Catching Up Again

I don't know where the time goes any more, Gentle Reader. I used to have the opportunity to blog practically any time I wanted. Now? Not so much. I guess between editing and keeping the boy entertained--or at least conscious--after school, my free time gets sucked down a big 'ol nasty toilet. So without further ado, let me try to catch up on my blogging yet again.

Strap It On
To make room for more recent cookbook acquisitions and help fund further acquisitions, I've endeavored to clear out some older ones, targeting primarily the Weight Watchers magazine-sized recipe collections. I went through each one to tag recipes that I'll either photocopy or, by some act of the FSM, write down on a recipe card and add to my collection. Going through these collections, I found some recipes I wanted to try sooner rather than later, including one for a fat-free gingerbread cake. And since I've been trying to find foods I can prepare for the kiddo--a kiddo who loves gingerbread, or at least the idea of it--to eat after school, I thought I'd move this one up to the top of the list.

Gingerbread Cake2 1/4 C all-purpose flour
2 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/2 t ground allspice
1/4 t NaCl
1 C unsweetened applesauce
1 C light molasses
2/3 C fat-free egg substitute
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C pitted prunes, finely chopped
1 C boiling water

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prep a 13" x 9" baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.
   
2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, allspice and NaCl. Set aside.
   
3. In a large bowl, beat the applesauce, molasses, egg substitute, sugar and prunes with an electric mixer at medium speed until the mixture is frothy (about 2 min.).
4. With the mixer at low speed, gradually add the flour mixture; stir until just combined--do not overmix.
   
5. Add the water to the batter, stirring until just smooth.
   
6. Pour the batter into the pan, then bake for 40 min. or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.

Yield: 24 servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 112
Fat: O g
Protein: 2 g
Fiber: 1 g
Carbs: 26 g
Na: 144 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Because I'm relatively inexperienced with gingerbread made from scratch, not the crap churned out in factories nine or ten months before Christmastime, I opted not to futz with this recipe. I used the bleached all-purpose flour I have, and I even bought a box of pitted prunes at Wally World. I've never bought prunes before, and I can't say that I've ever consciously eaten them either--they're quite tasty, I discovered.

The only alteration, the only deviation from the recipe I made was using blackstrap molasses instead of light molasses. Why? Because that's all I had--bought not knowing the difference between light molasses and blackstrap molasses--and I was anxious to use it up. Needless to say, the blackstrap molasses made for one very dark cake, and not a very sweet one either:


If you choose to make this cake, Gentle Reader, I feel compelled to warn you that when you undertake step 3, make sure you have nothing nearby that would be ruined if splattered by molassesy egg substitute because getting those moist ingredients to frothiness made one big-ass mess in my kitchen--and I wasn't even using a medium speed on my mixer. I'm not sure if I did something wrong (there's little to screw up in step 3, although The Faudie could surely find a way) or if handheld mixers just weren't that powerful back when this recipe was written. (Weight Watchers' Simply the Best : 250 Prizewinning Family Recipes was first published in 1997, but I doubt handheld mixers have become that much more powerful in ten, eleven years.)

Funny Thing About That Dark Gingerbread Cake....
Lemme now share with you a funny (not ha-ha funny but rolling-my-eyes-at-the-stupidity-and-shortsightedness funny) story about this cake. I cut a square of it (probably a smidge over 1") sprinkled some of the boy's favorite rainbow-colored sprinkles on top (because the powdered sugar I'd sprinkled on it earlier had already dissolved), put it in a little container and sent it off in his lunch for school. When I picked him up that afternoon, he informed me first that he and his classmates got cupcakes for dessert in honor of one of his classmates' birthday. (The FSM forbid we have in-room parties that feature "whoa" food--food deemed nutritionally evil in...some moronic bureaucrat's eyes--yet for the safety of the kids who might have food allergies, we're only allowed to bring prepackaged cookies or grocery store bakery cupcakes for our kids' birthdays that are then served at the end of the lunch period. Yeah, prepackaged cookies and grocery store bakery cupcakes are such great nutritional choices....) He then told me that he wasn't allowed to eat his cake.

Me: "You didn't have time to eat it?" (We've had problems in the past with the boy not having time to eat all his food, and I've always suspected the problem is his penchant for socializing, not munching.)
The boy: "No, they didn't let me eat it."
Me: "Who didn't let you eat it?"
The boy: "Someone in the lunchroom. But don't talk to them."
(Is it sad that the boy already dreads my penchant for getting peeved at a situation and wanting to intervene?)
Me: "Was it your teacher?"
The boy: "No."
Me: "Was it another teacher?"
The boy: "No."
Me: "Was it one of the lunchroom monitors?"
The boy: "It was one of the people who walks around during lunch."
Me: "Ahh. So some complete strange, some idiot, saw a dark piece of cake-like confection, assumed it was high-calorie chocolate cake instead of a fat-free, lower-sugar gingerbread cake and told you you couldn't eat it. Nice. Perhaps I should write a note to include in your lunch explaining not only the nutritional content of the foods we send with you, but also explaining that nutrition in the real world is not as moronically simplistic as 'whoa' foods and 'go' foods and many factors come into play when achieving a nutritionally sound diet, particularly for a little boy as active as you are."

Hilarious story, non? The food police do exist, and they patrol the boy's school.

The Faudie Gets All-'merican
That's right, Gentle Reader, I wrapped myself in red, white and blue this weekend. HEB has Gala apples on sale, so I picked up half a dozen or so on Friday, set to make them into an apple crisp, apple pan dowdy, apple brown betty or some apple something-something. No, not an apple pie. I didn't eat apple pie when I was a kid; Mum didn't do apple pies. She made apple things with oats and cinnamon that bubbled and baked in a Pyrex pan (I think a loaf pan was the usual) that went absolutely fabulously with vanilla ice cream. And I had a hankering for some.

Apple-Oat Crumble4 C Granny Smith apples, sliced and peeled
1/2 t orange zest
1/3 C fresh OJ
1/2 C sugar
1/3 C regular oats
1/4 C all-purpose flour
1/2 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground nutmeg
1/8 t NaCl
3 T chilled reduced-calorie stick margarine, cut into small pieces
6 T frozen reduced-calorie whipped topping, thawed

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
   
2. Place the apple slices in a 8" square baking pan, and sprinkle them with the zest and OJ.
   
3. Combine the sugar, oats, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and NaCl in a bowl and stir well. Cut in the margarine with a pastry blender or two knives until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle it over the apple slices.
   
4. Bake for 40 min. or until the apples are tender and the topping is lightly browned.
   
5. Top each serving with 1 tablespoon of whipped topping.

Yield: 6 servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 171
Fat: 4.7 g
Saturated fat: 0.6 g
Protein: 1.6 g
Fiber: 1.8 g
Carbs: 32.6 g
Na: 105 mg

The Faudie's Futzings

• As you can already surmise, Gentle Reader, I didn't use Granny Smiths. I used Galas. The finished crumble came out a bit runny--there was a fair amount of juice in the bottom of the pan, and it didn't thicken and get gooey like the goo in Mum's recipes--but I don't know if the Galas were the reason or if some other issue contributed to the non-thickened goo.
  
• While I did replace the all-purpose flour with white whole wheat flour, which goes really well with oats, I didn't replace the sugar. That's right, Gentle Reader: I whipped out the C&H.
  
• Screw fat-free Cool Whip. I bought Breyers (not Dreyer's, aka Edy's) vanilla with caramel swirl fat-free ice cream. And it was damn good.

By the way, Gentle Reader, can I tell you how much fun it was to get out the pastry knife? I loved that tool when I was a wee one, and I can't remember when I last used mine.