butter cupcakes know you're not a hit it and quit it type of person but sometimes your eyes wander and then your mouth wanders but it's okay baby, you're still the peanut butter cupcake for me but sometimes a grown adult just has these urges that are totally, totally normal and happen to everyone and if God wanted us to only enjoy one type of peanut butter cupcake for the rest of our lives, he wouldn't have given us taste buds?

Stop! You don't have to settle for another sleepless night!

Now you can live the good life with Mini Peanut Butter Cupcakes Three Ways!

Because you deserve it.  And cupcakenogomy is dead.

So that was weird, huh? I mean, all I've had for dinner tonight is cupcakes, 1/2 cup of edamame, and a yogurt and while that may seem like the perfect meal - it very much is the perfect meal and you were right for thinking that. My hands may be shaking? I can't imagine any correlation. Is this the danger of eating around? I should have used protection.

Let's get on with the deets...

Cupcake Ingredients

1/2 cup vanilla protein powder (use soy based protein powder to keep it vegan)

1/2 cup oat flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup + 1 tbls crunchy peanut butter

18 packets Truvia

2/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (or any variation)

Optional: a couple chocolate chips for plopping in the middle of the cupcakes before baking

Do as I say

Preheat the oven to 325. Line a mini cupcake pan with some mini liners. This recipe makes three and a half dozen mini cupcakes. Get ready to be overwhelmed. 

In a medium bowl, whisk the protein powder, oat flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

Beat the peanut butter with the truvia with an electric mixer until well blended. Add the applesauce and beat it like Chris Brown just caught it with another cupcake. (Too soon? Too nonsensical?) Mix in the vanilla. Mix in some of the dry mixture followed by some of the milk and continue alternating, finishing with the dry ingredients. Mix until fully incorporated.

Fill your mini cupcakes about 2/3 of the way full (here's where you can add some chocolate chips in the middle if you want) and pop in the oven for 12 minutes. Take out, let cool, repeat a half a million times.

Now let's get on with the cupcake swinging...

Option 1: Peanut Butter and Jelly

Ingredients

4 tbls vegan butter

3/4 cup confectioners sugar (I didn't have enough - don't make my mistakes.)

A splash of unsweetened vanilla almond milk

2 tbls of your jam of choice...but always choose red fig jam. No pressure.

Get on with it

Using an electric mixture, beat the vegan butter on high for a bit. Then add the confectioners sugar and beat until it incorporates. Beat harder and faster (teehee) to fluff it up (teeeeeheeeee). Add the splash of milk and the jam. Beat beat beat beat until you're happy with it. Spread it on the cupcakes. Devour the cupcakes.

Option 2: The Jackson Pollock

Ingredients

1/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (I had a lot of it, okay?)

2 tbls vegan butter

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Take the lazy way out

Get the butter and milk in a bowl together. Pop it in the microwave for a minute. Mix it. Add the chocolate chips and stir until smooth. Take your spoon and flick the ganache across the cupcake top like a masterful artist who's probably a little lot drunk hammered. Enjoy your delicate work of art.

Option 3: Chocolate Smothered Peanut Butter

Using the same ingredients as above

Dip your mini cupcakes top down into the bowl of ganache. Swirl a bit and set it on a cooling rack to set. Refrigerate to harden. Make sure to get chocolate all over your face and hands and face some more when you lose all self control and eat these like a savage animal. Yum!

So there you go. Three different options for your indecisive needs. And if you need more than three, you're just a sick fuck.

RATE ME!!

TASTE: 5/5 These cupcakes are so very good. Each option is a winner. And my love for bite-sized goodies is undeniable. If anything, the vegan substitutions in the batter elevate the taste and consistency. The cake itself is perfectly peanut buttery and the little crunches of peanuts are stupid good. Creamy peanut butter is for pussies and WonderBread. And you don't look like WonderBread to me...

EASE: 4/5 Vegan recipes are just oddly easy, if you ask me. Everything is so...soft. And when there's nothing in the batter that can cause you crippling stomach cramps if eaten in its raw form, it's also incredibly easy to taste as you go and adjust to your liking. And I like to pretend that it's healthier too. It's like taking a completely non-violent action to a bird with two stones! I think!

FILTH OF THE KITCHEN: 5/5 I'm just going to burn it down and start fresh. I think I have peanut butter and/or jam in my hair. I'll just shave my head. It's fine. I want to move on from this forever.

DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH? The dog woofed at me at one point because he realized it was 1am and I hadn't taken him out yet. Then I was all like, "Frank, shut the front door." And that confused him enough to convince him to go back to bed. (I'm pretty up to speed with my dog's mental capacity.) I think he's hibernating.

