I love holidays. I love baking. I love baking for holidays. I do not love gaining weight eating my holiday baking.
In the past, I have tried several tacks:
- I’ve either thrown caution to the winds and planned to sew my mouth shut come January
- Or I’ve carefully counted and weighed and resisted only to still have to sew my mouth shut come January
This year I have a new plan. I shall miniaturize all my favorite holiday baked goods. I got the idea originally from the little goodies that Starbucks introduced this spring. And then someone brought a dozen or so Oreo Cookie Truffles to a meeting, and I had to stop myself from grabbing fistfulls.
I love all things small, so it seemed a natural for me to explore the trend. I will get the pleasure of holiday baking without all the calories. Portion control, I believe it’s called. So now through Christmas I’ll be making and baking–and posting, for good or ill, the results.
First up, a Thanksgiving favorite: Spiced Apple Bread Truffles, a mere ounce or so of goodness and, by my calculation, a mere 2 WeightWatchers points. each
I used Trader Joe’s Spiced Apple Bread mix, but you could make your own or use another brand. Normally I don’t use cake mixes–or at least I don’t admit to it in public. But I had this in my larder and it seemed silly to waste it. Besides, I consoled myself that Trader Joe’s cake mix could only contain good stuff.
At this point, the directions are easy: make the Apple Bread, bake it, cool it.
Now comes the fun part: break up the bread into a mixing bowl. Get right in there with both hands and crumble the hell out of it. If you have kids, they could help you with this. When it’s reduced to mere crumbs, it should look like this:
In the meantime, you will have made
Caramel Frosting
1/4 C butter
1/2 C brown sugar
1/8 C milk
2 C powdered sugar
Melt the butter and add the sugar. Bring to boil and stir constantly for 2 minutes. Add milk and continue stirring until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat and cool. Slowly add sugar, beating well with a spoon after each addition until the frosting is thick enough to spread. Add the frosting to the bowl of bread crumbs, making sure to mix it all in thoroughly.
Another fun bit–suitable for older children: take a small amount of the mixture (I used a melon baller or small ice cream scoop) and roll it firmly between your hands to make a sphere. When you’re done, you should have 36 of them that look like this.
Put them in your freezer for at least an hour. Meanwhile,
- melt 12 oz. of white chocolate (the better the quality of chocolate, the better your truffles will come out) with 2 T shortening
- chop finely 1/4 cup of walnut pieces
Remove the apple bread balls from the freezer and drop each individually into the chocolate. This is called enrobing, which is just a fancy way of saying get that stuff all over the ball. I used a candy dipping tool that Wilton makes, but your could use a skewer or a fork. Place the enrobed balls on a cookie sheet covered with waxed paper. Before the chocolate hardens completely, drop a few walnut pieces on top of each.
Put them all back in the freezer, well-covered, for–well, until you need them. I took a couple out–just to try, you know, for testing purposes. The rest are in the freezer until Thursday, when I’ll take them to a meeting I promised goodies for.
Here’s what they look like close up:
The verdict? I would not use the Trader Joe’s mix again. Maybe it was my imagination, but there was a tinge of an artificial taste about it. Maybe the apple? Maybe the preservatives? I also would use a higher quality of white chocolate than I did. Again, Trader Joe’s just didn’t cut it for me; it was too sweet.
If you make these, let me know how they turn out for you.
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