Chocolate Fudge Pie

Whoever it was that said "diamonds are a girl's best friend" had a thing or two to learn.  Personally, my husband is my best friend, but if he isn't around for some reason, I won't be running towards diamonds; I'll be running towards chocolate!  That's right, good old always-there-when-you-need-it chocolate.
In my entire life, I think I have met one female who did not like chocolate, and to this day I think she is crazy.  I'll grant you that my waistline would be smaller if I didn't like chocolate, but I would miss out on so much culinary chocolaty goodness, so I don't think it would be worth it.  I'll just spend some extra quality time with the treadmill instead. :-P
But, what if I told you that you could have rich, creamy chocolate pie AND not feel guilty about eating a nice big slice of it?  Well, I recently came across a blog called Chocolate Covered Katie.  She specializes in making "healthy" desserts.  Now, I'll be honest, the first recipe I tried from her blog was a not a big hit.  It was edible, but it wasn't something I would make again.  Yesterday though, I saw this pie recipe and had to try it immediately.  It's a very rich, very chocolaty, very creamy pie with only about 150 calories per (large) slice (fewer if you cut smaller slices of pie - and really it is so rich, you could be perfectly satisfied with a half a slice!)
So, I whipped this up yesterday morning, enjoyed a slice with my husband yesterday evening and plan to enjoy more of the leftovers with him this evening after work.  Yum!

The secret of the pie is tofu.  I have seen many recipes that use tofu in desserts before and have never been brave enough to try on on my own before, but this was a real winner.  Just make sure you get the right kind of tofu.  You want the silken kind which is not the kind that is sold in the refrigerated section.  You want the kind in a box that doesn't need to be refrigerated until opened.  I used the Mori-Nu Lite Firm Silken tofu with excellent results for this pie!

Alright, get yourself some silken tofu and let's make this pie!  Now! :)

Ultimate Chocolate Fudge Pie
-1 12.3 oz pkg silken tofu

-1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

-1 tsp pure vanilla extract

-2 Tbsp milk (use soy/almond/rice/etc. if you want to make this pareve)

-Scant 1/8 tsp salt

-8-10 oz chocolate chips (I used the full 10 oz because I am a chocoholic!)

-3 Tbsp sugar substitute (I used Splenda, but Katie recommends Agave)
-Optional: flavorings, extracts, or liqueurs (I didn't add anything, but there are so many things that compliment chocolate, you could have a lot of fun playing with the flavorings!) 

Melt the chocolate.  Add all other ingredients to the melted chocolate and blend really well with an immersion blender, or put everything into a food processor and blend until very well processed and very smooth.  Pour the batter into a pie crust (or forget the crust and just pour into a pie tin) and refrigerate for several hours.  

I suggest serving the pie with fruit - just about any fruit goes well with chocolate so have fun with it!

We have a lot of graham crackers in this house so I made a simple graham cracker crust.  I didn't want to add a lot of calories to the pie because of the crust so I didn't want to use the standard crust of mixing graham cracker crumbs with butter.  I googled "low fat graham cracker crust" and found a recipe that used yogurt instead of butter - brilliant!  So I took the basic idea of that recipe and mixed 1 1/2 C of chocolate graham cracker crumbs with about 4 Tbsp of low fat vanilla yogurt, pressed it into a pie plate and baked at 350 for 5 minutes.  That's it.

(The recipe also called for added sugar and cocoa powder, but I didn't think the sugar was needed and I was already using chocolate grahams, though plain would have been good too.  I didn't miss the omitted ingredients.)

ENJOY!!

Creamy Pumpkin Lasagna

I recently bought a can of pumpkin. (Yes, I bought the canned kind instead of pureeing my own - an advantage of living in America - a can of pumpkin is no longer crazy expensive!)  Anyway, I only used a little bit of it for a recipe and had most of the can remaining just sitting in the fridge.  Now Pesach is coming soon and I also had a box of whole wheat lasagna noodles sitting in the pantry.  One of my favorite treats to order at a restaurant is pumpkin ravioli with a cream sauce.  One of the disadvantages to no longer living in Jerusalem is that I can no longer go to a restaurant and order such a thing. But, since I had pumpkin and lasagna noodles, I figured I might be able to make a close second to ravioli by combing these two things so I googled "pumpkin lasagna" and happily discovered that is was not a crazy idea after all!  I read a bunch of recipes and saw that they all said basically the same thing for main ingredients - pumpkin, lasagna, ricotta, and nutmeg.  I'm not going to link back to anyone specific on this one because I really just took the basic ingredients everyone suggested, added a couple ideas of my own and hoped for the best.  I was pleased with the results and am happily eating leftovers. :)

