I wasn’t sure what I was in the mood for to have for dinner tonight… I kinda wanted pancakes, and I do really like my oatmeal pancake recipe… which I’ll get around to posting on here at some point… but I wanted something a bit different.

Enter, the baked pancke.

This was super easy… and it’s set up for a single serving. I used about a 4-5 inch corningware dish. Use whatever oven-safe container you have…. even a cast-iron skillet, especially if you want to do multiple servings. The recipe below is based on larger recipes that I modified down.

What you need:

1 egg
1/4 cup milk
pinch salt
pinch ground nutmeg
1 Tablespoon vanilla flavored protein powder
1/4 cup pancake or all-purpose baking mix (what I used)
1 teaspoon butter

mix the egg, milk, salt and nutmeg (use fresh ground if you have it!) really well. I used my Magic Bullet for this. Then stir in the protein powder and baking mix. If you don’t have a mix, use 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 flour of your choice. You can skip the protein powder if you want, or if you use unflavored, put in a dash of vanilla extract, or if you want a bit of sweetness some SF vanilla flavored syrup.

Let this rest while you crank of the oven to 450 degrees (I used my toaster oven). Put your baking dish in the oven while it heats.  After about 10-15 minutes, take it out (carefully) and put in the butter. I splurged here, you could just use a no-stick spray too, but use butter flavored or plain, not something like the olive oil ones. Then pour the batter in to the baking dish.

Pop this in the oven for about 15 minutes. If your doing 2-3 servings, go for about 18 minutes, if you do a large batch (you could multiply this out by six to get up to 8 servings and cook in a 9×12 pan) go for 20-22 minutes.

The picture up top shows you what it looks like coming out of the oven. For my single serving, I scooped it out of the dish and put it on a plate.

You could do all sorts of toppings for this… originally I was going to do a mix of maple syrup and blueberry jam… but wanted something not so sweet. I took about a tablespoon of yogurt, mixed in about a teaspoon of low-fat cream cheese and about a teaspoon of black cherry preservers. Stirred this up really good and poured over the top.

I will be making this again… next time I may try putting fruit on the bottom of the baking dish, or inside the batter… we’ll see.

Oh, and I suppose I may even try it for breakfast some time…

So the other day I wrote up how to make a nice, WLS friendly, yellow cake. This all started with a recent BTV episode where they made a 35-second chocolate cake. You can get the original recipe in their forums, but me being me, I had to tweek it to my own needs. And it turned out rather well if I do say so myself, and this one is easy peasy. While the yellow cake calls for complicated baking procedures like “creaming”, if you can make chocolate milk and microwave popcorn, you can make this cake.

Here’s what you need:

2 rounded Tablespoons of multi-purpose baking mix (what I used)
1 Tablespoon vanilla protein powder
2 Tablespoons Sugar-Free NesQuik
2 Tablespoons + 1 teaspoon milk
1 teaspoon olive oil
pinch of salt

Here’s what you do:

In a small bowl mix the baking mix, protein powder and salt.

In a small cup, pour in the milk and add the NesQuik, stirring to disolve. I found doing it this way makes sure the Quik disolves rather than being all lumpy in the cake.

Pour the chocolate milk in to the bowl with the dry stuff, add the olive oil and stir till smooth.

Spray a coffee cup, ceramic bowl, ramakin or a couple silicone muffin cups with no-stick spray. I found a silicone mini bundt pan at the dollar store, and pick that up for this sort of stuff.

Put in the microwave and set for 35 seconds. If you have an average 800 watt oven, this should be fine. If you have a larger oven, go for 30 seconds or it may end up too dried out.

After cooking, take the cake out of the microwave, let it set for a minute or so before popping out on to a plate to cool… or eat while warm.

I made this using the new silicone bundt pan (one of those ring like pans with the hole in the middle) for my mom’s bday dinner I cooked her tonight, topped it with some SF Cool Whip and a drizzle of SF Hershey’s syrup and we split it. was perfect portions for us.

Next weekend I’m going to make one in a coffee mug, slice in to layers and try making a couple of “ice cream” sandwiches by freezing a couple slices of cake with a dollop of the SF Cool Whip between them.

The original recipe on BTV has just a few more ingredients, but this version I added the protein powder and substituted some things that I think would be more at home in the typical dudes kitchen… and are things that will likely see more use for a former fat dude that some of the original ingredients. But if you want, try them both out and see which works best for you!

In a recent episode of BariatricTV titled Food Porn they made 35-second chocolate cake. I tried a variation of it last night and it was very good… but when it comes to cake, my favorite is yellow cake. So after consulting with my favorite cook (Alton Brown and a Good Eats! episode) I came up with the following..

This is a bit more involved than the chocolate cake, yellow cake is a butter cake so the first thing you need is butter. I don’t use a lot of butter these days, but I keep some on hand for stuff like this, and I keep unsalted around, cause it’s better for baking and such. Keep the bulk of it in the freezer and it will keep longer. So take 1 Tablespoon and let it soften to room temp, then cream it in a bowl with 1 Tablespoon of Splenda. If you’ve never baked… and well… most dudes haven’t, cream just means stir the sweetener in to the butter until it’s all mixed really  well. You’ll know it’s there when it turns from a buttery yellow to more white colored. Kinda like this…

Then add the yolk from one egg, this is going to add back in the yellow color. Once you get that stirred in good, take a minute to mix the 2 Tablespoons of baking mix and 1 Tablespoon of protein powder together in a small bowl. If you don’t have baking mix, use 2 Tablespoons of flour and 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder with the protein powder. Now add 1 Tablespoon of the milk to the butter mix and stir that in, followed by about half of the flour mix, stir till all mixed in.

Then mix in the other 1 Tablespoon of milk and the rest of the flour mix. Once you get it all smoothed out, pour in to a small bowl that you’ve given a shot of no-stick spray. Ideally you want something with straight sides. Or use a large, straight sided coffee mug.

Pop this in the microwave for about 45 seconds. If you have a smaller, 800W or less go for 50. When you first open the microwave it is going to be rather puffed up, then quickly “fall” again. That’s ok. It should also shrink down and pull away from the sides of the bowl a bit.

It’s going to look a bit … well, like a damp sponge. It should not be wet, but you will see some lingering moisture on it. Flip the whole thing over on to a plate and let it sit for a couple minutes.

You can eat it warm, or try frosting it… I just whipped together about 2 Tablespoons of SF Cool Whip with about 2 teaspoons of SF Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup and spread it on the top. I’ll work on a better chocolate frosting for next time.

While I can eat the whole thing… you should probably share it, or split it over a couple desserts. The butter and egg do up the calories (about 280) and fat (about 17g), but on the plus side, you should get about 10-12g of protein from the whole thing, depending on the protein powder you use.

Here’s the full ingredient list:

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter – softened
1 Tablespoon Splenda (or equivalent)
1 egg yolk
2 Tablespoons multi-purpose baking mix
1 Tablespoon vanilla (or un-flavored) protein mix

This is based on my instant-oatmeal pancakes… the recipe for which is being tweeked over time and I’ll post in full here soon.

Tonight though, I wanted something different for dinner and made chocolate waffles with a cherry sauce topping. The chocolate taste comes from protein powder, and with mine was fairly subtle. Which is fine, I wanted just a hint of chocolate. This was dinner, not dessert.

What’s In It:

1/3 cup rolled oats (regular or quick should work fine)
1/4 cup no-fat cottage cheese
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 scoop (about 1 Tablespoon) chocolate flavored protein powder
2 tablespoon milk (I generally use soy milk)

The Magic Bullet style blender works great for this. Use it or a similar blender to puree all ingredients together until smooth.

Spray a heated waffle iron with butter flavored no-stick spray, pour on the batter and close it up. It should take about 7 minutes to cook, but follow the directions for your maker. Me, I have a 4-in-1 Grill Station (look for a review sometime later) that has waffle plates that are too shallow, so I “raised” the top plate a bit using a couple bamboo skewers. It seemed to work pretty good.

After the waffles come off the maker, plate them up, top with some of the cherry sauce (or your other favorite topping) and enjoy.

I get about 4 waffles that are slightly bigger than your typical toaster waffle, and I figure get about 7-8g of protein per waffle. Want to boost it up? Add more of your protein powder.

For the sauce I took bout half-dozen fresh, pitted cherries. I sliced a couple of them in half, the others I pureed with about a teaspoon of SF blackberry preserves. Use what-ever flavor you have, it’s just to add a bit more sweetness to it. Add the halved-cherries back in and microwave the sauce for about 30 seconds before pouring over the waffles.

That’s all there is too it. The left overs freeze well, and can be reheated just like your store-bought toaster waffles. If you don’t want chocolate, use plain/vanilla flavored protein powder and top with some sugar-free syrup. You could also try adding fruit to the batter, like mashed banana or some blueberries.

Check out my personal site for the background on this “swavory” dessert (maybe even breakfast?) dish. There is a link there to the site where I got the original recipe in case you want to make a larger version of this.

Strawberry-Peach Flognarde, straight from the oven…

Here’s what you need:

2 Tablespoons whole wheat flour
3 Tablespoons Splenda
1/3 Cup milk (I use soy milk almost exclusively)
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon thyme flakes
a couple grinds of fresh pepper
a tiny pinch of salt
2 large strawberries, sliced
3/4 of a fresh peach, sliced thin

Take a 2-cup capacity baking dish, anything similar to the one in the picture up there, and spray it with butter flavored cooking spray, then layer the strawberry and peach slices in it. It should be bit over half-full.

Put the rest of the ingredients  in a small mixing bowl and stir to make the batter. Pour this over the fruit and pop into an oven pre-heated to 350. I did sprinkle a very tiny amount of sugar (yea, real sugar) on top to see if it would maybe caramelize or anything on top, but I didn’t notice anything, so will likely leave it out next time. YMMV.

I use my toaster oven for small stuff like this. Bake it for about 35 minutes, then check it. It should be set, and springy to the touch with no liquid still lingering. If it’s not done, bake for another 5 minutes and check again. It shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes max.

After it comes out of the oven you can run a knife around the edges and turn it out on to a plate, then flip it on to a serving/eating plate. For me, this will be about four different portions, but for someone further along it could be a nice dessert for two, top with some fat-free whip cream maybe? Or how about using some more strawberries to make a strawberry sauce?

You could easily use other fruits in here too… strawberries are in season, and I thought they would go well with peaches. Let me know in comments if you try other fruit combinations… but remember, if you go with cherries, it’s not longer a flognarde, then it’s a clafoutis.