Low-Fat Blueberry Swirl Cheesecake Cupcakes

I'm really loving this recipe! I found a cheesecake swirl recipe from Annie's Eats and changed it up a bit to my liking. I love cheesecake but I don't like all the fat that comes along with it so I made a low-fat version. And they are delicious! My only complaint is that the blueberry taste was not strong. Next time I'll experiment with different fruit flavors (like strawberry or raspberry) and see which one works best.

Adapted from: Annie's Eats
Printable Recipe

INGREDIENTS for the CRUST:

1 1/2 cups of finely ground graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
4 tablespoons melted margarine

INGREDIENTS for the CHEESECAKE FILLING:

2 pounds (32 ounces) of fat-free cream cheese - room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs

INGREDIENTS for the BLUEBERRY SWIRL:

1 cup blueberries
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons sugar

DIRECTIONS for the CRUST:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

2. Line 24 muffin/cupcake tins with liners. In a small bowl, stir together the graham crackers, sugar and zest. Add the melted margarine and stir until combined. Take 1 full tablespoon of the graham cracker mixture and put into the bottom of each liner. Take a small glass and flatten the mixture into the bottom of each cupcake. Bake for 6 minutes then set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

DIRECTIONS for the CHEESECAKE FILLING:

1. In a large bowl, whip the cream cheese with an electric mixer until fluffy-about 4 minutes. Add the sugar and the vanilla and mix for another 1-2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, while mixing and combine well.

2. Pour 3 tablespoons of cheesecake batter over each of the pre-baked crusts.

DIRECTIONS for the BLUEBERRY SWIRL:

1. Combine blueberries, lemon juice, water and sugar in a medium-sized pan. Cook on low heat for about 15 minutes or until the blueberries have broken down and become juicy.

2. Pour mixture through a fine mesh sieve. You want about 10-12 teaspoons worth of thick blueberry juice for the cupcakes.*

3. Using about 1/2 a teaspoon of the juice per cupcake, place 3 dots on each of the cupcakes.

4. Using a toothpick (and some creativity), swirl the blueberry mixture around.

5. Bake 325 F for 22-25 minutes or until the cupcakes have set.

6. Set aside to cool for 1 hour then put in the fridge for 3 hours to chill completely before serving.

* Save the remaining blueberry mixture to top ice cream or yogurt. It's delicious!

Also, be sure to 'Like' Baking Boy on Facebook or follow Baking Boy on Twitter!

MillerCoors Brewery Tour

I'm not a fan of Miller beer (sorry Miller). But recently, on a visit to Milwaukee, Rob and I decided to take a tour of the MillerCoors brewery. My favorite Milwaukee breweries are Lakefront (yum!) and Sprecher. The MillerCoors was a free tour with three free samples, so...why not. It's a massive operation so it was interesting to see. That's about it...ha! Enjoy the pics. :)

The Girl in the Moon logo...hey hey!

The bottling plant...huge.

We were like a herd of cattle being directed through the long hallways...moooove.

A massive Miller sign on the side of the brewing building. I'm dizzy.

The huge brew kettles

The Girl in the Moon, inside the cave.

If you look closely...

The Fonz!

So excited to finally see the famous Fonz statue in Milwaukee!

Ayyy!

Ferrante Winery

My motto: Never pass up a wine tasting opportunity.

I stick to this motto wholeheartedly. So of course when my parents suggested a wine tasting at Ferrante during my last visit to Ohio, I could not refuse. I recently got back and I miss my family already. Sad face. But I have lots of great memories. Specifically, the memory of drinking all of these wine samples in the course of 20 minutes and barely being able to walk.

 

Slurp, slurp, slurp.

Yeah, that was fun! Can I get a "Whooohoo!"?

The temps here have been HOT. Like 95 degrees HOT so no baking the past couple days. But...there is a cool-down this weekend and I have plans to bake now that the weather will be cooler. Can I get another "Whooohoo!"? Anyone?

Summer Sunsets

I just wanted to share a few photos of some sunsets this past summer. All three of these were taken on Lake Michigan.

