Healthier (and YUMMY!) Red Velvet Cake

I love cake.  It is definitely my favorite food, always has been.  Cake is one of those things that I can't live without, but I try to eat healthy as much as I can.  This cake is absolutely delicious and SO much less fat than the original.   The cake leaves out Eggs, Oil and Water and only uses 1 cup of Diet Dr. Pepper. Seriously! I'm sure you could use Root Beer or Coke or whatever you want, but the diet makes it so the only calories are the cake mix.  The frosting is delicious too, has all the flavor of regular cream cheese frosting, but a fraction of the fat.  Now you can have your cake and ENJOY it too!

For the cake:

1 Box Red Velvet Cake Mix

8 oz (1 Cup) Diet Dr. Pepper

 

Stir cake mix and Dr. Pepper until combined. Don’t over mix.  Spray pan of choice with cooking spray ( lined muffin pans (2/3 full), 1 13x9 Pan, or 2 Round Cake pans). I made this in the 2 cake round pans.

Bake at 350 ~15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Put cakes on cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

For the Cream Cheese Frosting: 

1 Package (8oz) Reduced Fat Cream Cheese

8 Tbsp (1/2 cup) Light Butter or Reduced Fat Margarine

2 Tbsp Milk

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

16 oz Powdered Sugar

 

Combine cream cheese, butter, milk, and vanilla with an electric mixer (or by hand if you’ve got the energy).  Slowly add powdered sugar on low speed so you don’t make a mess. If the frosting is too thin, add a little more powdered sugar. If it’s too stiff, add a little more milk.  You can adjust these until you have the desired consistency.

Put it all together: 

 

Once cake has cooled, frost however you like. Cream cheese frosting is a little more thin than buttercream, so it doesn’t mold well.  I put a layer of frosting in between my two round cakes, then added a layer of frosting to the top of the cake. I thought it looked pretty, but you can do the sides if you want to as well.

Enjoy!

Baby's First Flight

Our family goes on vacation every year.  This year, we're going to Palm Beach - Sun, Swimming, Relaxing, perfect! But wait...we have a very BUSY 7 1/2 month old baby girl! Savannah is a wonderful baby and so smart, but we have no idea how she'll react to being held in one place on an airplane for 3 hours. 

I made these little gifts for the airline passengers sitting around us to ease the anxiety (my own) of flying with a baby.  I worry too much about what people think, so this way, there's no way they can stay mad if I make them smile and apologize with snacks before there's an incident!

This was so simple- I printed a cute little poem and airplane picture on some round labels. I stuck them on clear treat bags and put a pair of earplugs inside.  

If you can't read the poem in the picture, it says:

"My name is Savannah,

this is my first flight.

Here are some treats in case 

my smile doesn't 

stay as bright."

Next, get some ribbon and tie a bow around your snack of choice (I went with animal crackers to stay with the kid theme) and the earplug bag so that they stay together. 

Ta Da! Treat bags!  Happy Travels!

 

Coming Soon...

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting with HALF the fat!
Yes, seriously. I wouldn't joke about frosting and half the fat! Cake is my absolute favorite food and I'll be honest, this is mostly because of the frosting part.  I made a delicious strawberry buttercream with real pureed strawberries, Light Butter, and it took literally 5 minutes.

I'll get the complete recipe up this weekend, but here's a sneak peak of how it turned out!

Healthier Bananas Foster Waffles

I love breakfast, but a lot of yummy breakfast foods are not exactly good for you.  They slow you down instead of revving you up for your day.  I like to make breakfast on the weekends for my husband and myself, so here's a healthier breakfast with all the flavor of a naughty one. :) Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 Large Eggs

1 3/4 Cups Milk (I use Soy or Almond)

2 Tbsp Dark Rum

2 Large Very Ripe Bananas

1 Cup All Purpose Flour

1 Cup Wheat Flour (You could use all white flour or all wheat flour if you prefer)

1 Tbsp Brown Sugar

1 tsp Cinnamon

3 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/4 tsp Salt

Directions:

1. Heat your waffle iron to a medium setting

 2. Mix your wet ingredients in a bowl and mash the bananas in

3. Mix your dry ingredients into the bowl

4. Spray waffle iron with cooking spray and pour batter into the waffle iron per your iron's instructions. Mine instructs to put 1/3 cup batter into each section, but every machine is different

5. Let them cook 3-4 minutes or until a nice golden brown

6. You can serve these a number of ways.  I like to serve with walnuts and maple syrup, and you can add fruit as well.

Enjoy!

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Wedding DIY!

When we got married last year, we wanted it to be personal but not over the top expensive.  I took matters into my own hands and made a lot of things for it.  See some of it here! 

Or Here:

 

Summer BBQ

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I.Love.Entertaining.
My husband and I hosted our Third Annual Summer BBQ this weekend.  Our daughter Savannah showed up in her little car and charmed all of the guests. :)

It was outside, so we went more minimal on the decorations.  To make that personal impact and show that we really put some thought into it, I made the food and table more decorative instead of lots of actual decorations.

We did manage to remember to take a picture of the pork...

 My husband is from Georgia, so he knows how to smoke some delicious BBQ!

We neglected to take enough pictures...It's so hard with a group of people at your house! I had full intentions of taking pictures of the whole table with all of the food and completely forgot.  I did take pictures of some of my favorite things from the BBQ, though.

Top Left: Watermelon Grill. Yes! We just cut the watermelon in half and scooped out the insides.  I put oranges and blackberries in the bottom to look like hot coals (The red from the watermelon and orange from the....orange :) looked like it was hot under the blackberries). Stuck some skewers in for grates, then attached the lid with toothpicks.  Ta da!! Grill!  We made fruit skewers with the extra fruit and scooped watermelon and placed them on the grill, too.

Top Right: Food Labels.  I love these! I got stickers at Michael's craft store that were just plain black, and got a white paint marker.  I wrote what each food or drink was and stuck them on the serving container for everything.  This has a couple of purposes. 1: They look adorable. 2: Labeling everything makes it so your guests can see what they're going to eat/drink without having to ask you.  That way, you can entertain guests and they can figure out what everything is on their own.  

Bottom Left: S'Mores Fire Pit! I put marshmallows on a skewer and dipped them in melted milk chocolate.  I then rolled them in crushed graham crackers and let them sit so the chocolate could harden.  I placed them on a Silpat on a baking sheet, but even just a plate would work for this.  Once they were set, I used a dark metal planter from the Dollar Store that had floral foam in it, placed some scrunched tissue paper on top, then stuck the skewers down into the floral foam.  Once they were all in there, I chopped the tissue randomly to look like flames.  We all know it doesn't look like real fire, but it came out really cute and was a great centerpiece on top of being delicious! 

Bottom Right: Hot Sauce Bar.  We have a lot of hot sauce fanatics in our group.  My husband and I grabbed our 5 favorite sauces in varying degrees of spiciness and I used the food labels again.  We thought of fun names to call each one that let people know how hot it was and just stuck them over the actual label on the bottles.