Sweets

I forgot how much I love this cake! Sometimes I’m in the mood for something just a little sweet and my Oatmeal Snack Cake is just what I need. It’s still plenty sweet enough for a healthy dessert but I have to admit I like it with breakfast. And why not? It’s made with oats and some whole wheat pastry flour. The crispy broiled coconut-pecan topping is my favorite part!

This morning I had a boiled egg, toast, melon, a slice of whole grain oat snacking cake, and a glass of milk.  Maybe I should change the name… how about Oatmeal Breakfast Cake? After all, granola has oats, pecans, and coconut so why not have it in a slice? With breakfast. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

You don’t need butter to make delicious and healthy, chewy, fudgey brownies.  This is another one of my popular one-bowl quick & easy recipes and this is the only chocolate brownie I will ever make. It tastes like it’s bad for you but it’s not. This is by far one of my best dessert recipes… for being healthy and for being so easy to make! You only have to wash one bowl.  The baking pan is lined with foil so you can just put it away when you’re done.

There is no butter here. My healthy recipe uses extra light olive oil which has a very mild flavor and is perfect for baking with rich flavors like chocolate. Olive oil is proven to be heart-healthy. The nuts (toast them first!) add protein while dark chocolate chunks have benefits, too. Wait, there’s more: these easy brownies are 100% whole wheat – you gotta love that!

Here’s a time-saving trick when lining your plan with foil. Lay the foil flat and place the 9 x 9-inch baking pan on top of the foil. Press up around all four sides to create a “mold” which then fits nicely inside the pan. You’re welcome!

If you’re looking for an easy healthy brownie, try this recipe. You can call them whatever you want: Easy Brownies, Healthy Brownies, Olive Oil Brownies, Whole Wheat Brownies, or you can just call them what I do… The Best Brownies Ever!  Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

Lemon and blueberries go together like Peaches & Herb or Martin & Lewis… the perfect match! With blueberries in season, it’s the best time to try this dessert recipe for a light, delicious lemon cake with lots of fresh blueberries. A lot of cakes like this start with two sticks of butter but mine uses only 1/3 cup. And bundt cakes make a dramatic presentation. Remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the groom’s mom brought a bundt to meet the bride’s Greek family?  “A boont? A boont?”  I love that scene!  Did you know that blueberries are called “brain food?” They help your memory so you can remember to make this cake! Click here for my healthy recipe. – Jenny Jones

UPDATE (July 14, 2014): I made my strawberry cake yesterday (for someone’s birthday) and thought it would be helpful to show how it looks the second day. It tastes just as good the second day but the strawberries start to show a little through the frosting. I took a few snapshots:

Here it is below right after I made it (sorry, I didn’t clean off the plate!):

Here it is the following morning (today) after being refrigerated overnight:

And here’s a closeup of the strawberries, which have turned a little darker and even more juice has soaked into the cake, but again, still tastes great:

(Original posting from May 12, 2013): Good news! You don’t need a co-signer to buy strawberries – they are in season and affordable! I bought a 2 lb. box today for $4.99 and made my scrumpdeliumptous Fresh Strawberry Cake. How does it taste? It’s like the angels came down from the clouds with a gift from the heavens! One bite and it simply melts in your mouth…  it’s that good.

It’s actually a fairly easy recipe – a white cake (as healthy as I can make it, but it does have butter) filled with macerated strawberries so the juices soak into the cake, and the whole thing is covered head to toe with whipped cream. It’s definitely a special occasion dessert recipe but it is a show stopper and they will beg you to make it again. Somebody already asked me to make another one. Oh… right… that was me. Click here for the recipe. (And let me know if you make it!) – Jenny Jones

Wait ’til you taste this moist, delicious blueberry streusel coffee cake. It’s an easy recipe made with whole grain flour and no butter. And blueberries are in season right now so you won’t need a loan application to buy them! Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

I love love love this simple, easy recipe! One bowl. No butter. No cleanup. And you get moist, delicious, and very easy lemon brownies… Everything in one bowl, mix and bake.  And you can use either canola or extra light olive oil. Click here for my healthy recipe. – Jenny Jones

Why is this cake so unique?  It’s a sweet potato chocolate cake! Yes, it’s made with sweet potatoes.  Not only does it have health benefits, it’s also a heavenly, fastastically, stupendously delicious moist chocolate cake!  It has almost no butter so I love that it has very little saturated fat. This recipe was in my first cookbook and was the second most popular recipe in the book (my meatloaf was first).

Cooked sweet potato is the highest vegetable source of betacarotene, which boosts your immune system and even gives you glowing skin. If you’re looking for a healthy chocolate cake I promise you… everyone will love this moist & delicious sweet potato chocolate cake! Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

There is a meyer lemon tree in my back yard and I have more lemons than I can use, or at least I did. I decided to make lemon brownies and I’ve been through more than a dozen lemons already trying to get the brownies just right and I think they’re almost there. I’ll try one more adjustment and then I’ll post the recipe. And by the way, there’s no butter in the recipe and it’s all in one bowl. The recipe is super easy and they taste out of this world. UPDATE March 20, 2013: The recipe is ready. Click here.

With ninety-one organic apples on my tree, I had to come up with a very special recipe and here it is. It’s a lot less work than making traditional apple pie and the best part is… it’s healthier… made without shortening or butter, only heart-healthy canola oil. I love that!

It tastes just as good as a pie, in fact, Denis keeps calling it pie but I say a piece of pie is pointed and this is square – it is NOT pie! Whatever you call it, this is one of my best recipes.

And try to eat just one piece of p….. uh…. I mean one bar. 🙂

Click here for the recipe.

June 25th

I made apple pie bars again. I had to. My apples were calling me from the tree: “We’re ready! Over here! Eat us! Bake us into one of those pie bars! We need a purpose! We like being snuggled in that delicious crust. Please Jenny, take us before the squirrels come!!”