dessert – Burpees to Bubbly

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you’ve had a great week. I feel like I’m battling the onset of a potential cold, but I’m trying to load up on Emergen-C and other things to nip it in the bud. We’ll see how it goes!

Anyway, I had to share this splurge-worthy dessert with you. Back in November, I hosted a Pampered Chef party as a way to get my friends together, while also growing my kitchen “inventory”. Having it before Christmas was an added bonus since most of my friends bought their family Christmas gifts! Not only did I get $140 of FREE stuff from the Pampered Chef catalog, I also got a free Trifle Bowl. When it came in, I have to admit that I thought it was a little silly; why would I waste space in my already limited cupboard space for something impractical like a Trifle Bowl? Well, my friends, I take those thoughts back! I can actually find a lot of uses for the Trifle Bowl, such as desserts, fruit & yogurt parfaits, layered dips and even a table centerpiece/vase.

For Christmas, though, I decided I would use the Trifle Bowl to make a layered dessert (they always look so pretty!).

What I love about Trifle Bowl desserts is that you don’t really need a recipe; just pick some ingredients that you want to layer with and get layering! I was running short on time, so I totally copped out and bought mini containers of pudding which works when you’re in a pinch, but I would’ve preferred to have made a big batch of pudding. Next time 🙂

Ingredients

1 Box of brownie mix- any kind you want. I chose one with peanut butter chips, which I wouldn’t do next time since it was too much crunch.
Pudding- either pre-made pudding containers or you could make 1 or 2 boxes of pudding per the directions on the back of the box. I chose fat-free/sugar-free to save on calories and you couldn’t even tell because there were so many other tastes going on!
1 big container of Cool Whip
Chocolate Chips and White Chocolate Chips

Directions

1. Bake the brownies according to the back of the box. If you are using box pudding mix, too, make that according to the directions on the back of the box.

2. Once everything is cooked, begin your layering! I did brownies, pudding (both vanilla and chocolate) and Cool Whip and then repeated that until I used everything up.

At the end, throw on some chocolate chips and white chocolate chips and voila! you have a quick, easy, delicious and pretty dessert to bring to a party 🙂

I got so many compliments on this dish and can’t wait to experiment more. I think for a brunch, I would do a fruit, yogurt and granola parfait in this- doesn’t that sound delicious? If you don’t have a Trifle Bowl, no worries- you can make this in any sort of big bowl/dish.

Questions for you: Do you have a Trifle Bowl? What is a dessert/appetizer/breakfast dish you would make in this? I need suggestions!

Hey B2B readers- Happy Friday! It would be a happier Friday for me if I wasn’t so sick 😦 On Monday, I started to get that “oh boy, I may be getting sick” feeling and sure enough, I was awake most of Monday night with post nasal drip and an itchy throat. From there, it turned to just a sore throat, to a sore throat with sinus pressure and now I have it all, including a cough that kept me up for 3 hours in the middle of the night last night! Needless to say, it’s not fun, especially since I was supposed to go to a going away party for one of my favorite Dynamax members at a fun bar in Southie that I’ve wanted to go to for ages! And, what was going to make the night even more fun was the fact that I DON’T have to teach tomorrow morning!! This is the first weekend in a while that I have totally off- no teaching, no traveling, nothing. It’s a great feeling, I just wish I felt better! I think my body just decided that since I have a relatively open weekend, it was a good time to get sick- makes sense, right? Who knows!

Anyway! This week has been much less busy than last week! I called my mom when I left work on Monday and said I wasn’t sure if I felt like going to the gym, but it turns out, I must have wanted to go because I went and had an awesome workout! Only 10 minutes of rowing cardio throughout the whole thing- the rest was all weight training-focused and I loved it! Tuesday I subbed for Athena’s class at the Oak Square YMCA; I was finally able to make it for a “two-a-day”, but I think that’s what got me more sick:( Wednesday I taught, but didn’t do much of the workout and yesterday I taught and only instructed in SHRED and taught the low-impact version of kickboxing.

After kickboxing, my friend Meaghan and I met for sushi at Yoki in Cambridge since it’s only a block from my gym. I thought about cancelling because I had no voice, but we were so long overdue for a sushi date that I decided to keep the plans. So glad I did! It’s always so nice to catch up with Meg, especially since she had so many fun wedding updates to share! Thanks for a fun night, Meg!

Something Weird is Going On…

So, as I said in my title- something really weird has been going on: I haven’t had dessert in over a week! I know, if you’re anyone who knows me and knows how much I LOVE sweets, you know that me going even a day with no dessert is unheard of! Now, I’m not saying I have a huge ice cream sundae every day, but I’ll have a few bites of a cookie after lunch and dinner and always a couple bites of ice cream at night.

Last week I had a weird stomach thing going on all week, so the thought of sweets created a huge aversion for me. This week, even though I don’t have stomach issues anymore, I still haven’t craved sweets and therefore, haven’t eaten them. And, you know what? I have survived!!! It’s so interesting because I always said that I could never give up sweets- like ever! But, it turns out, I never really NEEDED those sweets after every meal. I think it had turned into a habit, thus making me think I wasn’t satisfied until I had a bite of something sweet to finish off my meal.

With this being said, I am by no means “swearing off sweets”, I am just going to be more mindful of eating them. I think I’ve made it clear that I am not one for diets or restrictions or anything like that; I firmly believe in the saying “everything in moderation” when it comes to food. But, with that said, I never needed as many as I ate, so it actually feels good to not crave them all the time. I am a little nervous, though, because what if as soon as I have a bite of something sweet, I revert back to my crazy sweet-tooth ways?! Has anyone else ever gone through anything like this? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Questions for you: Have you heard of a lot of people getting sick this time of year? Have you ever given up food that has been hard for you to give up? Do you have a big sweet tooth?