Tom Parker asked:


One of the worries for many people that are diagnosed with diabetes is that they will have to give up their favourite sugary treats. Whilst it is true that you should moderate your sugar intake as a diabetic, by being a little creative you can come up with some sweet treats for yourself. In this article I will be providing you with three diabetic recipes for; chocolate cheesecake, diabetic double chocolate cookies and fruit and bread pudding.

1) CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE

You will need:

- Margarine for pan

- 15 oz. part skim milk Ricotta cheese

- 1 1/2 c. (12 oz.) light cream cheese, softened

- 1 whole egg

- 2 egg whites

- 1 c. unsweetened apple juice concentrate

- 3 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa

- 1 tbsp. cornstarch

- 1 tbsp. sugar

- 1 tsp. vanilla extract

- 2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa (for topping)

To prepare preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 9 inch spring-form pan. Next wrap the outside of the pan with aluminium foil. Then place the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor or blender and puree them all till smooth. Next use a rubber spatula to scrape the mixture into the prepared pan. Then put the pan in the oven on a baking sheet for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes turn the oven off and leave the cake in the oven with door closed for 1 hour. Once the hour is up remove the cake and refrigerate. Before unmolding and serving, let it stand at room temperature for 10 minutes. Then sift 2 teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa over the top and slice the cheesecake with a knife that has been warmed in hot water. The finished cake should serve 12 people.

2) DIABETIC DOUBLE CHOCOLATE COOKIES

You will need:

- 2 c. 100% Bran or Bran Buds, All Bran or Fiber One

- 2/3 c. water

- 1 c. egg (5-6 med.)

- 2 tsp. vanilla

- 2 tsp. chocolate extract

- 2/3 c. vegetable oil

- Liquid sugar substitute – equal to 1/2 c. sugar

- 1 3/4 c. flour

- 1/2 c. cocoa

- 1/4 c. dry milk (instant)

- 1 tsp. soda

- 1 tsp. baking powder

To prepare mix the ingredients well and drop the mixture onto a cookie sheet using a teaspoon. Then place the cookie tray in the oven and bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

3) FRUIT N BREAD PUDDING

You will need:

- 3 slices enriched white bread

- 1 1/2 med. bananas, peeled and sliced

- 1/2 c. sliced peaches with juice

- 1/2 c. cranberries

- 1/2 c. brown sugar replacement

- 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

- 1/3 c. water

- 1/2 tsp. banana extract

- 1/2 tsp. brandy extract

- Grated nutmeg (optional)

To prepare toast the bread on a baking at 325 degrees until dry. Then cut the toast into cubes. Next combine the toast cubes with the fruits. Then dissolve the brown sugar replacement and cinnamon in water. Next add the extracts to the water and pour this over the fruit/toast mixture. Then turn it with a spatula until well coated. Next let it stand for 5 minutes. Then turn it again, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Next place the mixture in a one-quart size oven-proof casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees uncovered for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes serve the pudding warm with a dusting of grated nutmeg. The finished pudding should serve 3 people.

As you can see from these tasty recipes diabetes does not have to spoil your fun. You can still sample the sweet stuff. I hope you enjoy the recipes.



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Karen Ciancio asked:


There are so many Christmas cookie recipes around but often so little time to bake during the busy holiday season.

The solution? A great tasting basic cookie recipe that quickly and easily turns into such a variety of easy to make Christmas treats, friends and family will think you poured over all your favorite Christmas cookie recipes.

Let’s start with the basics:

Basic Cookie Dough Recipe

1/2 cup (or 1 stick) butter (or margarine) at room temperature

1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except the flour. Beat with an electric mixer, scraping the sides of the bowl several times, until the mixture is light and fluffy. With mixer at a low speed, add the flour gradually, beating just until everything is well blended.

Place the mixture on a baking sheet using a tablespoon measure and press down with a spoon to flatten a bit. Or roll our and cut into shapes with a cookie cutter. Bake at 350ºF for about 12 to 15 minutes, until golden.

This basic cookie mixture is also the base for the following cookie recipes (all baked in a preheated oven at 350ºF).

Orange Cookies

(Makes about 32)

Add 1 tablespoon of grated orange zest to the recipe. Shape into a log that is about 1 1/2″ in diameter and refrigerate for 4 hours.

Slice dough into 1/4″ thick slices. Place on cookie sheet. Cookies can be decorated with candies, rolled in colored sugar, or cut into pretty holiday shapes before baking. Bake in preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, until lightly browned.

Cherry Coconut Chocolate Squares

(Makes about 54 squares)

In addition to the basic dough you will need:

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

3 cups flaked coconut

1/2 cup maraschino cherries, well drained and coarsely chopped

Line a 13″x9″ baking pan with foil.

Stir cocoa powder into basic dough mixture. Press evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the crust looks dry.

