Crispy Oven Baked Zucchini

These Crispy Oven Baked Zucchini are a great alternative to deep fried snacks.  I made these for the first time back in Ramadan.  I was looking for something to make for Iftar which wasn't deep fried.  My mom would make Zucchini Bagiya/Pakoras which would be in a chick pea flour batter.  I love them but I wanted to find a healthier version which didn't involve frying.  I found these on Wishful Chef.  The original recipe used egg whites and I've used egg whites in the picture above.  I've also made them with whole egg and like that way too.  With the whole egg the breading is crispier and adheres better to the zucchini.  This is a great snack without all the guilt of deep frying.

Low Fat Oatmeal Date Bars {SRC}

It's time for Secret Recipe Club again!  For those not familiar with the club, every month you are assigned a blog and you must make one recipe from that blog.  Then on Reveal Day we all post at the same time.  This month I was assigned the blog Cookin' with Cyndi.  After searching through Cyndi's recipes I settled on her Oatmeal Date Bars.  I've been making a lot of oatmeal lately and dates are always a hit in our home.  My kids love to snack on them.  My main changes to the recipe was to replace the butter with oil and applesauce.  I also used brown sugar instead of Splenda and included some all-purpose flour.  Bilal loved them and called them "Go-Bah" meaning granola bar.  It's so cute the way little kids try to say words.  Hasan used to call granola bars "Go-Ma-Ma".  I think you can switch up the date filling in these.  I'm thinking of trying it with some strawberry jam next time.

Coconut Macaroons

I've never been a huge fan of coconut.  I started making these one day after making some custard and having egg whites leftover.  I didn't want to throw them out so I searched around and came across this recipe on AllRecipes.com.  These are very easy to make, quick to put together and were very good.   This time I had made these to giveaway to some family.  Make sure you keep them in an airtight container otherwise they dry up and get hard.  I had put them in some cellophane bags and they had hardened up.  You can remedy this by popping it in the microwave for about 10 seconds.  They are great snack for kids too.  These would also be great dipped in some chocolate or with some drizzled on top.

Hash Brown Egg Nests

My last post was for Herb Seasoning.  I used that seasoning in these Hash Brown Egg Nests.  My husband had bought egg whites from CostCo.  So you can imagine there were a lot of egg whites. He asked me to make something with them.  The first thing that came to my mind was Angel Food Cake but he didn't want dessert.  So after some searching I found these on SkinnyTaste.  I made them close to the original recipe but they were bland for us.  So I increased the seasonings, added some Herb Seasoning and mixed in some whole eggs.  I also omitted the cheese and mixed in some parsley and coriander.  They were much better.  The only thing I don't like about this recipe is that they take awhile to bake if you want them for breakfast.  I like things that are fast.  I don't want to be waiting around for an hour for breakfast to be made.  You can probably make the egg nests and prepare the egg filling ahead of time but I have yet to try this.  If we ever do have a bunch of egg whites this is definitely going to be on my list of things to make.

Cake Pops

Ever since I discovered Bakerella I have been dying to make cake pops.  They just looked so cute!  The first time I tasted them was when my cousin made them.  She has a cupcake business called Polka Dot Cupcake Shoppe.  They were so amazing...actually everything she made was amazing...looked awesome and tasted even better.

 

Strawberry Cake

Now that warm weather is here the grocery store has lots of sweet strawberries.  I had bought 2 packets from Longo's....then I went to my mom's and she had bought a packet for Hasan...so now my house is overflowing with strawberries.  I hate it when food goes bad so I knew I had to do something with them or else I was going to end up with some rotting strawberries.  I found a recipe at Smitten Kitchen which was perfect because it used strawberries, had no vanilla (I am all out of vanilla powder) and it used 4 egg whites (I had exactly 4 egg whites sitting in my fridge).  I replaced the butter with margarine and made a low fat cream cheese frosting.  I made half the recipe because the whole recipe was way too much for our family.  I didn't have cake flour so I just used all-purpose but reduced the amount.  I should have sifted it but I was lazy.  Next time I would do a proper substitution to make the cake less dense.  I omitted the food colouring.  The original recipe uses frozen strawberries which would be a great idea when strawberries aren't in season.  This was so yummy...I am really looking forward to making it again!

Low Fat Fudge Brownies

I love finding recipes that taste great and are low fat.  I found this recipe at Obsessed with Baking.  I made a few minor changes to the recipe.  I used semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet, reduced the vanilla to 1 tsp (since that is all I had) and I used one egg white.  This is originally a Cook's Illustrated recipe.  So far I have had good results with Cook's Illustrated recipes so I was eager to give this recipe a try.  At first I didn't like this brownie very much.  I don't like coffee and I could taste the coffee.  I took these over to my parents.  My mom really liked them.  The next day I couldn't believe how good these brownies tasted.  I find some chocolate baked goods really do taste better the next day.  I was so sad I only had 4 brownies left.

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

I've seen a few recipes for Cookies and Cream Cupcakes.  My son loves Oreo cookies so I thought this would be a good recipe to try.  I settled on a recipe I found at Annie's Eats because it had actual Oreos in the cake and it just looked so good.  I made half of this recipe and I replaced the butter with margarine.  I also made a low fat version of the cream cheese frosting.  It ended up being very thin and I wasn't able to pipe it.  It was also too much since I wasn't piping.  I found the cupcakes way too sweet.  My dad called me the next day and told me they were way too sweet and his sugar had gone up.  The recipe called for putting half an Oreo at at bottom and then putting the batter on top.  I loved this idea and the way it looked.  But when eating I wasn't too fond of it.  I thought it was way too many cookies in the batter.  So I made another batch and reduced the cookies by half and I didn't put the half Oreo at the bottom.  I also coarsley chopped them so the cookies were more distrubuted.  In the first batch I broke the cookies into 4-5 pieces.  They turned out much better.  I still have to work on a good low fat cream cheese frosting but I've posted what I did below.