Cheesecake Cupcakes

First off let me apologize for my absence, its been a super crazy couple of days around here. Now that we have that out of the way I bring you one of the first recipes I ever reworked. I am not an extraordinarily health conscious person, hell, I think I drink a 12 pack of soda a day on my own. I am, however, mindful when it comes to nutrition. Occasionally I throw the idea of being healthy to the wind and over indulge, but I try my best to ensure that only occurs on holidays.

I love a good cheesecake. I love refrigerator cheesecakes, I love baked cheesecakes, plain, chocolate … I love them all. The problem with making a cheesecake is that if I make one I’ll eat one. I mean I will literally eat the entire thing. The solution is to make mini cheesecakes, or cheesecake cupcakes. I’ll post a link to the original recipe at the bottom.

Cheesecake Cupcakes

2 pkg (8 oz) lite cream cheese

2 eggs

1/4 cup sugar substitute 

1 tsp vanilla 

Mix all ingredients together, beat until smooth. Its easiest to do one brick of cream cheese and one egg at a time so you don’t cement your mixer.

Fill cupcake tins either 1/2 full to make 24 cupcakes or 2/3 full to make 12

Bake at 350 for approximately 17 minutes until tops are lightly golden and cupcakes have set. Cool in muffin tin for 5 minutes then transfer to cooling rack and cool completely. Store in the refrigerator. 

The recipe as it was had 456 calories for the 12 serving size. This  recipe has 112 for the 12 serving sized cheesecakes. While it isn’t all about calories, there are a lot of other factors, most people tend to count calories more than anything else. These are delicious, and are great plain or topped with any sort of fresh fruit topping.

http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,196,147191-227192,00.html <– original recipe  

Quick Lunch/Side Salad

As someone with children I truly understand what it means to be pressed for time. Some days I think its a miracle to find five minutes for myself. I’ve had to adjust the way I eat to fit my new life. That means I can’t spend half an hour in the kitchen whipping up something spectacular for lunch, but it doesn’t mean I can’t eat delicious food. I’ve learned to do “make ahead” lunches. Things I can throw together on a Sunday night and eat throughout the week. I’ve also learned to make a few things that way I don’t have to eat the same thing every day.

Healthy Snacking

Snacking is inevitable. I personally eat about five or six times a day. You have to keep yourself full or you’ll be more likely to over indulge later on and regret it shortly after. The moral of the story is always keep some healthy snacks on hand. You’d be surprised how inexpensive it is to stock up on a few things that way you aren’t eating the same thing and getting bored with it quickly. You’ll never eat healthy if its boring.

Quick Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! Its also the one almost everyone I know, including myself, skips. If I don’t skip it I find myself in the Dunkin Donuts drive through, contemplating which horribly unhealthy breakfast menu item I’m going to choose. Every once in awhile fast food breakfast is fine. Its delicious, its fast, its convenient, and its generally not that expensive. The rest of the time I need something fast and easy. My standard go-to breakfast is the egg in a basket.

Cleaning out my Kitchen

As I mentioned in my previous post, my kitchen had turned into a no counter space nightmare. The biggest part of my problem is that I have no pantry. So I really don’t have much space to store things, I need to solve that problem very quickly. It’s very difficult to bake and cook when you don’t have counter space, and you just keep shoving stuff farther and farther into the corner, until you forget you have it. This is just how I got my kitchen in shape, it won’t work for everyone but it worked well for me and I hope that it can help some of you out too.

If you or someone you know has a gambling problem…

I don’t have a gambling problem. I am, however, a compulsive over-baker. I can’t help myself. If there’s butter in my house (and there is always butter in my house) I feel the need to bake. Yesterday was no different, with the exception that I cleaned, gutted, and reorganized my kitchen first. That’s not finished yet, when it is I’ll be sharing the details. After I got as much kitchen cleaning as I could stomach done, I realized I had enough counter space to start baking, and start baking I did.

There Is Absolutely No Problem With …

… Taking shortcuts! There’s nothing wrong with it, trust me. I have been cooking and baking for years, and in that time I’ve learned quite a few things. I used to refuse to do things like buy a boxed cake mix, I even refused to buy pudding and would make my own from scratch instead, which is delicious by the way. Next time I make home made pudding I’ll post it. While it is fine and wonderful to make your own EVERYTHING, it is completely unnecessary. The pound cake recipe I posted a few days ago is delicious, but if I use a particular brand of box mix pound cake no one can tell the difference between them. Since when I make chocolate chip cookies I usually use the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips, no one will ever know if I buy break and bake. My Grandmother would disown me and die if she heard me saying this, but its not always worth it to make everything from scratch.

Kitchen Staples

Several years ago I moved out of my parents house. I loved the “freedom” that came with living with my fiance. There was no one asking where I was going when I left and no need for explanations when I came home at 6 AM. I could stock my kitchen with whatever I wanted and didn’t have to worry about someone eating all of my food. I could finally have soda and caffeinated coffee at my fingertips when I woke up with no need to make an stop on my way to work. It was completely wonderful, at first that is. Two years later, due to unfortunate circumstances across the board, my fiance and I found ourselves moving into my parents house. I had gotten laid off and my father had become very ill, so our only choice was to swallow our pride and move in with my parents. Its gotten easier over time. I’ve accepted that the reduced cost of living and benefit of a live in babysitter greatly outweighs any feelings of failure. Not to mention, full use of a much larger kitchen than the one in our apartment.

Fall Baking

Yesterday was crazy. Not only was I making a huge pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner, a little tradition we have since the company my aunt works for gives all its employees a 13 lbs turkey at the beginning of October, but we had some weather. I live in the Midwest, and I have my entire life. Thunderstorms do not phase me. So there I was the a bird in the oven, my fiance had just left and the tornado sirens go off. In complete disbelief I get my 14 year old little brother, who is having a breakdown from fear of losing his Xbox, and get him settled in the bathroom with the baby with all of the baby necessities and close the door. I’m now trying to call my fiance to find out where he is and I’m looking around out the windows trying to determine if its worth me ripping everything out of the coat closet to fit inside. I came to the conclusion that it was not worth making that much of a mess. So I just stayed close by the bathroom to talk to the kids and keep them calm. Once the sirens stopped I went outside to have a look around to make sure the coast was clear. Went back inside, got the kids out of the bathroom and back to playing, and I went back to cooking. That was when I realized how much I’ve changed in the past year. The sirens go off at least once a year out here. Every time that’s happened in the past I’ve been the first person outside, wanting to catch a glimpse of the funnel cloud. This time was different. I didn’t actually go outside until after the sirens had turned off and my response wasn’t one of excitement. That was a pretty heavy realization, and after that there was nothing I needed more than a glass of wine and a slice of pie.

Not Just For PB&J

Both of my parents worked when I was growing up. My dad was the head of finance for a leasing company, and my mom worked odd part time jobs here and there to keep herself busy. Every weekday, we would make the 30 mile journey from our house to my Grandmother’s. We would have fun together every day. She would take me to the grocery store with her and show me how to pick produce, she would take me to the department stores and buy me anything I wanted, during the summer she would take me to the pool, and on rainy days, we would bake.