Hungry Girl's Triple-Chocolate Softies

Hungry Girl's Triple-Chocolate Softies

Big soft cookies are awesome. Guilt-free, cocoa-infused ones with TWO types of chocolate chips are exceptionally awesome! Preheat the oven, grab a baking sheet, and prepare yourself for the BEST SOFTIES EVER!

Ingredients:
1/4 cup brown sugar (not packed)
2 tbsp. sugar,
2 tbsp. light whipped butter or light buttery spread(like Brummel & Brown), room temperature
2 tbsp. no-sugar-added applesauce
2 tbsp. fat-free liquid egg substitute (like Egg Beaters Original)
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup whole-wheat flour
2 packets hot cocoa mix with 20 - 25 calories each (like Swiss Miss Diet or Nestlé Fat Free)
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
2 tbsp. mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tbsp. white chocolate chips, chopped

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray.

In a medium bowl, thoroughly whisk brown sugar, Splenda, butter, applesauce, egg substitute, and vanilla extract.

Add flour, cocoa mix, baking powder, and salt, and stir until smooth. Fold in oats, chocolate chips, and chopped white chocolate chips.

Spoon batter onto the sheet in 6 evenly spaced mounds. Use the back of a spoon to spread and flatten into 3-inch circles.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a softie comes out mostly clean, about 10 minutes. Eat up!

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

Serving Size: 1 softie (1/6th of recipe)
Calories: 164
Fat: 5g
Sodium: 164mg
Carbs: 27.5g
Fiber: 2g
Sugars: 17g
Protein: 3g

PointsPlus® value 4*

Healthier Banana Bread

While I LOVE my Mom's banana bread, it's not exactly healthy. And since I'm trying to drop some poundage, I need to find a healthier, but still tasty, version of one of my favorite foods!

Mom came across this one and it's pretty yummy! One eighth of the recipe is 6 PointsPlus for Weight Watchers.

Very dense and moist, this bread is fragrant and scrumptious. For an even lighter treat, you can cut the sugar in half or use some Splenda sugar substitute.

Weight Watchers Healthy Banana Bread recipe

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all-purpose white flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

2 eggs

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4-5 very ripe bananas, mashed

3/4 cup sugar free spiced unsweetened applesauce

2 eggs

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Spray a bundt pan with cooking spray, set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients, whisking to combine. Add the chocolate chips and nuts if using.

4. Beat the eggs with the sugar together at medium-high speed until creamy.

5. Beat in the applesauce and bananas.

6. Fold in the dry ingredients.

7. Pour into the prepared pan and place it in the oven. Once the oven door is closed, reduce the heat so it’s between 325-350 degrees F.

8. Bake for about 35-40 minutes (the cake is done as soon as a tester comes out clean).

9. Cool on a wire rack for about 5 minutes.

10. Invert on the rack, remove the pan, cool and store in an airtight container.

Nutritional information for 1/16 of the recipe (not including chips or nuts):

Calories: 121

Calories from fat: 8

Total fat: 0.9g

Cholesterol: 26mg

Total carbs: 26.6g

Dietary fiber: 1.9g

Protein: 2.9g

Petite Chocolate Cherry Cheesecakes

Ingredients

24 bite-size, reduced fat double chocolate chip cookies 
8 ounces reduced fat cream cheese 
1/4 cup granulated sugar 
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg 
1/4 cup reduced fat sour cream 
1/4 cup maraschino cherries (about 14 cherries), well drained, finely chopped 
2 tablespoons mini semisweet chocolate morsels

Directions

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Place paper liners in cups of Deluxe Mini Muffin Pan. Place one cookie in each liner.
2. In a small mixing bowl, mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until well blended. Add egg; mix well. Stir in sour cream.
3. Drain cherries on paper towels. Chop finely with knife and drain again on paper towels before stirring into batter. Using a small cookie scoop, top each cookie with rounded scoop of batter; spread evenly. Sprinkle evenly with chocolate morsels.
4. Bake 18 to 20 minutes or until filling is almost set. Cool completely in pan. Remove cheesecakes from pan and refrigerate 1 hour or overnight.

Yield: 24 mini cheesecakes

Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

The original recipe can be found here - Picky Palate - but I found the chocolate chip cookies in that recipe to be a bit too dense and dry, so I made the second batch with the traditional Nestle Toll House Cookie recipe and they were WAY better!

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 package of Double Stuf Oreos

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. In a stand or electric mixer cream butter and sugars until well combined. Add in eggs and vanilla until well combined.
2. In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking soda and salt. Slowly add to wet ingredients along with chocolate chips until just combined. 
3. Using a cookie scoop take one scoop of cookie dough and place on top of an Oreo Cookie. Take another scoop of dough and place on bottom of Oreo Cookie. Seal edges together by pressing and cupping in hand until Oreo Cookie is enclosed with dough. 
4. Place onto a parchment or silpat lined baking sheet and bake cookies 9-13 minutes or until cookies are baked to your liking. Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack. 

Makes about 2 dozen VERY LARGE Cookies.

Easy Breakfast Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats

3/4 cup whole-wheat flour

1/2 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour

1/2 cup Grape Nuts cereal

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup golden raisins

1 1/2 cups pecans or walnuts, chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Whisk together oats, whole-wheat flour, all-purpose flour, cereal, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy. Stir in egg and vanilla. Stir egg mixture into oat/flour mixture until just combined, and then stir in raisins and nuts.
3. Drop cookies by the rounded tablespoon onto a Silpat (or parchment paper) lined baking sheet about 2" apart. Bake until cookies are golden, about 10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Makes 4-dozen 2" cookies.

Peanutty Chocolate-Banana Bread

INGREDIENTS

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 medium bananas)

1/3 cup milk

1/3 cup peanut butter

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 egg

3/4 chocolate morsels

1/3 cup peanuts, coarsely chopped (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray bottom of loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. In large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add bananas, milk, peanut butter, oil and egg; mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in chocolate morsels. Spoon batter into pan; sprinkle with peanuts.
2. Bake 60-70 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven; cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove bread from pan to cooling rack; cool completely.

Banana Bread

My munchkins enjoying some banana bread :-)

My mom has been making this recipe for as long as I can remember, so I don't know where it originally came from. But it's amazing and I'll never bake another (plain) banana bread as long as I live!


INGREDIENTS

Dry

1 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoons baking soda

pinch of salt

1 cup sugar

Wet

2 eggs

1 cup mashed bananas

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

-OR-

1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour loaf pan.
2. Sift and mix dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients and mix until well incorporated. Spread mix in the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Yields 1 loaf.

VARIATION: spoon in to grease/floured or paper-lined muffin cups and bake for 18-20 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.

You can also substitute half of the flour for equal parts whole wheat flour.