Enjoy These Sweet Lava Cake Recipes

January 21, 2016 by greystar

With warm, gooey chocolate inside of a moist cake exterior, molten lava cake is a chocolate lover’s dream. This decadent dessert may look like a gourmet treat, but it’s actually surprisingly easy to make. Here are two sweet and simple molten lava cake recipes!

Paula Deen’s Molten Lava Cakes [Food Network]
Everything that Food Network host Paula Deen makes is delightfully sinful, and these Molten Lava Cakes are no exception. They take just 30 minutes to prepare, and the mix of bittersweet and semisweet chocolate with orange liqueur adds a unique taste that your guests and family will love.

Healthier Molten Lava Cakes for Two [Texanerin Baking]
If you want to cut calories while still maintaining the indulgent taste and texture, this Healthier Molten Lava Cake recipe from Texanerin Baking is the perfect choice. It makes just enough for two people so that you can share with a friend, but you won’t be tempted with leftovers. Plus, the dark chocolate and espresso powder add major chocolate flavor without the added sugar of milk chocolate.

CC-BY-SA-2.0/Flickr/Alpha

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Dessert, Food, Molten Lava Cake, Recipes

Healthy Recipes That’ll Curb That Chocolate Craving

August 20, 2015 by greystar

Any chocoholic will tell you how difficult it can be to kick a chocolate craving. If you frequently dream about ice cream, chocolate bars, and decadent brownies (and just as frequently give into those cravings), you’ll appreciate these healthier chocolate recipes.

Dark Chocolate-Dipped Cherries [Whole Living]
The combination of chocolate and fruit is a true classic, and it tastes great in just about any pairing. This recipe uses tart cherries and rich, dark chocolate to satisfy your chocolate craving while still providing heart-healthy antioxidants and cancer preventative anthocyanins.

Chocolate Avocado Mousse [Fit Pregnancy]
It may sound strange, but the thick, creamy consistency of avocado makes a great base for an untraditional chocolate mousse. The dark cocoa inside masks the flavor of the avocado and leaves you with the chocolate-y taste that you know and love.

Chocolate Souflee [Eating Well]
These individual sized chocolate souflees help you to quiet your chocolate craving without overindulging. They also look as professional as a gourmet dessert, which makes them perfect for dinner parties.

Peanut Butter & Pretzel Truffles [Eating Well]
Few things go together better than peanut butter and chocolate, and this recipe is a wonderful example of that fact. These truffles are incredibly easy to make, and they also incorporate a salty taste from the crunchy pretzels.

CC-BY-2.0/Flickr/Ragnar Jensen

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Chocolate, Food, Health, Recipes

Dip a Spoon Into These 4 Recipes for Classic Vanilla Pudding

February 5, 2015 by greystar

Sure, you've made vanilla pudding from a box, have you ever tried to make the sweet dessert from scratch? These straightforward recipes will show you how to prepare vanilla pudding a few different ways, and some are even provided by your favorite cooking show personalities.

Homemade Vanilla Pudding [All Recipes]
Just like Mom used to make, this vanilla pudding is classic, simple, and easy to prepare.

Vanilla Pudding [Martha Stewart]
You can’t go wrong with a recipe from Martha, and this one is certainly no exception.

Vanilla Pudding [Real Simple]
With fluffy egg yolks and just a pinch of salt, this is a flavorful recipe that your guests will love.

Vanilla Pudding [Picky Cook]
Add a pinch of espresso or some chocolate shavings on top to spice up this elegant pudding dish.

CC-BY-2.0/Flickr/Kim

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Dessert, Food, Pudding, Recipes

Bake Your Own Bread With These Recipe Sites

December 4, 2014 by greystar

Who doesn’t love the taste of warm, crusty bread right out of the oven? Though homemade bread may seem intimidating to many at-home chefs, these simple websites offer bread recipes for cooks of all skill levels. Whether you’re looking for a sweet cinnamon raisin loaf for tomorrow’s breakfast or an elaborate multigrain baguette for a dinner party, these websites have recipes for every type of bread imaginable.

All Recipes
All Recipes is a go-to website for just about any recipe you can think of, and their bread section leaves nothing to be desired. It features recipes of the day with mouth-watering photos of breads, muffins, and biscuits, as well as a variety of staff picks that are tested by the site’s knowledgeable employees. If you have a specific bread in mind, All Recipes also offers a handy search bar that allows you to search by the name, ingredient, or purpose of the bread.

