Apple Butter Yogurt Cheesecake

This is another one of my let’s-clean-out-my-fridge-before-I-move-out recipes, and conveniently happened to fall in time to celebrate a friend’s birthday. :D Recipe adapted from here! I made this about 1.5 months ago, but it feels like it’s been several decades. Funny what a life of studying and nothing (no need to get dramatic here, Farrah!) little else will do to you! :O

Apple Butter Yogurt Cheesecake

 

Ingredients:
-1 package light cream cheese at room temperature (you need it at room temp to have the right consistency!)
-2 tbsp unsweetened vanilla almond milk
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-2/3 cup 0% Fage Greek yogurt
1/4 cup apple butter
-12 vanilla wafer cookies
(Topping)
-crumbled coconut bars

Instructions:
1) Put cream cheese, milk and vanilla in a blender and blend/beat until very smooth. Add yogurt and apple butter and blend/beat until smooth.
2) Put vanilla cookies into a food processor/high power blender and process until they’re fine crumbs. (If you have a lot of anger in you/no food processor, you can stuff em’ in a ziplock bag and beat them with a rolling pin.)
3) Pour cookie crumbs onto 8″ pan and spread evenly over the bottom.
4) Top the cookie crumbs with even portions of the cheesecake filling and smooth it over with the back of a spoon.
5) Sprinkle crumbled coconut bars over the top and let chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. (I kinda wanted to stick it in the freezer for an hour to see how it’d turn out, but there was no space. If anyone tries that, please let me know how it goes!)

We stuck an umbrella on it to make it extra-fancy.

This was a DDT Featured Favorite! :]!

And lately, because no post is complete without some kind of randomness. Here’s one of my daily pop quizzes from my friend! She usually writes them on my whiteboard, but was out of town to take her exam, so she emailed it to me instead, telling me to be sure to answer it before 10:30 a.m. As it turned out, we weren’t allowed in the building because the fire alarm went off (thanks, we really needed that ;_; ), and I am slightly ashamed to admit that I was so intent on getting back into the catacombs to study that I completely tuned out and didn’t even realize the fire alarm was going off. -1 for survival skills. :[

(How is that med student so young!?!) There’s a stinking fire alarm going off so I’m answering you on my phone. :[

• Carpal tunnel syndrome, effed up median nerve, Phalen’s & Tinnel’s (or nerve conduction study)! If it’s not treated, more pain/numbness/tingling down lateral side of forearm/hand, atrophy of the thenar eminence, possibly double crush if shit really goes down.
• Large intestine stuffs, small intestine(?), and I’m sure I’m forgetting one of the sexy-time parts but I haven’t gone over the levels since the OPP final. :x will look at it today! Dry and ropy would be chronic, but if there’s edema and erythema at L2, I’d go with acute and more large intestine-y or prostate-y stuffs.
• Pons houses CN 5, 6, 7 and 8, so you’d have effed up sensation to the face, facial expressions, loss of taste to anterior 2/3 of tongue, maybe some vertigo and hearing issues.

I WOULD STILL STUDY BECAUSE ‘TIS MERELY A FLESH WOUND; I must fight on!

The internet is being shitty, so I’m waiting for the meme to load still.

Have a safe trip, an awesomely relaxing day, and you shall kick all the butts tomorrow!!! <3!

In case you wanted to know what the meme was. heh heh heh.

Banana Pudding

I had a box of reduced fat vanilla wafer cookies that I got for 59 cents some time ago, so I decided to make banana pudding to go along with it! I’ve been contributing to church potlucks in an effort to be less of a freeloader and also so I can empty out my apartment a little more speedily.

Banana Pudding

Ingredients:
-2 12.3 oz boxes of organic firm Mori-Nu tofu
-4 ripe bananas, mashed
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-4 tbsp coconut butter, melted
-dash of salt

Instructions:
1) Melt the coconut butter and blend everything together in a food processor or blender.
2) Add milk of choice if you want a thinner pudding consistency!
3) Serve with vanilla wafer cookies!

No-Bake Coconut Bars

Historically speaking, I haven’t had the chance to spend actual-Mother’s Day with my mom in many years (hooray for attending a school that’s across the country), but on the plus side, we did get to go out for food last week as an early celebration of sorts, and I got to call and talk to her yesterday (after I’d waited long enough to be sure that she was most likely awake; hello time zones). <3

I spent yesterday here with my “adopted mom.” (I think I’ve been ridiculously blessed in that I have really amazing people in my life, many of whom I’ve pretty much adopted as second families.) :] My original plan had actually been to treat her to brunch or dinner, but before I could ask, she intercepted with the very reasonable statement that there were lines everywhere and asked if I wanted to have huevos rancheros for breakfast. (Yes, yes I did. But now what was I gonna do? :[ )