IMPRESS-O-METER: 4/5 If I've said it a million times, I will now say it a million and one times: vegan baking earns you street cred. Sure, it's a street that's gentrifying more and more with each passing second but it's also a street. And you cannot get cred anywhere else. Also, I hear they just opened up a new coffee house that serves one no-frills-back-to-basics brew in hand thrown mugs from a Polish grandmother's open-air studio that used to be a whorehouse. It's also fair-trade. It's pretty legit.

Mini Cupcake Nutrition Facts

per Peanut Butter Cupcake

32 calories / 3g carbs / 2g fat / 2g protein / 0g fiber / 1g sugar

per Peanut Butter and Jelly Mini Cupcake (estimation based on the recipe making enough for 20 or so servings)

72 calories / 8g carbs / 4g fat / 2g protein / 0g fiber / 6g sugar

per Chocolate Smother Peanut Butter Cupcake (estimation based on the recipe making a shit ton of ganache - I guessed 60 cupcake tops worth)

45 calories / 4g carbs / 3g fat / 2g protein / 0g fiber / 2g sugar

Miniature Chocolate Cheesecakes

It's safe to say that everything is better in miniature form. (I'm sorry, have you seen miniature ponies?) I can think of literally tens of other things that follow suit. Bonsai trees. Shrunken heads. Teacup anythings. My apartment. Chocolate Cheesecake.

Shrunken Teacup Studio Apartment Chocolate Cheesecake slices. Cuuuute.
(Bonsai.)

Six things. I can think of six things that are better in miniature form. See? Everything.

Before we go on and on and on and on (my God, it's already starting) about Miniature Chocolate Cheesecakes, let's take a closer look at thing #5: my apartment. Bitch you be mad tiny. Like I've seen a lot kitchen sinks (I think?) but rarely have I seen one that, with proper aim, you can throw shit in ala office trashcan basketball hoops (the one exception to the miniature rule - pretty sure only assholes have those) while lying comfortably in your bed. Does that make sense? I don't care. My apartment is like miniature pony of apartments. And I have loved it for 11 months.

So as the lease on my tiny studio apartment winds down, it seems only fitting to make something miniature. In honor of my tiny studio apartment and all things miniature (I listed them all above, if you forgot what they were. That's the complete list. Also? You should be kinda worried that you couldn't remember that list. It was only a handful of sentences ago. It's probably a tumor.) I present some Miniature Chocolate Cheesecakes. Oh and they'll keep you tiny too because who wants giant people when miniature is so much better? SEVEN! Seven things! I did it!

Recipe adapted from Women's Health because I am crazier than Women's Health. And don't you forget it!

Makes 14ish standard sized cupcakes

Ingredients
4 tbl wheat germ
2 8oz packages of fat free cream cheese*
8 oz very firm tofu, drained
24 packets Truvia
1 egg
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 unsweetened cocoa powder
8 oz fat free sour cream*
Some of this red fig jam I'm obsessed with

*(Use these if you're also crazy. Use reduced fat for it to taste better.)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. You can use terribly adorable cupcake liners or not. The not version turned out prettier but the liner was easier to handle. Either way, use some cooking spray to lightly coat the insides on the liners/pan. Dust the bottoms with some wheat germ for your crumb base. Toss that pan in your freezer.

Blend the cream cheese, tofu, and sugar (substitute) in a food processor. Add egg, egg whites, and vanilla. Process some more. Add the cocoa powder and sour cream. Process!

"Process me like one of your French girls."

Take your pan out of the freezer and load them up with cheesecake batter. Put them in the oven for like 20ish minutes or until they look done. That's helpful, right? Top with that jam I love.

Is that red fig jam on your mini slice of mini cheesecake?
BECAUSE IT LOOKS A LOT LIKE HEAVEN. 

RATE ME!!!

TASTE: 2.99/5 (Updated: they taste significantly better after a few hours of refrigeration.) So okay, I went a little too *crazy with the fat free-ing. One or both of the creamy white parts needs to be at just reduced fat. But they still taste good and I would put red fig jam on everything I eat if I could. And since I live alone, I can. And I do.


EASE: 5/5 The only way this could possibly be easier would be if my food processor didn't have the motor of a chainsaw and as such, wouldn't leave my ears ringing for hours. It hurts.


FILTH OF KITCHEN: 1.5/5 Hey! Way to go Mini Chocolate Cheesecakes! You are almost entirely contained to 2 washable things! MINIATURES DO IT BETTER. Amiright?


DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH? If the dog doesn't go back to eating the dough when I move to my new apartment, the dog is going to have to start paying rent. The fuck happened to my living breathing vacuum/Swiffer Wet Jet all-in-one?


IMPRESS-O-METER: 4.5/5 Oh, haven't you heard? Miniature things are the best things.

Nutritional facts per mini cake:
76 calories / 13g carbs / 2g fat / 8g protein / 1g fiber / 2g sugar

Healthy Little Muffins

Hey there Healthy Little Muffin, you wanna hang out before work?
Maybe after the gym?
Do you want to be my everything?
My one and only?

I want you inside me.

Recently, I've been having this kinda weird love affair with protein and fiber. I eat double fiber bread. I drink protein shakes. I nibble on Fiber Choice tablets. Protein bars? We've shared some romantic evenings.

Tonight was the final straw. I bought dried prunes and figs at Whole Foods. Wholesale. I know. I'm really passionate about pooping.

So making a muffin that will make you poop, give you energy, and maybe even taste halfway decent seemed like the obvious next step. Because cookies would have been stupid. Please. What is this, amateur night?

No #2 has ever tasted so much a winner.

It's official. This is not amateur night.

Here's the rundown on this recipe since I sorta kinda whipped it up out of my kitchen:

Ingredients


Almost 1/2 cup superfine sugar + 2 packets of Truvia (I ran out of sugar...then I ran out of superfine sugar...this was almost amateur night...)
2 tbs butter
2 eggs
1 cup of fat free sour cream
2 cups of old fashioned oats
1/2 cup of oat flour
1/2 Oh Yeah! Cookies and Cream Protein Powder (why wouldn't I buy the only brand with an exclamation point in the name?)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 remaining dried figs, chopped
2 remaining dried prunes, chopped

You're This Close to a Fantastic Bowel Movement


Preheat oven to 425. That seems super hot, I know.

1. Cream butter and sugar in your mixer. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat til brutalized.
2. Toss the sour cream and oats in a bowl to combine. Add them to your mixer and beat beat beat.
3. In a separate bowl (I plan to get your whole kitchen filthy), mix the dry ingredients.
4. Add the dry ingredients to your wet ones and mix on low until smoothish.
5. Douse your muffin pan with baking spray.
6. Evenly distribute the muffin batter into the 12 muffin tin. Add the random dried fruit you had left over into as many of the muffin pods you want. Be creative! Make a smiley fig face! Do not make a frowny fig face!
7. Stick it in the oven for 10 mins. Then reconsider how fucking hot that oven is. Turn it down to 375. Give it another 6 minutes. They look done? Sure, sure.
8. Let cool.
9. Allow yourself to enjoy how wonderfully the smell of muffins covers the smell of that entire bag of steamed spinach you whipped up earlier for dinner. Shhh...muffin time.

If my intestines were superhuman,
I'd eat every one of you, baby.

But wait!

I even have the nutrition facts for these little fuckers! These numbers may not seem like much but with such a low calorie count, I think they are moderately impressive. You get your fiber from the oats and oat flour and you could always add more prunes or figs to get a much more substantial amount. The protein obviously comes from the protein powder (per serving, it's one of the lower calorie, higher protein, lower carb ones available), the eggs, sour cream, oats, and oat flour.

Healthy Little Muffins 
nutrition facts per muffin


cal: 152
carbs: 22g
fat: 4g
protein: 7g
fiber: 2g
sodium: 249mg


RATE ME!!!


TASTE: 3.5/5 These muffins are really yummy and perfectly breakfast-y. I will say, they do taste healthier than gluttonous. But I think that's a positive thing? They are plenty moist thanks to the sour cream and the cookies and cream protein powder actually tastes really good on its own so it's only uplifted by the addition of oats. I am a really big fan of everything I am tasting in these muffins. And they had the potential to be terrifyingly bad.

EASE: 5/5 I just want to make a poop joke here so bad. So I will. The only thing easier will be passing my next bowel movement. HELLO.

FILTH OF THE KITCHEN: 3/5 I used alllllll the bowls in my kitchen. But to be fair, I have like 3-4 bowls in my kitchen. USE ALL THE BOWLS.

DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH?: The dog got a bath earlier tonight. The dog wishes he was dead still.

IMPRESS-O-METER: 4.75/5 Excuse me, I made healthy muffins with protein powder that actually taste fantastic. Where's my ticker tape parade? When will all this fist pumping I've done tonight be appreciated? Soon. So soon.



I have to go to the bathroom now.