Here we go:
-1 large can pumpkin puree or make your own - you want about 2 lbs of puree.  Added some water to the pumpkin to stretch it a little farther and it still tasted great - just don't thin it too much!
-1/4 tsp nutmeg

-1 tsp vanilla

-Parsley flakes

-2 C Ricotta cheese (I used skim.)
-1 egg

-1/2 C butter or margarin

-2-4 tbsp cream cheese

-2 C heavy cream

-3 C shredded cheese, divided (I used mozarella)

salt, pepper, & granulated garlic to taste

-1 box of lasagna noodles prepared according to package direction (or make your own if you have the time :) )

-1 onion, thinly sliced

-Ground sage

-Nutritional yeast

Start by mixing the nutmeg and vanilla into your pumpkin.  Sprinkle some dried parsley in and stir (I just poured, I didn't measure, but I would say to use about 2 tsp or so), and set aside.  Then mix the egg into the ricotta, season to taste with salt & pepper, and set aside.  (If I were in Israel, I would skip the egg and just use g'veena levana.)

Next we need to make an alfredo sauce.  I use a recipe I found a while ago by looking on Google for Olive Garden recipes.  I can't find the same link I once had, but several people have the same recipe posted for it:

Start by melting your butter or margarine in a saucepan.  When it's melted, add the cream cheese.  (This last time I didn't realize that I had no cream cheese, but I had bought Philadelphia Garlic and Herb cooking cream which turned out to be a cream cheese consistency so I just used 2 Tbsp of that.)  Once the cream cheese is melted add the heavy cream and stir.  (I used the rest of the cooking cream plus enough half & half to equal 2 C - again, it's what I had on hand).  Simmer for 15-20 minutes and then remove from heat.  Stir in 2/3 C shredded cheese (if you have parmesan, that is what you are "supposed" to use, but as I said I used mozarella and it was just fine.  When we were living in Israel, I always just used the cheapest Kosher block cheese I could find.)  Season to taste with salt, pepper, and lots of granulated garlic.

Pour half of the alfredo sauce into the bottom of a 9x13" pan and spread around to cover the bottom.  Cover the sauce with a layer of lasagna noodles.  Cover the noodles with a layer of ricotta and some onion slices.  Then add more noodles, cover with a layer of pumpkin, more noodles, and repeat with ricotta and pumpkin until you have used everything up adding in onions whenever you feel like it.  On top of the final layer of noodles pour the rest of the alfredo sauce.  Sprinkle 1-2 Tbsp of the nutritional yeast on top and over that sprinkle the remaining shredded cheese.  Add a small sprinkling of ground sage on top of the cheese.  

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes until cheese is browned.  Remove from oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before slicing.  Season to taste with parmesan cheese, freshly ground black pepper and a sprinkling of salt before serving.  Enjoy!!

Rainbow Challah

Purim is coming - do you have your shalach manos ready?  We have been throwing ideas around for a while and even though we only have one day left (yikes) we still haven't really figured out what we are doing and I have only baked about half the things I originally thought I was going to.  Oh well.  Anyway, last year we were much more organized!  We knew exactly what we were going to do months in advance and I had everything ready - it was great!  We did a Parshas Noach theme so we made rainbow challah, frosted elephant sugar cookies, and some store bought animal crackers to fill the plate.

Oh, and we dressed our daughter as an elephant as well, just to keep the theme going, and let me tell you - she made a darn cute elephant!

The recipe I want to share with you now is called  "Rainbow Challah".  The first time I made this I had a friend over for shabbos and when my husband sliced the bread open she actually screamed with joy, no kidding.  This challah is not only tasty, pretty, and unique, it is also a conversation piece.  Now, I don't want to mislead you - this is not a "bake it on Friday morning" type of bread.  It takes a lot more time than at least my usual challah, so with this one I bake it whenever I happen to have free time (ya, right) and then I freeze it.  I assure you though, this challah is worth trying at least once.

Pad Thai with Tofu

Pad Thai.  What can I say about this dish?  It is simple and has a lot of flavor.  And it's flexible.  This recipe uses tofu, but you could leave the tofu out altogether if you want (though I don't recommend that) or substitute chicken, or maybe even beef.  I'm not so positive that beef would work well - years of being vegetarian has affected my ability to imagine if that would taste right, just a little bit.
You can also make this dish as spicy or as bland as you want, though to be fair, even if you leave out all the spice the dish still has plenty of flavor.  The most recent time I made this, I made a poor judgement call with the hot sauce I used (red Tobasco as opposed to the Frank's hot sauce I usually use) and the Pad Thai came out to be "five alarm Pad Thai" instead of "Pad Thai with a kick".  It was still good, but I couldn't eat as much as I normally would have - probably a good thing for my waist line anyway. :-p