Ahhhh, summer...you will be sadly missed.

Arancini, again!

Hello, happiness.

A couple months ago I had a wonderful lesson in making arancini. I made them again last week. This time I was on my own and making them from memory. They tasted exactly the same as when Rob's aunt was here. That made me so happy! And it made my belly happy.

I haven't been blogging much lately because I have been out and about enjoying summer as much as humanly possible. I will however, be posting about some raspberry ricotta scones I made a couple days ago. In fact, I'm eating one now. Mmmmmmm...look for that post soon! :)

Dune Rides

As I mentioned in my latest muffin recipe post, Rob and I went on a mini vacation recently. Every year, for the past four years, we have gone to Saugatuck Michigan. It's a really easy trip, only about a two and a half hour drive from Chicago. It's a great place to get away from the city and just relax. Ahhhh.

I've blogged about Saugatuck before. The most recent post was about our Fenn Valley Winery tour. That was amazing! It was a perfect autumn day. This time around it was hot and sunny. We hung out at the beach, went on a sunset cruise and went on a dune ride. I just had to blog about the dune ride because it was just so much fun and not at all what I was expecting. It's fast...very fast! It was also educational. The dunes actually formed because of The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The land was originally thick with trees and after the fire, the town of Singapore Michigan was almost completed deforested for the wood. The lumber was shipped to Chicago and used to rebuild the city. After the trees were wiped out, the wind off of lake Michigan blew sand inland and created the dunes at an alarmingly fast rate. The town of Singapore was eventually evacuated and is now buried deep under the dunes. And now it's a perfect place for a dune ride. Whooohoo!

So here are some pictures from the ride. We had a really fun and funny tour guide/driver named Joey. He told us that the last row of seats was the bumpiest so we took on the challenge.

You can't tell, but we were actually going really fast when Rob took this picture. I am gripping onto the seat with my left hand...yikes!

Our fellow co-riders:

Our tour guide/driver:

I think his hands weren't on the wheel. He did that a couple times to scare us. Ha!

So purdy!

Construction? It's like being back in Chicago.

Our driver tried to convince us that a worker was buried in the dune. If you look closely you'll see feets sticking up. Something tells me he's lying...

Can anyone say, workers' compensation? Haha.

He took us up to the highest dune and we had some time to stop and get out to take pictures. Here I am on the dune:

This is a better picture of what was behind me. It's quite breathtaking:

If you are ever anywhere near Saugatuck, you must go on a dune ride. It was tons-o-fun.

Raspberry-Lemon Muffins

Wow, I have so much to blog about! Rob and I went on a much needed mini vacation last week. I have a lot to share but I wanted my first post to be a recipe post since it's been a while. On our drive home we stopped at a Earl's Farm Market, a U-pick fruit farm. We loaded up on raspberries and blueberries. We picked 3 pints of raspberries and 10 pounds of blueberries. Yes, 10 pounds! It was quite a process picking them and even more of a process washing them and packaging them for freezing. But now I have a lot of frozen fruit for future baking.

I wanted to start out baking with the raspberries. I found an easy recipe online so I couldn't resist. They are yummy!

Printable Recipe

Adapted from AllRecipes.com

INGREDIENTS

2 egg whites
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup fresh raspberries*

*If using frozen raspberries, allow to thaw before using.

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper muffin cups.

2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the eggs whites, yogurt, vegetable oil, lemon juice and lemon zest. Set aside.

3. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and lightly mix until blended. Fold in the raspberries.

4. Spoon the batter evenly into the 12 muffin tins. Bake for 14-16 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

5. Cool for one hour before eating.

6. Eat 'em up!

Also, be sure to 'like' Baking Boy on Facebook or follow Baking Boy on Twitter!

