Quinoa Tabbouleh + Summer Berry Cobbler from the Skinnytaste Cookbook

I know a lot of you are really excited about The Skinnytaste Cookbook release. Well guess what?, so is Target! So excited in fact that they are carrying my cookbook which is now available for pre-order on Target.com.

The Skinnytaste Cookbook has 150 recipes – 125 of those recipes are brand spanking new and have never been published on my blog. But I gave Target a sneak peak inside the cookbook and shared two exclusive recipes and photos from the book. (photo credit: Penny De Los Santos)

I chose two of my summer favorites so you don't have to wait until September 30th – you can start making them now while the weather's warming up. The Quinoa Tabbouleh tastes so fresh – a perfect summer salad whether you serve this as a main dish or a side dish with grilled chicken or lamb. And this Summer Berry Cobbler – cobbler is my weakness and this is my absolute favorite way to utilize those sweet summer berries.

Did I tease you enough? Well that wasn't my plan... head on over to Target's A Bullseye View and get the full recipes!!!

Fruit Pizza

Need a colorful dessert idea for Mother's Day? Try these lightened up white chocolate cookie bars topped with cream cheese frosting and fresh fruit. The perfect dessert for Spring or Summer!

I brought these to my daughter's class party yesterday and shared a photo on my Instagram and everyone wanted the recipe, so here it is! You can use any fruit you like, I usually use my favorites and try to keep it colorful but if you don't feel like cutting fruit, just use berries! You may notice some of the photos pictured here don't have white chocolate chips, that's because I tried it both ways and liked it better WITH the white chocolate, but if you're not a fan of white chocolate you can leave them out and increase the sugar slightly. The recipe below and nutritional info includes the white chocolate.

Click Here To See The Full Recipe...

PB2 Flourless Chocolate Brownies

These brownies are pretty amazing! Made with PB2 (powdered peanut butter) instead of flour plus cocoa powder, raw honey and chocolate chips – moist and delicious, you won't believe they're only around 130 calories each!

I'm not a baker. Baking is an edible science that requires accuracy and precision. It requires the perfect balance between flours, leaveners, fats, and liquids. When I bake, I feel more like a mad scientist because I break all the rules. So when something actually works and turns out awesome, I'll be honest, I'm often surprised! These brownies are the perfect example – no flour, no oil or butter, but they are amazing (happy dance)! And the best part, you don't need a fancy mixer. I mixed this all by hand in a large bowl with a whisk and a spatula.

If you've never heard of PB2, it's basically a powdered peanut butter with 85% less fat. You add a little water to make it a spreadable peanut butter. I personally prefer real peanut butter if I'm spreading it on toast, but for baking and adding to smoothies, PB2 is excellent. I used to buy it on Amazon, but now I see it in my local supermarket. Here's the Amazon link if you can't find it near you.

Moist, chocolatey and delicious, you will LOVE them! They also happen to be gluten-free, and if you use dairy-free chips they can be dairy-free as well. If you have nut allergies however, these are not for you. But my other brownie recipe called: Amazing Flourless Brownies are your nut-free answer. Those are made with black beans instead of flour but I swear, you'll never know! Both recipes are great yet different. Curious to see which you like best!

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Amazing Flour-less Brownies

Moist, chocolatey and delicious – finally a low-fat, gluten-free brownie that's pretty darn good!

I can't get over how good these brownies taste considering they're made with no flour and no butter. Yet they're not cakie or dry like most low fat brownies I've tried. I found the original recipe last year on the Roasted Root, which I adapted and have made many times since.

The secret ingredient is black beans, and I'm sure you're thinking… what? But trust me, you don't taste it! My husband even loves them, and can't get over how good they are (and trust me if he didn't like it he would tell me). They really feel like you're eating something loaded with butter, yet it only uses 1/2 teaspoon of oil.  The last version I added some walnuts which increased the points to 5 each, but I gave you the basic recipe without.

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Chocolate Chip Clouds

Light, airy and chewy with chocolate chips in every bite. These cookies are a must for Santa, we've been making them for years and everyone loves them. Made with egg whites, sugar and chocolate, they are very light, gluten free and just melt in your mouth.

The perfect chocolate treat, and when you make them the night before, they are chewier the next day, which is just how I like them. Hope you enjoy and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

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Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta with Strawberries

Vanilla beans, strawberries and cream make this luscious dessert worthy of a standing O!

Panna cotta is one of my FAVORITE desserts when prepared properly. It’s such an easy dessert to make and it can easily be adapted with many different flavor profiles. Although it's usually made very rich with heavy cream, I've been able to play around with the ingredients through the years to give this dessert that same lusciousness, yet using much less cream.

If you need a dessert this Holiday season to impress your guests, I promise, this one is it! And since it needs at least four to five hours to set it's the perfect dessert to make a day or two ahead.