In a medium bowl whisk together eggs, sugar, almond extract and baking powder until well blended. Stir in coconut and cherries. Pour over the baked crust.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until top just begins to brown and a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack. Lift it out on to a cutting board using the foil ends and cut into 1 1/2″ squares. Squares can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

Coconut Pineapple Cookies

(Makes about 36)

In addition to the basic dough you will need:

1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut

1/3 cup pineapple preserves (use raspberry or apricot if you prefer)

Add 1 cup of the flaked coconut to the basic dough mixture and mix well. Shape the dough into 1 1/2″ balls and roll in the remaining coconut to coat them. Place the balls 1″ apart on lightly greased cookie sheets. Make a deep indentation in the center of each cookie with your fingertip.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until the cookie is firm and the coconut is lightly toasted. When cooled, fill each hole in the center of the cookies with the preserves.

You can vary this basic dough to make a wide variety of Christmas cookie recipes. Add other flavorings like maple, ginger or cinnamon. Add chopped dried fruits like apricots or dates. Or bake them plain in holiday shapes and decorate with colored icing.

Christmas is such a wonderful time of year. Here’s hoping these quick and easy Christmas cookie recipes help keep the pressure off the cook.



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Abbas Shareef asked:


Easy Chocolate Chip CookiesBy: Stephanie Foster”There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love chocolate, and communists.” – Leslie Moak Murray

I can’t help but love that quote. When I was a kid, my grandpa always called any store bought cookies that somehow made it into the house “Commie cookies.” For him, it was Grandma’s homemade cookies or none at all.

There’s just something special about homemade cookies, especially chocolate chip cookies, so far as I’m concerned. It’s a great family activity, something even children can help with, and everyone loves eating the results.

Here’s an easy recipe for chocolate chip cookies I think you’ll enjoy:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 package butter pecan, chocolate chip, chocolate fudge, devil’s food, German, chocolate or yellow cake mix1/2 cup butter or margarine — softened1 teaspoon vanilla2 eggs1/2 cup chopped nuts1 (6 ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup)Heat oven to 350°. Combine half of the dry cake mix , butter, vanilla and eggs in large bowl and mix until smooth. Stir in remaining cake mix, nuts and chocolate chips.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are set (centers will be soft). Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Hope the cookies turn out great! Don’t forget, you can find more delicious chocolate recipes at My Chocolate Heaven, the best chocolate blog. My Chocolate Heaven gives you many dessert recipes and they all have to do with chocolate. There are drink to cookies, to cake recipes and much much more. Go check it out today and don’t delay! Give yourself a yummy treat!

http://www.mychocolateheaven.blogspot.com



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Joe Croft asked:


Chocolate mousse recipes abound in all shapes and sizes, some are complicated, and some, like this one, are very easy to make. However, that doesn’t make it any less delicious. This one gets made frequently in our house, and doesn’t last long! I use a blend of white and milk chocolate because I feel that creates a perfect complement to the baileys, and the amaretti biscuits.

This is the sort of recipe that can be easily adapted with all sorts of different flavours, as long as you retain the same ratio of chocolate to cream, and don’t add too much of any ingredient that contains a lot of water, as this could affect the ability of the chocolate and cream to blend together smoothly. I’ve included some other varieties we frequently indulge ourselves in at the end of the recipe, which will hopefully spur you on to dream up your own concoctions.

HELPFUL HINTS: The trick with this recipe is to get the chocolate and cream to the right temperatures so that when they are blended together, the chocolate doesn’t “melt” the cream (which has all the lovely little air bubbles in it because of all the whisking you’ve been doing), and the cream doesn’t make the melted chocolate instantly solidify into little bits. For that reason, I’d suggest you get the cream out of the fridge about half an hour before starting, so that it can warm a little, and don’t forget to let the chocolate cool a little before adding it to the cream!

INGREDIENTS:

300ml (10 fl oz) Double Cream

100g (3.5 oz) Milk Chocolate

200g (7 oz) White Chocolate

100ml (3 fl oz) Irish Cream (Baileys, or any other brand)

Half a dozen small hard amaretti biscuits

METHOD:

Melt the Milk and White Chocolate together gently in a double boiler (or a pyrex bowl over a saucepan with a bit of water in the base), and then set aside to cool a little. Meanwhile, whip the double cream until it just shows the trail of the whisk. Gently fold the cream and melted chocolate together. Then add the Irish Cream, a little at a time, stirring constantly and gently. Pour into individual ramekins, and top with an amaretti biscuit to garnish.

Leave to set in the fridge for a couple of hours. The finished dessert should be consumed within 3 days of making, unless it is frozen, in which case it will keep in the freezer for at least 3 weeks, if kept inside a tightly sealed box.

Calories per portion: 585 kcal

Fat per portion: 44g

Makes about 6 portions

OTHER OPTIONS:

Substitute dark chocolate for the milk and white chocolate, and add about 200g of fresh raspberries to the mix at the end, folding them in gently to avoid squashing them.

Replace the milk chocolate with white chocolate, and add a few drops of peppermint oil to counteract the sweetness of the white chocolate.

