Down 2 Eat: Confession of a Food-a-holic

I've been really slacking on the blog posts this month! It's not that I haven' t been cooking, in fact, I've been cooking more than normal, and tons of new recipes too. Truth is, I'm a tiny bit embarrassed because I've been keeping a secret from you, blog world. So here it is... I'm on Weight Watchers. I know, nothing to be ashamed of really, but I love food and watching every morsel that goes into my mouth doesn't allow for complete cooking and eating freedom. Also, I feel kind of guilty because I'm always that friend who is saying "come on!! eat the ice-cream!!! it's no big deal!!" and now I'm the one who says "umm can I get a salad instead of the onion rings??"

Despite being worried that I would be depriving myself of the joys of food, I have been surprised how good the recipes from Weight Watchers have been. Don't get me wrong, there are some foods that just aren't the same when you scale them down (french fries!) but the great thing about Weight Watchers is that you can eat anything, you just have to plan accordingly and control your portions. One of my biggest challenges is my sweet tooth, so I decided to see what the Weight Watchers recipe bank had in the way of sugary goodness.

I decided on the Berry-licious Cupcakes because the picture of them looked so cute. I realize that these aren't *healthy* but they have less calories and fat that regular cupcakes, and taste just as good, proving you can have your cupcake and eat it too!

Berry-licious Cupcakes

150 calories and 2.5g fat (with frosting)

Dunken Hines Yellow Cupcake

270 calories and 12g fat (not including frosting)

Berry-licious Cupcakes

Courtesy of Hungry Girl and Weight Watchers, comments by Amanda

Makes 12 cupcakes

Prep time 20 min

Cooking time 20 min

Ingredients:

4 oz (or half an 8oz container) fat free Cool Whip

1/4 cup fat-free cream cheese, softened

2 tbsp SPLENDA No Calorie Sweetner When recipes call for artificial sweetener, you can't just use sugar instead because 1 tbsp sweetener might not equal 1 tbsp sugar. Also, baking is a science as well as an art, so you might mess up the chemistry if you sub sweetener for sugar or vis-versa

1/8 tsp vanilla extract

2 drops neon pink food coloring (1 drop for icing, 1 drop for batter) I skipped this part because I wanted to have white icing so my sprinkles would look cool

1/2 Tbsp sugar free raspberry or strawberry syrup again, skipped it for white icing

9 1/8 oz (about half a package) regular white cake mix I weighed this out just to be sure I had exactly half, remember, this is science! Also, I used yellow, but I would recommend white, read on to find out why.

1 cup diet cola, black cherry flavor I used Diet Dr. Pepper

4 large egg whites (about 1/2 cup)

6 medium strawberries, pureed I used my mini food processor

2 sprays cooking spray or cupcake liners

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In a medium bowl, comine whipped topping, cream cheese, Splenda, vanilla extract, 1 drop of food coloring (optional but looks cute and girly) and syrup (also optional, but tastes good).

Using electric mixer at medium-low speed, blend frosting until mixed thoroughly, about 1 minute. Chill frosting in freezer for 20 minutes and then transfer to refrigerator until ready to frost cupcakes.

3. In a large bowl, combine cake mix, soda and egg whites; add pureed straberries and remaining drop of food coloring. Mix with electric mixer at medium-high speed until smooth, about 45 seconds. I used yellow cake mix because it was on hand, and left out the pink food coloring. This caused the batter to be a slightly unpleasant yellowish-brownish-pinkish color, tasted fine, but not so pretty looking.

4. Coat a 12 cup muffin pan with cooking spray or line with cupcake wrappers. Evenly spoon batter into prepared muffin pan.

5. Bake until firm, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely in pan. Once cool, remove cupcakes from pan and evenly spread with frosting. As I was decorating I noticed that the icing had tiny chunks in it where the cream cheese didn't incorporate into the cool whip all the way. I didn't like the way this looked, but as soon as I started topping each cake with sprinkles, not only did they look adorable, but I couldn't stop smiling! Oh, the magic of sprinkles.