I've tried so many panna cotta recipes from blogs through the years that looked so beautiful, only to be disappointed. Perhaps I'm a bit of panna cotta snob, because I know what a good panna cotta should taste like. It shouldn't have the texture of jello, instead it should be creamy and smooth, almost pudding like in texture. I've tested this particular recipe FIVE times to get it perfect, so if you plan on trying this – don't change a thing!

For diabetics, yes, this will work with Splenda or other sweeteners, and of course cut back on even more calories. So go grab a spoon and savor each spoonful of this vanilla treat.

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To Die For Coconut Cookies

'Tis the season, so I thought I what a perfect time to revive some of my older Holiday recipes from the archives. If you like coconut macaroons you will love these cookies! Similar to a macaroon, but with the addition of cornflake crumbs, they are sweet and delicious and easily made gluten-free.

Coconut lovers... this is a must! With the holidays quickly approaching, I'm sure lots of you are busy baking so I am dedicating the rest of this week to skinny holiday sweets. 

This recipe was emailed to me a while ago by a woman who told me these were "to die for" hence the name. I held on to it for a while with intentions of trying it for the holidays and I was super pleased with the results–I think you will be too! For the cornflake crumbs, you can buy gluten-free crushed cornflakes in many supermarkets, but if you wish to make your own, just put them in the food processor and crush until very fine. If gluten free is an issue, check the labels on the cornflakes, not all are gf.

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Pear Cranberry Crumble

Just in time for the holidays! This warm baked fruit dessert is made with Royal Riviera pears and seasonal tart cranberries, then topping with a oat-nut crumble topping – delish!

Harry and David sent me a box of their finest pears to develop a recipe for their blog Field Notes. Royal Riviera pears grown in Southern Oregon are so sweet, juicy and tender, you can literally eat them with a spoon. Since these pears are so special, I wanted to create a dessert that would do them justice and since fruit crumbles are one of my favorite desserts, I knew exactly what I was going to make.

This recipe will serve 6 to 8 people depending on their appetites. If it's a special occasion and I want to splurge, I'll serve it warms with my favorite fat-free vanilla frozen yogurt from Stonyfield's and serve it a la mode.

Cranberry Pear Crumble
Servings: 8 • Size: 1/2 cup • Old Points: 4 pts • Points+: 6 pts (does not include yogurt)
Calories: 197 • Fat: 7 g • Protein: 2 g • Carb: 37 g • Fiber: 5 g • Sugar: 25 g
Sodium: 75 mg • Cholesterol: 0 mg

Click here to see the full recipe on the Harry and David Blog.

Skinny Cranberry Bliss Bars

A blondie cookie bar with chunks of white chocolate chips and dried cranberries, topped with sweet cream cheese icing, tart dried cranberries and white chocolate drizzle  – perfect for the holidays!

I got a request this year to lighten Starbuck's Cranberry Bliss Bars – this make-over turned out excellent! I was able to cut the fat and calories by more than HALF, yet they still taste indulgent. The original bar is 340 calories with 19 grams of fat; this lighter version is just 149 calories with 5 grams of fat (4 points plus).

Last year I attempted to make these light but didn't have much success. I had used whole wheat flour and I believe that was my demise – it gave the bars an unpleasant texture and scent that I really didn't enjoy. 

This time I used Gold Metal all purpose flour and the results were excellent. This is dessert after all, and although I try to use whole grains in all my meals, it doesn't always work when baking. If you need a dessert for a holiday party, these are great. Leave them refrigerated until ready to serve.

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Mini Sweet Potato Meringue Pies

Petite sweet potato pies lightly sweetened with a ripe banana, a touch of brown sugar and spices, then topped with a light meringue topping – perfect for the Holidays!

My Mom hosts Thanksgiving every year, she wouldn't have it any other way! I usually bring a side dish and an appetizer and my cousin Nina usually brings dessert. My cousin Nina has a baking blog called Ambrosia and she often shares some of her delicious treats with us (those parker house rolls on her blog are dangerous!). She's not just a great baker, she's also very talented in photography, writing, and she just graduated from Columbia University so I put her up to the challenge of creating her first guest post for me and she really came through! Please welcome her and visit her blog if you love to bake.

Hi, everyone!  My name is Nina, and I'm the blogger behind Ambrosia, a site full of everything you could imagine about creating simple and delicious baked recipes.  I'm very excited to be sharing this recipe for mini sweet potato meringue pies. Creating this recipe was something very new to me.  I'm no stranger to coming up with creative pie, cookie, and cupcake recipes, but this recipe was a bit different.  My blog features traditional style recipes, full of butter, cream, and sugar, so the recipes I share tend to be on the indulgent side.  However, this doesn't mean that I'm always thinking about rich foods; on the contrary, I actually care a lot, more than some people know, about eating healthy whole foods.  I love being active and over the past several years have grown to love all kinds of exercise, and eating a lot of healthy foods is definitely one of my priorities to help keep my cake and ice cream obsession in check.  Fortunately for me, my cousin Gina has been a great resource for coming up with healthy meals!  I actually prepared a lot of her recipes while I was living away from home during college, and love it when she asks for taste testers for her new recipes.  Who knew that eating healthy could be so easy, and delicious?!