A Little Chipmunk

I completely forgot to upload this photo yesterday on my blog post about the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I love chipmunks! So cute! Hi little chipmunk. :D

Chicago Botanic Gardens

This past weekend was PRIDE weekend in Chicago. Whoohoo! Happy pride to all. An exciting weekend all around especially because of this. New York is the 6th state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. Being such a huge state it will hopefully open up the doors and influence other states to change laws and legalize same-sex marriages. It's an exciting step but there is still a lot more to fight for so show your pride and stand up for equality! Yes!

On a lighter note, Rob and I had decided we were going to go hiking on Saturday and enjoy the pride parade and festivities on Sunday. We decided to do some hiking in the Forest Preserve, then head to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Admission is free, unless you park in their lot which will cost you $20 dollars. We decided to cheat and we parked in the Forest Preserve parking lot and walked roughly 2.5 miles up the gardens. We were feeling very ambitious. I think we walked roughly 7 miles that day. Here are some pictures I took around the gardens. It's such a visually stimulating place!

I liked these but I forgot what they're called. Whoops.

More pretty flowers that I also do not know the name of.

Here's my little bee friend. Hello little bee friend!

I loved this sculpture.

These flowers were my favorite! Purple Alliums or "Onion Flowers"

Ahhh refreshing!

The Theodore C Butz Carillon.

One of my favorite parts of the gardens was the Rose Garden. "Stop and smell the roses", as they say. We literally did. This may sound cheesy but it was such a great moment. To admire and appreciate the beauty of nature that we sometimes take for granted. Each rose was so special and smelled completely different. I wanted to smell the roses all day! Any chance I get from now on I will definitely stop and smell the roses. :)

Ahhhhhh...

Amazing!

Homemade Arancini = Heaven

Arancini. The word itself just rolls off the tongue like buttah. Thanks to Rob's aunt, I was lucky enough to learn how to make homemade arancini. (Insert many exclamation points here). This was so exciting for me. For those that don't know, arancini originated in Sicily. They are fried rice balls coated with bread crumbs. The middle contains mozzarella cheese, peas and a meat sauce. How could you not love a deep fried ball of rice with cheese in the middle?! Yuuuum.

So, three weeks ago Rob's mom and aunt came to Chicago for a visit. We were lucky to have fantastic weather that weekend. Rob's aunt is an expert in the kitchen. The day they arrived she made homemade pizzas and arancini. It was delicious! Here's a pic of us happily making the arancini:

She's a great teacher!

What a process! Messy, but totally worth it. I have yet to try making them on my own but I will soon. And I may need to have Rob's aunt on speaker phone just to make sure I don't forget anything. Here she is posing with the yummy arancini:

It was a great visit and it was nice spending time with his mom and aunt. I'm so glad they came. And I'm so glad I still have some leftover arancini in the freezer. Mmmmm!

Salsa!

This is kind of boring. I mean, salsa is easy to make and I don't really need to do a post about it. But as you can see, I'm going to anyway! I'm not actually a big fan of this salsa recipe so I'm hoping you (yes you!) will share a good salsa recipe. Something different, something fun. Whoohooo.

Printable Recipe

INGREDIENTS

3 tomatoes - diced
1/4 cup onion - chopped
1/4 cup cilantro - chopped
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 clove of garlic - crushed

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix together then eat it up.

Porch Garden Update

Up until this past weekend, the weather in Chicago has been completely inconsistent. There have been lots of cold days recently. But judging from the sudden warm weather and the extended weather forecast, it looks like it's going to stay warm. Finally. This makes me happy inside.

Rob and I got our porch together this past weekend and planted our little basil plants.

They grow up so fast. It seemed like yesterday they were itty bitty little sprouts.

We had a lot of little basil plants so we planted them in two containers. In the rectangular container we planted the parsley, three little basil plants and a full grown basil plant that we bought. We want to use basil right away so we bought the full grown one to use until the little guys grow up.

We planted a lot in the big round basket. We may have planted too many in there but if it gets out of control we'll pluck a few out.

Here are our impatiens:

We actually planted some a few weeks ago (thinking it was going to be warm) but unfortunately it got really cold and they basically died. So we had to buy new plants. They look much better than the original ones. Within a month they'll fill up the box.

