The DIY Diet

I’d been paging through my many cookbooks looking for ideas for a light, delicious dessert to serve when my friend, Karen, and her husband joined me for supper. Like me, they are both on a calorie diet so I wanted to make something that kept our calorie count at a reasonable level.

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When I was growing up Christmas always meant my Aunt Sig and Uncle Chet would bring a box of meringue cookies when they came up north for the holiday.

I loved the sweet, melt-in-your-mouth treats. My favorite was the light green wreath shaped cookies with colorful sugar sprinkles on top. I’ve never tried making them but intend to do so next Christmas. I’d also never tried making meringue shells because I thought they’d be both very high in calories, because of the sugar, and difficult to make. I was wrong on both accounts.

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Even with me being on a diet, it wouldn’t be Christmas if I didn’t make many varieties of Christmas cookies to share with the family and friends I invite to my home during the holidays.

This year every cookie I’ve made thus far has been made from commercially-available refrigerated cookie dough. It’s much faster than making the cookie dough from scratch and I’ve come up with some simple ways to make the cookies special.

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When the Fall air turns crisp, I think of pumpkins and apples and food that is comforting.

The pumpkins I grew this year didn’t ripen properly, and though the shells were a lovely deep orange color, the interior flesh was very pale and immature-looking.

I had wanted to bake my own pumpkin filling. I bought Libby’s Pumpkin filling instead; it’s so much more convenient than baking my own and I know it was prepared at the proper stage of maturity.

I found this Pumpkin Dessert recipe in the Ostmark Lutheran Church 80th anniversary cookbook published in 1974 by this rural Watkins, Minnesota congregation of which my cousin is a member.

It’s a nice fall dessert perfect for the time between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

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Fresh fruit is always a good choice. When the best seasonal fruits are combined into a compote, the taste is divine, and it makes a wonderful side dish to most any main dish entrée. Here’s my favorite recipe for fruit salad.

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Kozy Shack brand products, a family-owned business, makes delicious flan, an egg custard with caramel sauce.

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The idea here is to use twice the quantity of strawberries than ice cream thereby keeping the calorie count low but the flavor satisfying, so sit back and enjoy the luxury of this sumptuous dessert.

You can use blueberries or peaches or nectarines varying the flavor of the ice cream with each fruit to make similarly satisfying sundaes at fewer than 200 calories. Use your imagination.

I also love the Blue Bunny Personals packaging. There are two 1/2-cup servings per package. Split the package in half and share it with a friend or save the other half for another day.

With the Personals-size packaging you can have several ice cream flavors in your freezer and don’t have to worry about ice crystals forming, as they tend to do in larger packages when you don’t eat the ice cream in short order.

Sure. I love the luscious variety of flavors that both Nestlés Ultimates and Pillsbury Big Deluxe refrigerated cookies offer but I don’t like the big calorie count. I also don’t want to feel deprived. So here’s what I do.

I cut the refrigerated individual cookie dough pieces in half. I roll them between my palms forming a ball, then press them gently onto a cookie sheet. I follow the manufacturer’s baking instructions except I set my timer for 1-2 minutes less baking time than is recommended. When the end of my estimated baking time is up I watch the cookies carefully and remove them from the oven the moment they are ready.

Using Nestlés Ultimates Turtle refrigerated dough, I end up with two dozen yummy cookies at 90 calories each. The Chocolate Chips and Chunks with Pecans dough makes into two dozen cookies at 95 calories each and the Triple Chocolate Decadence dough makes into two dozen cookies at 85 calories each. It’s the same with Pillsbury’s Big Deluxe cookies. Using the White Chocolate Macademia Nut refrigerated dough, I end up with two dozen delicious cookies at 100 calories each. The per cookie calorie count on the other varieties is similar.

I eat the cookie with a 4-ounce glass of skim milk (45 calories) and I’ve had a simple, sweet dessert for under 150 calories! When I’m baking, I usually bake several packages of the cookies and put most of them in the freezer. I never leave out more than six cookies at a time. I don’t want to be tempted. I make assorted bags of cookies usually six cookies to a bag. If I’m having a friend over for tea, I can quickly pull out a cookie assortment.