On Desserts

My husband loves Klondike Bars, Reese's Klondike Bars, to be exact.  Recently, though, as a part of my on-going effort to be healthy, frugal and green, I decided to start making more of my own desserts, hoping both to save some money and to satisfy my sweetie's sweet-tooth with a little more nutritional value.  I've always loved baking, anyway, and this is the time of my life when I have the most time!

So, we started with shoo-fly pie from More with Less.  Its virtue lay in its molasses and brown sugar instead of white.  But I knew that it would probably taste funny to someone who wasn't used to it, and it did.

The next week was gingerbread, pictured above.  I chose the recipe in Joy of Cooking because of its large molasses-white sugar ratio.  It rose beautifully tall, but even I thought it wasn't very sweet.  With warm vanilla cream sauce, it was delightful, but it was just no substitute for a Reese's Klondike Bar to John.

Blueberry-lemon bread pudding was next, serving as a use for a loaf of stale bread in my freezer and a way to get so-healthy blueberries into my husband.  (I plan to share the recipe for this soon!)  Once again, I thought it was delightful and John thought it was weird.

[These "failures" have come to mean that I'll chip away at the home-made dessert for about a week unless we've had company!  At least I'm not eating the Klondike Bars!]

In the mean-time, I've made a peanut-butter pie, which John liked, and a lemon meringue pie, which he would choose over a Klondike Bar any day!  But neither of them is particularly healthy in my mind.  The quest continues . . .