Food Network
If you’ve ever watched a show on the Food Network and wondered how to make the fresh, delicious breads from your favorite shows, the bread section of the network’s website is the place to go. This page offers simple, instructional recipes for the simplest no-knead breads to the most complex bread puddings, and they’re all ranked by level of difficulty.

CC-BY-SA-2.0/Flickr/Mike65444

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Baking, Bread, Food, Recipes

Improve Your Diet with a DASH Healthy Eating Plan

December 18, 2013 by greystar

High blood pressure is a major health concern, and it can often be mitigated by limiting the amount of salt in your diet. The NIH's DASH Eating Plan can help those at risk for high blood pressure to stay on track with a low-sodium diet.

The DASH Eating Plan stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, the formal name for high blood pressure. DASH recommends limiting your sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams per day, because this is the adequate intake level determined to lower blood pressure.

In order to follow the DASH Eating Plan, you must eat a certain number of servings per day from all of the food groups. For example, DASH advises that followers consume 6 – 8 servings of whole grains per day, like whole wheat pastas, breads or oatmeal. It also recommends 4 – 5 servings of fruits, 4 – 5 servings of vegetables, and only a limited amount of sweets and sugars. DASH also encourages people to exercise for 30 minutes per day to produce faster results.

DASH Eating Plan [National Institutes of Health]

Public Domain/Public Domain

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Cooking, Nutrition, Paseo at Bee Cave, Recipes

Three Great Websites for Fall Recipes

November 20, 2013 by greystar

With so many festive fall activities on your calendar, you'll need some warm and filling recipes to entertain your guests and keep your family healthy. These creative websites are full of both unique and classic cold weather foods that you can easily make at home.

Spoonful’s Fall Recipes
With a simple, attractive layout and creative recipes that are good for the whole family, Spoonful is a great choice for fall cooking inspiration. Its Fall Recipes page includes delicious dishes such as cute Scarecrow Cookies, as well as cumulative recipe lists with themes like Dinner Every Day in October to help you get your meal planning under control this autumn.

All Recipes’ Fall Seasonal Cooking
Popular cooking website All Recipes organizes many of its dishes based on season, and its Fall Seasonal Cooking section will surely become a go-to tool when the weather gets chilly. With recipes such as Autumn Pork Roast and Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake, you’ll never run out of meal ideas with the help of All Recipes.

Food & Wine’s Fall Flavors
Blending the classy, tasteful feel of Food & Wine magazine with the convenience of a cooking website, this site has created a page devoted to the magazine’s best fall foods. Browse sections like Warming Drinks and Fiery Foods for Cold Weather to find hearty, elegant meals that are sure to excite your tastebuds.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Fall, Food, Recipes

Veg Out with These Vegan and Vegetarian Recipe Sites

November 6, 2013 by greystar

Cutting meat out of your diet is proven to reduce the risk of heart disease, help you lose weight, and lower the amount of greenhouse gases in the environment. If you’ve chosen to go vegan or vegetarian, these creative and helpful websites will help you stay on track with your meat-free lifestyle.

VegWeb
Not just a recipe website, VegWeb is also one of the oldest online communities for connecting vegans and vegetarians. Here you’ll find an expansive assortment of meatless recipes for every meal of the day, as well as a thought-provoking blog, discussion forums, and tips for transitioning to a vegan lifestyle.

Vegetarian Times
Vegetarian Times is a simple, convenient online recipe book full of meat-free recipes that expand far beyond your basic tofu. The recipes are organized extensively by type of meal, cuisine, holiday and even season, providing you with a seemingly endless assortment of meals for any given day. If you follow a specialty diet such as gluten-free or low-calorie in addition to your vegetarian lifestyle, Vegetarian Times has sections tailored to those needs as well.

Post Punk Kitchen
With humble beginnings as an online vegan cooking show featuring live bands, Post Punk Kitchen has since become a popular website with a devoted following of like-minded, meat-free individuals. The site takes a fun, laid-back approach to teaching others the ways around a vegan kitchen, and the videos that accompany each recipe make this website feel like you're hanging out with your best friends.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Cooking, Food, Recipes, Vegetarian