Pineapple Guava Bread

Last year my friend gave me a few Pineapple Guavas to taste and I thought they were great, so this year when she offered to give me some I jumped at the chance. Well, I got a lot of them! 

 This is what I had leftover fruits after my cooking attack today!

After a few minutes of "what on earth am I gonna do with this?" I looked online for ideas. In a forum somebody mentioned using this in a bread instead of bananas. Now I had been meaning to make my banana bread for a while, so here we go! Now the original recipe is from Cooking Light (November 2007 I believe) but I thought that version was still a little too fatty, so I played with the butter vs apple juice content and the spices until I got it to where I wanted it. So I believe I changed it around enough to where it's mine... that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

This time around, I changed the fruit, I doubled the recipe, and I added chopped up crystallized ginger. I was alone at home when I made this, so my hands were too dirty to take pictures of the process, but the sun was hitting my kitchen this afternoon so I'm purty proud of my "after" pictures! Here's the recipe!

This is Bread #1 right out of the oven 

Pineapple Guava Bread
Makes 2 Bread
Per Bread: 8 servings*, 4 pts/serving

Ingredients
1/2 cup Splenda
1/2 cup bron sugar
1/4 Cup butter
6 TBSP Apple Sauce unsweetened
1 cup egg beater
3 cup, white flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 cup fat free vanilla yogurt
2 cup pineapple Guava, chopped
2 TBSP crystallized ginger, chopped small
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Cooking spray
Nutmeg (whole for grating)

1- Preheat over at 350F

2- Place sugar and butter in a large bowl, beat with a mixer at medium speed until well mixed, add apple sauce and beat a little more. Add eggs beater slowly while mixing well.

3- Sift flour and baking soda and spices together and add to the wet mixture alternating with the yogurt. You want to start and finish with the flour. Do not over-mix! The more you mix, the denser it will be.

4- Fold in the pineapple guava, ginger, and vanilla extract and pour the whole thing in 2 9X5 inch pan that you pre-sprayed with cooking spray. Grate nutmeg on top before putting in the oven.

5- Bake for about 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 8-10 minutes in the pan, then remove to a wire rack and cool completely.

*The original recipe was 10 serving per bread which would be 3 pts here. To me those slices are too thin. I want a REAL slice!

Source: Adapted (a lot) from Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2007 p. 407 (November 2007) 

This is Bread #2 right out of the oven!

So once it was completely cooled, I wrapped one of the bread in plastic, then foil, then plastic again just to be sure, and put it in the freezer. the other one is waiting for my husband to be tasted. I know better than start without him, there'd be none left by the time he makes it home!!

Half of the leftover fruits got peeled and diced, frozen on a cookie sheet and then "zipploc-ed" for future smoothies. The other half will be eaten tomorrow.

Soooo, if anybody has more of those to share, I'm in!! :o) I'll come back and comment on the taste once I have actually tasted it! ;op

Added Note: After tasting it, both my husband and I think it's absolutely a winner! Thankfully I froze one of them already!

Be good n stuff!

Pumpkin Mousse Parfaits

This is one of those recipes that has made the round on the Weight Watchers message boards since the dinosaurs. I have no idea who first posted it, or how many variations there are. I trot it out in one version or another every year.

The original version was a pumpkin mouse, but I turned it into neat little parfaits. These are good without the graham crumbs (and much more PointsPlus friendly), as shown in the picture, but sometimes you have to get fuffy!

Pumpkin Mousse Parfaits

Makes 4 parfaits, 5 P+ each (8 with the graham crumbs)

15 oz can of pumpkin puree
3 cups cool whip free, divided
1 cup skim milk
2 small boxes of sf/ff vanilla pudding
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (to taste)
1 cup Graham crumbles (divided in 4)

Mousse:
Beat pumpkin, milk, pudding mix and spice together with a whisk. Gently fold in 1 cup of the Fat Free Cool whip. (You can stop there and serve this alone (4servings at 4 P+) as a mousse along a nice cup of hot cider (3 P+).) ;o)

Putting it together:
Brush the bottom of each of your parfait glasses with butter substitute (ICBINB or something like that). Pour in each ¼ of the graham crumbs (if using) and pour out whatever doesn’t stick.

Delicately put in 1/8 of the pumpkin mousse, add ¼ cup of Cool whip (try not to mix it up so it looks cute), sprinkle with ½ of what’s left of each ¼ cup (after you coated the bottom of the Parfait glasses) of Graham crumbs, then add 1/8 of the Mousse again.

**I cover and refrigerate at that point for about 1 hour to let it set, and finish it up just before serving so it looks prettier.

Just before serving: Add ¼ cup of the Cool whip again and sprinkle with the rest of your Graham Crumbs. I stick a cinnamon stick in there to make it look fuffier. :o)

Peach and Ginger Crepes

We recently moved our dinning table closer to the window, and on beautiful mornings, the sun hits right on our table as we sit there having breakfast. It's sort of a magical thing when we have time to just sit and enjoy the morning together. On the weekend we like to indulge a little bit and sometimes we go hunting for different breakfast that does not include eggs or oatmeal. :o)

This recipe is one of those "special breakfast" recipe that we don't do too often, but that is so delicious, that we keep it in reserve "just in case". Thing is, it's easy and quick enough to be an every day recipe and it's not THAT high in P+ really, I did add some FF cool whip to it, because I was feeling fuffy!

Peach and Ginger Crepes
4 servings, 4P+/serving

Ingredients
4 ripe peaches, about 1 1/2 pound, halved, pitted, chopped
2 TBSP granulated sugar
2 TBSP chopped candied ginger
2 tsp lemon juice
4, 7inches, ready-to-use crepes
2 tsp confectioners' sugar

Combine the peaches, granulated sugar, ginger, and lemon juice in a medium bol; let stand 10 minutes.

Place 1/4 of the mixture in the center of each crepe; roll up to enclose the filling. Place each filled crepe, seam side down, in the middle of a breakfast plate. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.

Source: Mix it Match It cookbook, Weight Watchers 2007, Breakfast section.