Low fat … with coffee

Here’s one more Judy rerun this week, as she wraps up her yeshiva-break vacation.

Let’s face it, how many of us would like to limit the amount of fat in our diet? How many of us actually do?

Most of us groan at the thought of giving up the foods we love most, but the scale tells another story. Comedian Stephen Phillips said it best, “In the Middle Ages, they had guillotines, stretch racks, whips and chains. Nowadays, we have a much more effective torture device called the bathroom scale.”

As Julia Child said, “The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.” As well as “If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”

Ellen DeGeneres once quipped “Buns of Steel? The only buns I’m interested in are buns of cinnamon.”

Albert Einstein discovered that a tiny amount of mass is equal to a huge amount of energy. Humorist Dave Barry reminds us of this statement that Einstein himself so eloquently put it in a famous 1939 speech to the Physics Department at Princeton, “You have to exercise for a week to work off the thigh fat from a single Snickers.”

For years, when a client would ask me if my chocolate praline mousse cake or mile high lemon cloud “real whipped cream” cake could be made low fat my answer was simple, NO! Certain desserts just don’t work as well with reduced fat, but as I’ve learned through the years, there are many recipes that do very well with lower fat content.

Below are recipes for two relatively low fat, low calorie muffins. These just might do the trick for those yearning for that special treat with their morning coffee.

Low fat blueberry muffins

Approx. 130 calories and 4 grams of fat

Ingredients:

1-1/4 cups flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

4 tbsp butter

3/4 cup skimmed milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp grated lemon rind

1 cup fresh blueberries

 Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2. Place paper muffin cups into 12 cup muffin tin

3. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl.