Tag: frosting

Valentine’s Day is a legitimate cheat day

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Food, HolidaysLeave a comment

cupcakes

Since my diet (new healthy lifestyle) began, I have completely sworn off candy, cakes, ice cream, cookies and anything that has a lot of calories and sugar.  I have made adjustments though so I can eat certain sweets as long as they are made out of healthy ingredients like oatmeal, fruit and peanut butter.  I normally have to cover my peripheral vision when walking through the seasonal, ice cream and cookie aisles at the grocery store to avoid temptation, but I have a mental block in my mind that I simply don’t want to eat junk, so I can look at it and not care about it.

Valentine’s Day was yesterday and I went to the store with the intention of buying some junk food because one day is not going to ruin my weight loss progress.  I didn’t find anything that I liked, so I bought the Valentine’s Day disposable cupcake tins with cupcake paper cups with hearts on them and some cupcake sprinkles.  I went to the cake aisle and I was going to buy the sugar free cake mix and frosting, but they we’re both sweetened with Splenda.  Most people would grab those because they have less calories, but I didn’t because Splenda gives me mad cramps in my stomach and I just can’t handle that.  I bought the Duncan Hines white frosting with a packet of Strawberry Shortcake flavor to mix in and a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix.  That made 24 cupcakes.  I gave 1 of the trays to our tenant because they have 3 people living there, so they each got 2 cupcakes.  They were thrilled.

Besides eating cupcakes all day long, which I only had 6 (YIKES I know, right?), I also ate some chocolate covered strawberries which I had to skewer and freeze so I could dip them into Magic Shell chocolate which hardens when it comes in contact with something as cold as ice cream or say frozen Strawberries.  Those were good.  We actually still have a bunch of them in the fridge.

Of course I wasn’t a bad boy all day, I had my regular healthy bowl of cheerio’s with 1 banana and some soy milk for breakfast and my weight watchers frozen dinners for lunch and dinner.  I am allowed to have 3 snacks throughout the day, so I exchanged my healthy snacks for the cupcakes and the chocolate covered strawberries.

My day wasn’t a total bust, I only went over my calorie budget by a little, so I technically still had a good day.  I weighed myself when I woke up and my weight didn’t go up, it actually went down.  Although it will probably take a day before the cupcakes kick in, so I will just have to be extra good until my next cheat day which will be my birthday.  I don’t plan on cheating at all during Easter since I don’t celebrate it despite how much I love Cadbury eggs lol.  I will resist temptation since I have a mental block on it.

3D Christmas Cookies

On By Michel McDonaldIn ChristmasLeave a comment

3d-christmas-cookies 3d cookie cutter tree

Can you believe that it’s almost Christmas already?  I can’t because it seems like just yesterday I was sweating my Christmas ornaments off in the summer heat.

Even though I know I shouldn’t eat them because of how bad they are for you, I just love baking cookies.  I bought the 3D cookie cutters (left image) I want to say in 2005 or 2006 from Publishers Clearing House.  Yuk it up, I made 4 payments lol.  I wanted to make them with the cookie recipe the cookie cutters came with, but Darrin told me it was too much work and that I should just go ahead and buy a roll of sugar cookie dough already made from the grocery store, which I did and it was the biggest mistake because the dough rose too much and the pieces didn’t fit, so I had to shave it down where the pieces were supposed to slide together.  I also bought the powdered sugar and food coloring so I could decorate them in many different colors which was also a mistake because it looked like a pre-schooler decorated them.

This year I bought the 3D Tree cookie cutters (right image) from AVON.  I don’t know why but the set didn’t come with a cookie dough recipe, but I did buy Halloween cookie cutters which did, and I made them and they were very good so I will be using that for both sets this year.

Instead of decorating them with many colors, I will do them both just as they are in the image with white frosting made with the powdered sugar.  They have sprinkles in the holiday aisle at the grocery store with shapes which will add more color to the trees and the star and it will give eyes to the reindeer, angel and the snowman.

When I made the 3D cookie cutters, I gave them to family and I was very disappointed that they were still there a year later, and I believe the next year after that.  They said they didn’t eat them because they were too nice, but it’s insulting to give someone cookies that I worked hard on making just to see that they didn’t even eat them.  If you don’t want to eat it, then give it to a child, trust me, they will eat it lol.  If not, just throw it away.

But I digress…

I can’t wait to make these cookies again this year.  I was hoping to make the tree and decorate it with rainbow colors for the PFLAG Christmas potluck, but I wasn’t sure how I would do that.  Well, I think I might know how, instead of doing all the layers white, I could paint them in rainbow colors.  There are enough that I could paint 3 stars in red, 3 stars in orange… etc.  Who knows, I still have awhile, but whatever I do I will definitely post pictures when it happens.

So yay!  Christmas cookie time lol.

Cake Anyone?

On By Michel McDonaldIn Food, TVLeave a comment

I like cake.  I guess you could say I love cake.  I love cake so much that if I died and they did an autopsy on me they would find that I have frosting flowing through my veins.

I was watching this show on Food channel which isn’t a channel I normally watch because I find myself drooling after awhile lol. This show was called Ace of Cakes and they really do make some cool looking cakes.  I have to give them props for that.  I went to their website to see how much they charge for a cake.  They say that since all of their cakes are different they can’t give you a specific price but they require a minimum of $1000 for all their cakes.

HOLY COW!  $1000?  For a cake?  I like cake but not that much.  Sorry but I can’t afford a $50 cake.  The best I can do are the $15 cakes at Albertsons.  If I were ordering cake for a wedding that would be one thing and even then I’d probably be looking at $200 at best.  But for a birthday party, the birthday boy/girl will have to settle for either homemade or grocery store cake lol.