Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Despite the heat wave outside on the East Coast right now, fall is coming and one of the perks if you like pumpkin is it's a great replacement for oil.  You might already be familiar with a Weight Watches recipe where you pretty much dump a can of pumpkin into a box of spice cake mix and voila.... cupcakes with no oil or butter (aka fewer calories).  Last fall I found a blog that took that recipe and added oil and an egg to it, probably in response to comments I have seen that the WW cupcakes are dry. 

But doesn't adding oil defeat the whole purpose of using pumpkin?  So this is my take on merging a few different recipes together.  If you don't have pumpkin pie spice in your rack, it's pretty easy to mix up your own using cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.  Also I have made both cream cheese and cinnamon frosting for these cupcakes and either one tastes great.

Cupcakes:

1 box spice cake mix

1- 15 ounce can of pumpkin

1/4 cup plain, nonfat Greek yogurt

2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2.  Mix together all the ingredients.

3. Line 24 cupcake pans and fill approximately 2/3 of each with batter.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Iced with cream cheese frosting dusted with cinnamon

Healthy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I've posted before, we love Greek yogurt and besides using it in chicken salad and dips, I also use it for baking.  We are also hardcore pumpkin lovers in this house, which is another great baking alternative.  Last year I found a recipe on Pintrest for the Softest Chocolate Chip cookies that is made with pumpkin and the husband loved them.  A few days ago a friend had us over for pumpkin pasta and gave us the extra pumpkin to take home.  Since we had a snow day I decided to use the pumpkin to modify the recipe I made previously and use Greek yogurt in lieu of oil.  I also used whole wheat flour since we always have some on hand but if all you have is all purpose flour that will work.

There is still sugar, that is hard to eliminate altogether but it is still less of what is in regular chocolate chip cookies.  Also I have never done the flour, baking soda and spices first like most recipes call for.  Mine is the lazy way of course.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup Greek yogurt

1 cup pureed or canned pumpkin

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups wheat flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 pinches salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp powdered ginger

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.  Beat together eggs and sugar.  Add Greek yogurt, pumpkin and vanilla.  Mix in flour, baking powder, salt and beat well. 

Greek yogurt and pumpkin... healthy cookies!

Once everything is mixed together add spices.  Stir in chocolate chips with a spoon, I never mix them in with the beater.  

Fall spices to give some kick to the pumpkin

Lately I have been just spraying a light sheen of PAM on my cookie sheet instead of using foil or parchment paper and it works just fine.  Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, the perfect time to take them out is right as the edges of the cookies are starting to brown.  I athink that many people ruin cookies by over cooking them.  Once the edges are starting to brown and pull them out and let them sit on the cookie sheet to set.

These cookies are very moist so they won't keep as long as regular cookies.  I also found they should be refrigerated.  I made just a few and froze the rest of the dough.

Hungry Girl Buffalo Chicken Dip with Old Bay

A couple years ago when we were first dating, I made my husband the Hungry Girl Buffalo Chicken Dip.  He loves it so I make it for special occasions, like for the Super Bowl last week.  I wouldn't say its healthy but its definitely a healthier option then a lot of the other dips and snacks.  Also it tastes great with veggies, I just cut up what we had in the fridge which was celery and green pepper.  We had some chips as well but mostly stuck with the veggies.

  When it's just us I make just half the recipe and for large parties I often double it.  The only change I make is using a chicken breast instead of the canned chicken the original recipe calls for and adding Old Bay.

Ingredients:

1 chicken breast
1 (8 ounce) package fat free cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup Frank's RedHot original cayenne pepper sauce
1/2 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup fat free ranch dressing
1/4 cup fat-free Greek yogurt

Old Bay Seasoning

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Place cream cheese in a medium bowl and stir until smooth. Mix in Frank's RedHot, mozzarella cheese, ranch dressing, and yogurt. Stir in chicken until thoroughly combined. Spoon mixture evenly into a deep 8-inch by 8-inch baking dish.  Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until mixture is heated through.   Sprinkle Old Bay seasoning on the top for extra flavor.

Buffalo Chicken Dip with Old Bay sprinkled on top

The veggies make it healthy right?

Sriracha Chicken Salad with Greek Yogurt

In our house we love Greek yogurt, we always have a tub of it in the fridge.  We use it when we cook Mexican food instead of sour cream, in dips and I have started using it in my baking.  Lately the husband has been using it more in his cooking to replace mayo and cream.  Last week he roasted a chicken and we still had leftovers we needed to use.  For lunch this weekend, it was chopped up and mixed with mayo, greek yogurt, celery and sriracha.  We still included a little bit of mayo to give it the tang that you are used to in chicken salad.

Ingredients:

Chicken Breast

1 Tbsp Light Mayo

4 Tbsp Non-fat Greek yogurt

1 stalk of celery

Sriracha (season to taste)

Chop up the chicken breast and celery and mix in the mayo, yogurt and sriracha.  I used it to make a sandwich with a toasted potato bun and pepperjack cheese.

Healthy chicken salad

Chicken salad sandwich