I was pretty excited when Gina asked me to help her come with a perfect dessert for Thanksgiving.  There was a catch though: I had to stick to a specific number of points per serving!  Yikes!  I was up for the challenge though, and immediately knew that I wanted to make pie.  Pie is one of my absolute favorite things to make, so I knew that that I wanted to make a skinny pie dessert, and sweet potato pie seemed like a great way to go.  To make the pie filling light, I used a trick I saw on many sweet potato casserole recipes.  Adding a ripe banana to the sweet potato puree is the secret to keeping this sweet potato pie filling light.  Since the banana adds natural sweetness to the sweet potato, it means that you need hardly any additional sugar at all!  Rolling out a store-bought pie crust a little bit thinner helps keep the points low, and also makes life a little bit easier.  Meringue is naturally fat free, so it was a great way to add a little more sweetness without increasing the points per serving, as well as adding some marshmallow flavor to the sweet potato filling, because who doesn't love that flavor combination?  I thought making mini pies would be great for Thanksgiving, because they not only help with portion control, but also looks cute and festive.  You can make the pies the day before, top them with the meringue just before serving, and all that's left is arranging them on a pretty platter and digging in.  At only 4 points plus per serving, these will go fast!  Hope you enjoy!

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Skinny Cranberry Swirl Cheesecake Squares

 
Cheesecake squares with a cranberry swirl and a gingersnap pecan crust – so good, less guilt and perfect for the Holidays!

I'm so excited to share these with you, they turned out even better than I expected! 

 

A few years ago I started experimenting with adding fat free Greek yogurt to my cheesecakes and now it's a standard for me. It's a great way to cut down on the fat and the flavor is wonderful. This is a variation of my strawberry cheesecake swirl recipe, and my chocolate raspberry swirl cheesecake, only for a Fall/Winter theme cranberries are in perfect and in season. The gingersnap and pecan crust is the perfect compliment – you'll love this!

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Skinny Mummy Cake Balls

Easy Halloween cake balls made light by using a box cake mix, egg whites and fat free Greek yogurt – no no butter required!

Madison is having a Halloween party in school and I'm in charge of bringing the cupcakes, so I thought cake balls would be perfect for 4 year olds – and less mess than icing on cupcakes.  For an easy Halloween theme I decided to go with mummies and I think they turned out pretty darn cute. These are super easy – if I can make them so can you!

Cake pops were made popular by the very talented Bakerella who I'm actually going to meet next week, I'm so excited! Her cake pops are just darling and if you ever buy her books she's got tons of ideas. The traditional method of making cake pops is by crumbling cake with frosting and forming them into balls. My skinny version is so much quicker – I simply use a cake pop pan.

I played around with a few cake pop pans and machines out there and realized they are not all created equal. After testing out several, I had the most success with the Nordicware cake pop pan, which is only about $17 at Target. I actually own two so I can bake them both at the same time.

These are FAR lighter than traditional cake pops, but you'll still need some self control as they are dipped in white chocolate. Candy melts (available at Michael's) were used to coat the balls. They usually melt perfect for me but this time it was a little thicker than I liked so I had to add a drop of oil to thin it out. I may play around with other brands of white chocolate to see which melts the best.

One tip from making these several times: if you don't need to decorate so many cake balls you can bake them all and decorate what you need, then freeze the rest. Then thaw them to use for another day.

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Candy Corn Fruit Parfaits

A delicious Halloween treat that's light and easy to make. If you need an idea for a healthier Halloween dessert at your next party – look no further!

Confession: I strongly dislike candy corns. As a kid I was always disappointed to find them in my trick or treat bag. But candy corns are such great inspiration for Halloween treats and decorations, I just had to share this.

You basically layer orange and yellow fruit in clear cups and top with whipped cream. I used mandarin oranges and pineapple because I love the combination, but you can also use mangos, melon, oranges – whatever. These cute little jars I found in Homegoods are perfect to use as cups, but you can use clear disposable plastic cups if you are having a party.

For a whipped topping that is lighter than the average whipped cream yet not full of "fake" ingredients I've been making this light whipped topping by whipping my cream and folding in Greek yogurt. Cuts the fat down and tastes delicious!

If you prefer to use whipped topping, go for it or if you want to have this for breakfast I say just top it with vanilla yogurt. But for dessert – I wouldn't change a thing! Hope you try this, you will LOVE it!!


