July 28: Low-fat, dairy-free seasonal Fruit Puffs!

Here's one for Miss Marple's Friend, who requested a low-fat dessert with a "plus" for seasonal fruit.
With that, the first thing I thought of was a low-fat fruit tartlet, but decided to opt for something a little less traditional.
For this recipe, I tweaked around a cream puff recipe to get this delicious little fruit bomb!

These aren't particularly sweet, but are a wonderful, light summer treat, perfect for a picnic or just for noshing on the deck with a good book (my personal choice).

You can fill them with either fresh fruit (sprinkled with sugar if you wish), or the filling recipe below.

For the puff:
1 1/3 cup water
1/2 cup margarine (as always, butter is interchangeable if you wish)
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 cup plus 3 tbsp flour
4 eggs

For the filling:
3 sliced nectarine (or peach)
1 1/2 tsp maple syrup or to taste
4 good shakes of cinnamon or to taste

To make the puff:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
In a medium saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Add the margarine and salt and mix vigorously to melt. Bring back to a boil and add the flour all at once. Stir vigorously until the whole thing turns into a sort of ball-thing. Take off of heat and place in a bowl (the colder the better, since it's hot).
Add eggs one at a time, mixing EXTREMELY thoroughly after each addition. Each one should thin the batter at first, but don't worry - keep mixing until the batter thickens. It will. Add sugar and mix thoroughly.
Now, I put them in the oven in two ways: eight delicious puffs were dropped by the tablespoon onto a greased baking sheet, and eight were placed in greased cupcake tins (NOT in the papers!). I suggest putting them on the pan - the cupcake tins ones look sort of really silly and aren't very good for filling.
If you put them on the pan, they'll look really flat - don't worry, they puff up nicely. Bake for 20 minutes or until they look dry with no beads of moisture.
Cool on rack.

To make the filling:
Over low heat, cook the nectarine until soft. Once soft, add the maple syrup and cinnamon. Stir vigorously until hot and very, very soft. Take off of heat and let cool to desired temperature.

To fill, cut open the puffs - they naturally have a cavity once they bake. Fill very full and fill immediately before serving.

Makes 16 puffs.

July 24: Gluten- and White/Brown Sugar-free, Dairy-Free Chocolate Fruit Tartlets!

This one is done as per the request of my friend Nikki!

My friend Leslie came over to bake this one with me. We were going to try to not make this one chocolatey, but we're having trouble thinking of a non-nut flour alternative to wheat that isn't cocoa.

Note: Make sure to grease your tartlet pans! Otherwise they will yield delicious brownies that are impossible to remove.

Filling:
18 very small strawberries (6 regular size strawberries), smashed to a pulp
Juice of 1 1/2 lemon
12 lemons, zested (Note: if this is too much, as it may be, you can mess with the strawberry/lemon ratio. More strawberries is delicious too!)
3/4 cup coconut
1 cup honey
Strawberries for garnish

Tarts:
1 cup honey
1/2 cup cocoa
A pinch salt
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla

To make the tarts:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium-size bowl, using an electric mixer, mix together honey, cocoa, and salt until thoroughly mixed. Add egg whites and vanilla and beat until mixed. Do not over-mix - the egg whites will stiffen. Fill up tartlet pans halfway and bake for 10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the tartlet comes out clean.
Remove and let cool in tartlet pans; after a few minutes, remove from pans and let cool on a rack.

To make the filling:
Mix all ingredients but strawberries over heat and stir until they all stick together. Add strawberries and make sure they are thoroughly mixed in. Once at the desired consistency, remove from heat and let cool.

To put together:
Poke or scoop and indent into the tartlets once they have cooled. Put in the desired amount of filling and garnish with strawberry slices. Enjoy!

July 23: Egg-, Gluten-, and Dairy-Free Chocolate Shortbread!

My first dare: bake something without eggs and wheat, and preferably without dairy, too.

Um, what?

I'd made two flourless desserts in my life before, and one had cream and the other was a meringue cookie.
So, I set out with my trusty Google and found...nothing that didn't require nut flour.

Since I'm trying to do this all with common ingredients that pretty much everyone has in their kitchen, and I was doing this with 3 hours to go until I had to head to work with the cookies, I wasn't about to do that.

Instead, I found a basic shortbread recipe - a recipe I already knew was eggless. From there, it was a few easy modifications to get to the delicious, four-ingredient cookie that takes less than an hour to get from the bowl to your mouth!

About to go in the oven!

I made them soft and chewy, but they can be made any level of crunchiness - just leave them in the oven for longer. They're incredibly rich, so much so so to be described as "an emotional journey" by one of the other actors (there were barely even any crumbs in the container by the time I left the rehearsal).

Here's the recipe!

1 cup margarine (butter if you are OK with dairy, but it's interchangeable)

2 ½ cups cocoa

¾ cup brown sugar, or to taste (I prefer my cookies very, very cacao-rich; if you like yours sweeter, add more sugar)

1 tsp vanilla extract or to taste

Preheat Oven to 325 degrees.

Cream margarine, brown sugar, and vanilla together until very, very creamy. Add cocoa and mix until completely mixed. At first, it will get very fine, almost like a thick flour. Keep mixing - it takes a couple of minutes. It will eventually start getting into thicker and thicker grain, then it will pebble, and slowly clump all together. By the end, it will be a very, very thick batter – you will probably have to poke it out of the mixer. Use an electric mixer for this – it’s far too thick to do it by hand.

Roll out dough on parchment paper and cut into whatever shape you want and place on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet and bake.

The cookies will begin to get very soft, and then will firm up slightly. Take them out only once they have begun to firm up  for them to be nice and chewy. Let cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Makes upwards of 2 dozen cookies, depending on size and shape of cookies..