White Chocolate Raspberry Cake

In August, we celebrated my husband's, brother's and mother's birthdays. A white chocolate raspberry cake had been requested from a local bakery, but I didn't realize they needed over a week's notice to make it. Instead, I found a recipe for white chocolate cake and made it myself. It was sandwich layer included the icing as well as some raspberry sauce which was also served with the finished cake. I topped it with raspberries and melted dark chocolate that I used to write out "Happy Birthday" and create scroll work designs.

This cake was time consuming, calorie-laden, and more expensive in terms of ingredients than I normally would go for, but it got a unanimous thumbs up!

A Very Berry Tart

I had never made a tart before, and maybe never even eaten one, but I stumbled across this recipe from the blog Cooking with my Kid, and was inspired to make it for a book club brunch I was hosting.

It was quite easy. I used fresh raspberries and frozen blueberries, and have decided that frozen works perfectly - just use frozen (don't thaw the berries first). I don't keep self-rising flour on hand, but here's a simple recipe to make it.

As I said, I'd never had a tart before, so I'll let you know it tasted like a cross between a cookie and a cake in terms of texture and density. Not overly sweet, with nice tart berry bursts.

Banana Bread

Based on THIS recipe, but with an adjustment recommended by one of the reviewer - replacing some of the white sugar with brown sugar.

Did you know adding peanut butter makes it even more delicious?!

Baked Sweet Potato

To accompany the fish and mushroom risotto I made for supper tonight, I decided to use up a sweet potato I had laying around. I just tossed it in at 350F until I remember it was still in there. The skin of the potato had come away from the flesh, so I peeled it off, made some gentle indents in the potato and sprinkled it with sea salt.

Sweet, salty, and oh-so-filling, this is something I will definitely make again!

Homemade Pop-Tarts

On Pie Day/Pi Day, I was looking for an option for single-serve pies to make for dessert, after a quick Google search, I found Brown Eyed Baker's recipe for homemade Pop-Tarts.

I made some with brown sugar & cinnamon filling (pictured), others with blueberry filling, and improvised an apple crumble with some of the scraps and other ingredients.

While definitely NOT low-calorie, these were fun to make, but I don't think I'd do this specific recipe again.

Lemon Meringues

I've never made a meringue before. I've only eaten one or two. But did that stop me from trying a recipe that looked so easy and so low calorie? No, it did not! I saw the recipe on Jen's Favorite Cookies. The only thing I found to be a little confusing was that she didn't say how big you should make them - I'd compare it to a Hershey's Kiss or chocolate rosette. I also found mine started to lose the rosette look after a while... further investigation found the culprit: a lemon zest clog.

Admittedly, these did not photograph well... but hers looked great!

WARNING: the "dough" for these is incredibly sticky.

Nutrition information: serving of 6 pieces (from a batch of 300)
Calories: 14

Potassium: 5
Fat: 0
Carbohydrates: 3
Fibre: 0
Protein: 0
Weight Watchers Points Plus: 0

My rating: tasty and lemony, it was hard to stop after just a couple. I would only repeat this recipe if I was sharing it out with some friends. I ended up throwing quite a few away to prevent me from eating them.