Here's our big rosemary plant:

I love rosemary. I love touching rosemary so my hands smell like it. Ahhh...

Our landlord planted new grass. It's so green and perfect and suburban looking. Much nicer than the lawn last year. Actually, it wasn't much of a lawn last year. It was mostly weeds. After taking this picture I had a flashback of the 5 foot snow drift from the blizzard of the century. Yikes.

I love this building when it's covered in leaves. It's not fully covered yet, but it's close:

It's much better than this.

And here's a picture of our alley. Just because I like it.

Also, be sure to 'like' Baking Boy on Facebook or follow Baking Boy on Twitter. :)

The Inconsistent Blogger

That should really be the title of my blog. I guess I go through phases. Sometimes I get busy and don’t have time to blog. Other times I get a little overwhelmed at the idea of sharing my personal life with anyone who has access to this endless universe known as the internet. The latter is more applicable in recent weeks. I realistically know that I’m the one who controls what is shared about my life, but sometimes I question whether I want to share anything at all to anyone out there who can turn on a computer. I’ve also been in a funk because of the weather. It may sound silly to some people but I’ve realized that the weather greatly affects me emotionally. This Chicago Spring is 100 times more inconsistent than my blogging. One day it’s hot, the next it’s cold. Mostly cold, actually. I love this city but I am really questioning things. I need heat and sun and at this rate I’m not sure if I’ll get that this summer in Chicago. Who knows, maybe I will. I’m just not feeling optimistic right now. I am also not feeling motivated to bake so who knows when my next blog post will be. It could be tomorrow or it could be next month. Either way, it will happen again…eventually.

I do love you Chicago. But your weather stinks lately.

Bruschetta

Bruschetta is so easy to make. And it's healthy. The recipe I'm posting is exactly how I like my bruschetta. You can add or subtract ingredients depending on what you like.

Printable Recipe

INGREDIENTS

3 medium sized plum tomatoes - diced
2 small garlic cloves - crushed
5-7 fresh basil leaves - chopped
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon crushed black pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Italian bread

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix tomatoes, garlic, basil, salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar in a bowl. Refrigerate for 1 hour prior to serving.

2. Slice bread into equal 1/2 inch thick slices. Toast on a baking sheet in a 400 degree F oven for 10 minutes. Allow to cool before topping with the tomato mixture. Serve and enjoy!

This is such a great snack. Easy to make and healthy!

Note: This is an old post that got a bit of a makeover. I made some bruschetta for guests this past weekend and took a better picture than what I had previously posted. I also created a printable recipe link so I figured I'd post it again. Enjoy!

Spring Has Sprung

Finally!

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

You may be saying to yourself, "But David, these do not look like carrot cake cupcakes!" I know, I know. They look more like rolls with melted Velveeta. But I promise you they are yummy carrot cake cupcakes. My decorating vision was not well executed. I've always decorated carrot cake with little carrots made of frosting but this time I wanted to do something different. I got a little carried away with the drizzling of the orange frosting. I blame the mimosa I was drinking! Oh well. They taste fantastic so that's all that matters.

Printable Recipe

INGREDIENTS for the CUPCAKE

1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups finely grated carrots

INGREDIENTS for the ICING

1/4 cup cream cheese softened
2 tablespoons butter softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS for the CUPCAKE

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper muffin cups.

2. In a bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

3. In a large bowl, beat together eggs and sugar with a mixer for 2 minutes or until it becomes lighter in color and a little frothy. Add the vegetable oil, vanilla and carrot and mix with a spoon.

4. Fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture and combine. Fill the 12 muffin cups to the top with the batter. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

DIRECTIONS for the FROSTING

1. In a medium size bowl with a hand mixer, beat together the cream cheese and butter. Once combined, beat the vanilla in. Add the powdered sugar little by little until smooth.

2. Frost the cupcakes once they have cooled to room temperature.

3. Decorate them differently than I did. Ha!

Also, be sure to 'like' Baking Boy on Facebook or follow Baking Boy on Twitter!