Make some caramel by boiling up 90g of granulated sugar with 3 tablespoons of water in a heavy-based saucepan until it is a pale golden brown. Pour it onto a greased baking sheet, and leave for a few hours until cool, then put in a bag and break into small pieces using a rolling pin. Replace the white and milk chocolate with 100g dark chocolate, and 200g milk chocolate to make a really richly chocolatey milk chocolate, and stir the little pieces of caramel into the mousse at the end.

Double the batch size, omit the Irish cream and amaretti cookies, and split the chocolate content into dark, milk and white (i.e. 200g each of white, milk and dark chocolate. Mix them up in separate batches, and either pour into a loaf tin in layers (allowing them to set in between), or pour small amounts into a large serving bowl, stirring together gently at the borders between the colours, to achieve a marbled effect. Delicious served with a fruit coulis!



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Steven Magill asked:


Copyright (c) 2008 Steven Magill

Have you ever wondered who invented the chocolate chip cookie? Because chocolate chip cookies are so common, it is easy to forget that these treats have not been around forever. In fact, did you know that chocolate chip cookies are not even one hundred years old? It’s true!

The answer to “who invented the chocolate chip cookie” is: Ruth Graves Wakefield.

Ruth Graves Wakefield was born on June 17, 1903 and she is person who invented the Toll House Cookie, which was the world’s first chocolate chip cookie.

Ruth Wakefield was educated at the Framingham State Normal School Development of Household Arts and she graduated in 1924. After graduating from school, she worked both as a doctor and gave lectures about food.

In 1930 Wakefield and her husband purchased a lodge for tourists in Whitman, Massachusetts (part of Plymouth County). The lodge was first built in 1709 and has a long and rich history of its own. Many weary travelers have spent the night at the lodge as it is conveniently located around halfway between New Bedford and Boston. This is usually where passers through paid a toll, changed their horses and stopped for some much appreciated home cooked food. When the Wakefields bought it, they named the lodge the Toll House Inn and made sure to keep up with the lodge’s traditions. All of the home cooked meals were prepared and served by Ruth and it was not long before her desserts earned her some local fame. There were many visitors to the lodge, one of the most famous being John F. Kennedy (when he was still a Senator).

In 1940, Ruth wrote a cookbook called Toll House Tried and True Recipes. Ruth passed away in 1977 and the Toll House Inn burned down at the end of 1983. While there are plenty of companies that make and sell chocolate chips now, the recipe printed on the back of the Nestle Toll House bags is the original Ruth Graves Wakefield recipe. As of today, Nestle is the only company with the rights to print the recipe on its bags. All of the recipes that are printed on other company’s’ bags are different from the original recipe.

The chocolate chip cookie was invented in the late 1930s (making it almost seventy seven years old) though there are different stories about how, exactly, the original chocolate chip cookie recipe was invented. Some stories say it was an accident, others say it was an experiment and still others say that it was a purposeful recipe. The story of how the chocolate chip cookie was invented varies according to the person telling the story. One thing is for certain, though, and that is that the answer to “who invented the chocolate chip cookie” is Ruth Graves Wakefield. Who knew that what might have started out as an experiment or an accident would someday be one of the most common treats in the Western World? Who doesn’t remember eating chocolate chip cookies after school?



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Rowenavic Lopez asked:


Cooking can be one of the most exciting activities that a person can indulge herself. Not only you enjoy the cooking process and the preparations to be able to cook dishes, the output can be a great accomplishment especially if you were able to cook the food right. One of the most favorite foods that people love is chocolate cookies. These sweets can turn a not-so-good day well especially if it really taste good. Would you want to learn how to bake chocolate chips cookies? Of course, learning is fun but it is quite dangerous too. You are prone to burns or you might not be able to get the right taste for the cookies. If you are not ready to face the possible mishaps, but still want to learn how to bake the cookies, try cooking games online and you can cook at the virtual kitchen safely.

Begin the cooking by preparing the things that you need and the ingredients necessary to make the cookies. You will need to have the right proportions to come up with the right taste. You need 1 cup pf butter, 1 whole egg, 1 tsp choco powder, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of flour, 1 tsp baking soda and 1 cup choco chips.

You need to follow the directions carefully at cooking games so you can bake the cookies right. Before you start mixing anything at the bowl, pre-heat the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, get a bowl and place the butter, add the egg, choco powder, sugar, flour, baking soda, and choco chips. Stir the mixture to even out the ingredients. After you are done with the dough, click the bowls content and you will not have to make golf size ball size amount of dough. It is instantly prepared at the tray!

Prepare the cooking pan and place it inside the oven. While you must wait for about 8 to 10 minutes when you bake it in reality, at the virtual kitchen, you can cook the cookies after a few seconds! After you bake it in the oven, remove the pan and let the cookies sit on the pan to cool. Using a spatula, lift cookies off onto wax paper or tin foil and after cooling them down, you can place it into a more decorative container or jar.

Sweets like desserts and chocolate cookies make a sweet finale for the meal. You don’t need to be an expert to make a recipe or two. You can start with simple recipes like chocolate cookies. With cooking games, you can learn what the basic ingredients for the recipe are and you will know how to do the cooking. This will guide you later on how to cook it in the actual scenario. Bake and enjoy!



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