My friend had already picked up flowers and wine for her, and since I knew she wasn’t the biggest fan of sweets, but loved coconut, I decided to make some coconut-y dessert. I was majorly pressed for time though since I’d studied most of the day away. There were a number of amazing-looking recipes, but many of them required baking, soaking things overnight, chilling for several hours…and let’s face it, ain’t nobody got time for that when it’s already 6 p.m. and dinner’s at 7:30 (+ you need to fit a grocery trip in there somehow). :O

So I did an adaptation of this! I brought along gelato (caramel cookie crunch!) just in case it didn’t turn out the way I hoped, but everything worked out quite well. :] If you don’t have 2 hours to let it sit in the fridge, you can stuff it in the freezer for 25 minutes like I did (and spend those 25-30 minutes folding/putting away clothes, washing dishes and speed-cleaning the apartment).

No-Bake Coconut Bars

~104 calories, 13g CHO’s, 5g fat, 3g protein, 2g fiber, 25mg sodium!

Ingredients:
-2 cups rolled oats
-4 tbsp sweetened coconut flakes + some more for topping
-1/4 cup Peanut Butter & Co. White Chocolate Wonderful
-1/4 cup natural almond butter
-1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
-2 tbsp honey
-1 tbsp hot chocolate powder
-1/2 tsp vanilla
-sprinkle of sea salt

Instructions:
1) Combine oatmeal + shredded coconut in a mixing bowl and set aside.
2) Combine peanut butter, almond butter, almond milk, honey and hot chocolate powder in a sauce pan. Cook on medium heat while stirring until well combined. Heat until mixture is fragrant + thickened (~5 minutes).
3) Turn off stove + stir in vanilla and sprinkle in some sea salt.
4) Pour mixture into oatmeal mixture and mix until well combined.
5) Pour into non-stick baking dish and press down until evenly distributed. Sprinkle with extra coconut.
6) Let sit in fridge for 2 hours, or in the freezer for 25-30 minutes.

Raspberry Almond Bird’s Nest Cookies

Not too long ago, I discovered that there was a such thing as Carrot Cake M&M’s. Yeah, you read that correctly! Carrot Cake M&M’s! I couldn’t find them at Kroger so I scoured Walmart for them (that was a load of fun). I wanted to make bird’s nest cookies that weren’t frighteningly unhealthy, so…I used this recipe for the base (I halved the amount of honey though). To be honest, they taste better without the M&M’s if you put in jam (I think the flavors clashed), so choose either the jam/fruit preserves or the M&M’s!

I’m sorry if you’re sick of seeing this plate, but it’s the only pretty plate I have, so just grin and bear it. :O

Raspberry Almond Bird’s Nest Cookies

(18 cookies) 98 calories, 12g CHO’s, 5g fat, 2g protein, 1g fiber, 51mg sodium!

Ingredients:
-1 1/2 cups almond meal
-2 tsp baking powder
-5 tbsp applesauce
-2 tbsp honey (sub with maple syrup if vegan)
-1/2 tsp almond extract
-1 tsp vanilla extract

(Topping)
-1/2 cup raspberry jam/preserves (or fresh raspberries)
OR
-24 carrot cake M&M’s (optional)

Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper.
2) In a bowl, combine all ingredients except the raspberry jam
3) Drop batter onto parchment paper in 1-tsp size balls.
4) Bake cookies for 13-15 minutes or until golden.
5) Press in an indentation into the center of each cookie with the back of a teaspoon.
6) Top with a little jam or with M&M’s.

Fried Bananas

Linda got this recipe from a restaurant she used to frequent with her family back when they were in SD. They went so often that when she poked her head into the kitchen to ask how the fried bananas were made, the chef actually told her. And I get to benefit from this! <3

This is a pretty darn versatile recipe in the sense that you can sub the liqueur with all kinds of different things. It’s also super quick (took about 5 minutes), so we made 3 different variations and I’m rather curious as to what else we can do with em’. O: It is in no way healthy (other than perhaps the fact that you start out with a fruit :P ), but I think there are definitely ways to healthify em’. I will likely try that out and will report back when I do!

Fried Bananas

Ingredients:
-3 bananas, quartered
-1/8 tsp pure vanilla extract
-1 tbsp butter
-1/4 tbsp cinnamon sugar butter
-1 shot (1.5 oz or 3 tbsp) Grand Marnier (orange liqueur)*
-whipped cream (optional)
-Maraschino cherries (optional)

*Variation 1: 6 tbsp orange juice
*Variation 2: 1 shot peach schnapps

Instructions:
1) Heat/melt butter in a skillet and add the vanilla extract.
2) Add the bananas (flat-side down first!) and pour in the Grand Marnier (or whatever it is that you’re using).
3) When the bananas have turned a darker color, flip them and let cook for another 1-2 minutes.
4) Pour the remaining sauce over the bananas and top with whipped cream and cherries.

The sauce kinda caramelizes after a while and makes it even more delicious. *-*