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Tropical Fruit Salad Recipe

This tropical fruit salad, made with fresh papaya, mango, pineapple, bananas and grated coconut is the best tasting fruit salad... EVER!!

It makes a great big bowl, big enough to feed a crowd so it's perfect to bring to a picnic, potluck or to serve at a backyard BBQ. This is easy enough for anyone to make – if you can use a knife, you can make this salad. The bananas are added just before serving so they don't turn brown.

Fruit salad always makes me think of my Dad, when I was younger he made a great big bowl of fresh fruit salad just about every night. It's the perfect dessert because it's all natural, made with nothing but fruit – it doesn't get cleaner than that!

In my past life I must have lived on a tropical island somewhere; the climate, blue oceans, palm trees, and sweet tropical fruit are my idea of a perfect world. Thank goodness we can get papayas, mangoes, coconut and pineapples here in the states, but there are still so many tropical fruits I'd love to see a lot more tropical fruit imported here one day such as fresh guanabana (sour sop) guava or passion fruit (maybe I need to get on a plane to somewhere tropical really soon).

Fruit salad is naturally low-fat, low-sodium, gluten-free, vegan, paleo friendly, clean-eating dish you can serve for brunch, snack or dessert. Yes, there is sugar in fruit, but it's natural and unprocessed, and loaded with vitamins, antioxidants, phytonutrients and fiber. Unless you have to watch your sugar for health reason, the USDA suggests you eat about 1-1/2 to 2 cups of fruit a day.

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Red White and Blue Fruit Skewers with Cheesecake Yogurt Dip

If you need a quick last minute dessert that doesn't require much work, it doesn't get easier than this! These fresh strawberry, blueberry and angel food cake skewers are perfect for Memorial Day.

I'm not sure what it is about putting fruit on sticks that makes them so appealing, but my youngest daughter's eyes lit up when she couldn't wait to eat them.

I wanted a cheesecake flavored dip so I played around with yogurt, cream cheese, vanilla and sugar, and it was exactly was I was looking for. The strawberries tasted wonderful with this dip, a keeper!

This will feed a large crowd, you can assemble it in the morning, and refrigerate until ready to eat.

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Superfood Triple Berry Chia Pudding

 

I LOVE chia pudding! And what can be easier than throwing a few chia seeds into a mason jar with some fresh fruit and almond milk and giving it a good shake! Side note: please excuse the manicure.

If you've never tried chia pudding, I highly recommend picking up some chia seeds and Blue Diamond Almond Breeze almond milk and give it a try. Chia is a super food; an excellent source of omega fatty acids, has more antioxidants than blueberries and it's full of minerals, calcium, protein, vitamins and fiber. Plus it is low in calories and is incredibly satiating.

Some of you may have tried my Mango Coconut Chia Pudding which is always a favorite of mine, but I wanted to try something with all the berries I bought this week and used fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries... delicious!

All I do is combine the chia seeds with milk (my favorite milk to use when making chia pudding is Almond Breeze Unsweetened Almond-Coconut Milk) then add fruit and a little liquid stevia or whatever sweetener you like, then shake it all up, let it sit 15 minutes and give it another good shake and keep it in the refrigerator overnight. Karina, my oldest loves this! Madison, my youngest wanted to help me style the shot, perhaps I have an assistant in training...

Isn't she such a ham : )

This is so healthy you can even eat this for breakfast, which is what I did this morning. Did I mention this fits into so many dietary restrictions; gluten-free, dairy-free, low sodium, low sugar, low calorie, vegetarian, vegan... enjoy!! By the way the lovely spoon is by For Such A Time Designs.


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Mexican "Unfried" Ice Cream

A skinnier fried ice cream with a sweet crunchy cinnamon topping. Oh-my-word, I can't tell you how good this is!

If you've ever had the Mexican fried ice cream at Chi Chi's, you'll understand this recipe. I always loved the concept of fried ice cream, as a kid I remember ordering it and always found it fascinating that the ice cream didn't melt.

This recipe is a much lighter, healthy version of the original fried version. This isn't fried at all, but it still has that same great taste with the crunchy cinnamon topping, and cold creamy vanilla ice cream (well, actually frozen yogurt) in the center.

This idea came from a fan. She actually made something like this for a party and layered everything in a square pan which is a great idea if you want to serve a crowd, but for portion control, I thought making them in individual servings was better.

To make it light, I bought my favorite fat free vanilla frozen yogurt: Gotta Have Vanilla from Stonyfield; that stuff is sooo good, I actually prefer it over their other brand Oikos. Then I perused the cereal aisle and decided on using crushed Special K as my crust mixed tossed with some cinnamon. If you are gluten free, I would use a gluten free cereal instead. Enjoy your weekend and have a happy Cinco De Mayo!


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