Last night was Dessert Night at my house. One of two nights during the week when we indulge in a sweet treat after the evening meal.
I started the practice about two years ago. Tired of (1) my children arriving nightly at the dinner table asking “is there dessert tonight?” and (2) giving in to their escalating demands (sometimes it’s exhausting holding your ground), I designated Friday and Sunday as Dessert Night.
It’s been a glorious success!
- my children eat more of their healthy meal (no need to save room for dessert)
- I eat fewer cookies, cakes and pastries (and don’t crave them the same way, since dessert night is always only a few days away)
- I try recipes from my favourite clean eating cookbooks
- I spend more time searching the internet for ‘cleaner’ dessert recipes (there are tons of them out there)
- I experiment with the recipes I find to further reduce sugar and unhealthy fats and increase the nutritional content of the treat (this is usually successful, but there was a time I added too much flax to a cake recipe; the incident is now referred to as the ‘flaxident’)
In response to your requests for the recipes to my more successful creations, I’ll occasionally be posting a Dessert Night recap.
Here’s what we had last Friday night:
Peanut butter chocolate chip brownies
I took a recipe I found online and made a few adjustments, reducing the sugar, swapping out whole wheat flour and flax seed for the white, reducing the butter and increasing the peanut butter to compensate (natural peanut butter, with no added sugar), substituting egg whites for the whole eggs and omitting the peanut butter cups.
My version’s ingredients:
- 1 cup whole wheat flour (next time I’ll try WW pastry flour)
- 1/4 cup ground flax seed
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup all natural peanut butter
- 1/8 cup melted butter
- 1/4 cup low fat milk
- 2 tsp best quality vanilla extract
- 3 egg whites
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
Recipe makes 16 servings.
Nutritional info per serving: Calories, 119; Total fat, 6.8 g; Sat fat, 2.1 g; Carbohydrates, 10.2 g; Fibre, 1.9 g; Sugar, 3.2 g, Protein, 4.3 g.
These were a huge success! Everyone asked for seconds and there was even enough left over for Sunday night’s dessert. Gotta love a twofer!
HOLY CRAP – that looks amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can see why people asked for seconds!
Jody – Fit at 54 recently posted..Gratitude Monday, Family, Supermoon & More!
It was very yummy! And not too sweet with the natural peanut butter and reduced sugar. Next time I’ll cut sugar back even farther… slowly dragging my sugar-loving children along with me!
Those look really great. I may have to give them a try. I like your idea of dessert nights. We have been too lax in our house, and my boys usually get a small treat after every evening meal. Maybe I need to tighten the reigns a bit. They’ll be so pleased… Don’t worry, I won’t tell them where I got the idea.
For the record, love the term: ‘flaxident’!
crubin recently posted..Who Needs A G-Spot When You Can Have A Sweet Spot?
My hubby is the only one who doesn’t adhere to the ‘dessert night’ schedule. I often find him in the kitchen after dinner rummaging around in the freezer for treats that I’ve hidden way behind the old bread crusts!
Apparently you need a new hiding place.
crubin recently posted..Who Needs A G-Spot When You Can Have A Sweet Spot?
Funny that you should say that, because when he hides things, nobody (not even Himself) ever finds them again!
You are one smart mom! I remember wanting to solve the dilemma of being pestered at the grocery store to buy this, that, the other. So I made a rule that my daughter could pick one special item per grocery store trip. If she begged or pestered for anything else she lost her pick. If she wanted to trade her pick she could do so anytime. And voila! Instead of the whining for wanting choice 1 and 2 and 3 and so on, she would carefully choose one item and be happy that she got the choice. Your solution is even better! Moms rule!
I so hated grocery shopping with them when they were little. All the junk food is placed at they eye-level of preschoolers. And you can’t even win by avoiding the non-food aisles; they have extra displays at the ends!
My husband used to come home from work and offer me the night to go grocery shopping by myself! It felt like such a luxury and always made me ‘appreciate’ him even more…
I could totally go for some of these tonight
Did you make them Matt? They are delish!
Hey, Thanks a lot for this awesome article! I will save Dessert Night recap: peanut butter chocolate chip brownies – fitknitchick. Thank you.
These are amazing! I love them. I made these tonight for the 2nd time and I reduced to sugar to 1/4 cup and used 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of almond flour.
So yummy!! Thanks for this recipe!
OMG these look delicious! I’m definitely pinning these. Thank you for linking up!
They are to die for. Particularly good when served warm with a bit of ice cream on the side (I know, defeats the low sugar option, but very yummy!)