Low fat berry cream topping - 1 WW point

This berry cream makes an excellent low-fat topping for pancakes. It saves me from smothering them with syrup! Try it on my high protein peanut butter pancakes. The best part is that it's only 1 point per 1/2 cup serving and 4 points for the whole recipe on Weight Watchers Freestyle program.

It can also be used as a healthy dip for fruit for a point-friendly snack. I haven't tried on ice cream yet but I can see it being used as sundae topping too.

I like that it's naturally sweetened by the fruit but if you want to toss in a little Stevia I won't judge. However it's sweet enough from the fruit for me.

I blend it up in my mini food processor in just a few minutes. In fact, you can do it in between flipping your pancakes.

Ingredients
4 oz fat free cream cheese
1/4 cup fat free greek yogurt
1/2 cup mixed frozen berries

Add all ingredients to a mini food processer and pulse for 2-3 minutes. Makes about 2 cups. 1/2 cup is 1 point on Weight Watchers freestyle. It can be stored in the fridge for 3-4 days.

The post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase from one of these links I may receive a small commission. Thank you for your support. This blog is not affiliate with Weight Watchers in any way. Point counts were checked in April 2018 under the Weight Watchers Freestyle program.

Pumpkin nut bars

Around my forth bite of the persimmon nut bars I made recently, I thought, "hmmm...these are really tasty, but the persimmon flavor isn't quite strong enough, I bet they would be yummy with another kind of fruit."

A few days later, I had just been to the grocery store, and excited to see pumpkin was back in stock after the fall harvest, I had bought 3 cans, without any direct intention of how to use them. It was an impulse buy, like gum at the cash register or big blocks of feta cheese.

The fates coincided. I would make pumpkin flavored [persimmon] bars. I decided to double the recipe and make a 9x13 pan of said bars because I had a friend who'd be coming to stay in a few days and I thought it would be nice to have something to feed her. And I like pumpkin, have I mentioned this?

I start mixing up my ingredients and realize I'm just tad short of almost everything essential to make a double batch. I needed 1 cup vegetable oil and had to use about a 1/4 cup of olive oil to make it. I was almost a whole cup shy of flour and tossed in some bread flour, not really sure what the difference was and what the consequences might be. I also noticed half way through that I made a serious judgement mistake in trying to make the persimmon bars with pumpkin puree. Anyone see it? Yea the texture of the two is totally different. I thought with the spices it would be a nice flavor combo but I probably should have looked up a pumpkin bar recipe, batter was very cake-like. I even put in some extra (bread) flour. But I baked it anyway. What's the worse that can happen? Already used all the ingredients, might as well go all the way!

Results? Pumpkin cake. So not bars, but very moist and fluffy pumpkin cake. It also made a ton, I've been eating it for days and still have some, plus I put a fair amount in the freezer. So sometimes the random experiments work! But I still probably need to learn to check my ingredients before I start.

Persimmon nut bars

One of my coworkers brought some persimmons to the office this week because she had received way too many from her aunt. What is a persimmon? Good question! It's a fruit! It kind of tastes like a berry flavored apple with a very apple like texture (depending on ripeness). The photo below shows persimmons, see the slice in the back for an idea of what it looks like cut open. These are fuyu persimmons, what I understand to be the less common variety.

I had drank persimmon juice blends, but this was the first time I'd actually seen one in the flesh (pun so intended). So I took a few and set about to figuring out what to do with them. My coworker recommended a persimmon bunt cake.

I found a recipe online for some persimmon bars, seemed tasty and lots of people had rated it highly. Plus I had almost everything needed to make it so, why not? When else am I really going to make persimmon bars? Probably never. See the original source of the recipe here.

They were tasty! Very spicy and nutty (I put walnuts in). I skipped the raisins, I honestly thought adding raisins would be a bit overkill, maybe if you prefer to skip the nuts go for the raisins. Definitely plan to bake them longer than 20 minutes! Mine were very gooey, to the point I considered sticking them back in but I had already put the glaze on. Plan to bake them at least 25 minutes, be warned they looked done and "fluffy" when the 20 minutes were up, so proceed with caution. The glaze also pooled a little bit, so you might want to try spreading it with a pastry brush. I attempted to drizzle it, but it did not really work.

It's summer (almost)!

Ahhh...summer! Summer is potentially the best season for eating, fresh produce abounds and I'm tempted to while away the days in a hammock eating fresh fruit or sit on a picnic bench with some BBQ. sigh.

Misty daydreams about summer perfection aside, the season offers ample opportunity to enjoy inexpensive, quality fruits and vegetables. With this in mind, I recently attended a BBQ - the first of many of the season, hopefully - and made one of my favorite deserts for the occasion, fruit pizza.

Fruit pizza is something of a modern classic, or so I feel and it's the perfect treat on a summer day. It's fresh and cool to the taste and takes advantage of the season's bounty. That's right, I said bounty. I'm feeling very nostalgic or something today. When my mom would make fruit pizza, my sister and I would gorge ourselves on it, arguing that it is really only good for 2 days.

Fruit pizza

Crust (can be made ahead & frozen):

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup butter
1/4 cup white sugar

Press crust into the bottom of a 9x13 pan and bake 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees, or until lightly brown.

Sauce:
8oz cream cheese
3TB sugar
1/4 fruit juice (orange, pineapple, apple)

Blend all ingredients together and spread evenly over crust.

Topping:
3+ different types of fruit, sliced (I recommend the combination pineapple, strawberry and banana)

Sprinkle fruit slices over sauce until desired coverage is reached.

Glaze (keeps fruit fresh):
1/2 cup fruit juice (orange, pineapple, apple)
1TB of corn starch

Mix fruit juice and cornstarch in small sauce pan and cook on medium heat until it thickens, about 5-8 minutes. Drizzle glaze over fruit.

Eat within 2 days, 3 maximum.


Tips & tricks

1. If you use canned pineapple in its own juice (not syrup) there will be enough juice to make your glaze and sometimes also the sauce
*If you're in a hurry, you can use pre-made sugar cookie dough and will get more or less the same result, just be careful of the baking time.

2. I think it goes without saying, but some fruit will hold up better than others. If you use bananas or apples make sure to get each of them with a dab of the glaze to keep them from turning brown.

3. If you're feeling fancy you can also make this as individual tarlets. Make your crust in a greased muffin pan, letting them cool before trying to take them out, then spread (or pipe if super fancy) the sauce in and top with fruit. These really make a lovely impression but are slightly more work.

4. Take care not to let the glaze get too thick or it will be very gelatinous on the top of the pizza. In the one pictured above, I let it cook just a little bit too long.