Kari's Awesome Waffles Recipe

Lately, I have been trying to eat healthy and try new recipes and all that kind of stuff. And with Steve's new iPhone and the crashing of our computers, I have gotten to put new apps on his phone. One of my favorites is Spark recipes (which has a website too), and it is mostly healthy recipes. I used two recipes that I liked to make my own recipe and then made some other adjustments too. The ones I used were Grandma's Awful Waffles and Honey Flaxseed Whole Wheat Applesauce Waffles. I liked the base of the Grandma ones, but I also liked the idea of adding in Flaxseed meal for some extra fiber, and applesauce instead of using butter or oil. And then I added some personal things like extra cinnamon and vanilla! The first time I made it I only measured some things, and then afterwards decided to write a recipe for it, so the next time I made them I followed my recipe amounts exactly to make sure it tasted alright and that my guesses for amounts were okay. Such as the first time after my first waffle I decided it needed sugar, so I just threw in a handful of sugar, not really a good measurement for telling other people how to make it. Anyways, we love it, they are very filling, and they are going to my standard waffle recipe, they aren't boring like other waffles. Here is my recipe.

Kari's Awesome Waffles
Yield 7 waffles (7 being both sides of the waffle iron, or 14 square ones if you want to count it that way)

2 cups whole wheat flour (or any combo of flour you have, last time I ran out of whole wheat and had to use white)
3 tsp baking powder
1/8 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
2 eggs
1 3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup applesauce
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup blueberries
1 cup chopped walnuts

Mix all dry ingredients (except nuts), make a well in the middle for wet ones to go into. In seperate bowl beat eggs, add milk. Pour into well in dry ingredients and mix well. Stir until smooth, also add the applesauce now. Stir in blueberries and walnuts. Use with waffle iron or as pancakes.

When I made these I used the Del Monte fruit Naturals blueberries that are in little plastic containers in juice in the salad section at the grocery store. I saved the juice from them and used it with mapleine to make fruit syrup. Just use the juice to replace the water in the recipe and follow the direction on the box for the quick method. It was really yummy though I was scared to taste it at first because it smelled like cough syrup!
Another note- it may sound like a lot of cinnamon and vanilla, but we love both of these in our family, and the cinnamon gives it some great flavor, if you are scared to use that much, then don't, you are the one eating, it needs to be to your liking too!

Mini cheesecakes- Oreo Cookies 'N Cream

So I decided I wanted to make cheesecake and found this post of a recipe from Martha Stewart. But I didn't have sour cream, so I searched for other cupcake cheesecakes, and found these terrific recipes for mini cupcakes.
But they weren't quite what I wanted, so I combined them and made my own recipe. This is what I came up with:

Kari's Oreo Cookies N' Cream Mini Cheesecakes

Ingredients:

2 8 oz packages of cream cheese room temperature (I actually used Neufchatel because it is 1/3 the fat and tastes just as good)
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp lemon juice
12 oreos smashed up (I put them in a sandwich bag and beat them with a Lincoln Log)
1/2 cup? chocolate chips (I didn't actually measure, I just dumped the rest of the ones from my almost bag into the bowl
18 whole oreos for cheesecake bottoms


1. Using hand mixer on medium-high speed mix cream cheese and sugar
2. Add eggs, vanilla and lemon juice- mix some more.
3. Stir in crushed oreos and chocolate chips. (The recipes all specified stirring them in by hand, but honestly, I used my mixer and it turned out fine, just don't tell the recipe people

4.*This is the point when I preheat the oven to 275 degrees because I am a little slow, if you are amazing fast you can do it at the beginning, but I am so slow it preheats and then I am normally still mixing for like 10 minutes after it's hot!
5. Put cupcake liners in muffin pan.
6. Place a whole oreo (filling and all) into the cupcake liner, center if possible.
7. Add cream cheese mixture on top of the oreos- I used an ice cream scoop and it worked perfectly, no drips even, and one scoop was the perfect size to fill each cupcake! Go ahead and fill them almost to the top, the cheesecake actually settles a little while cooking, so it's not going to overflow if you go to the top.

8.Put your pan in the oven, wait about 20 minutes until the filling has set and is no longer jiggly, then remove.

9. Put in fridge for 3-4 hours trust me on this one- you want them to be chilled before you eat them or they DO NOT taste as good!
10. ENJOY!

If you look at that last picture you can see the row in the middle is a lighter color- those were my first batch in the oven that I cooked on 275 for 22 minutes- Different recipes gave different times- the browner ones were done on 375, unfortunately I just found out I burnt the bottoms of these ones, so you could go for the middle and take the advice of the recipe that said 325 for 20 minutes. I just tasted the first batch ones- the pasty whites at 275, and they taste delicious and the middle is a little more moist and gooey- this one is just a matter of preference but I will stick with the 275 when I make them again, that Martha really knows what she is talking about!

One of the recipes also suggested keeping the cheesecakes in the pan while they cooled and then keep them in there to chill, I took mine out so I could use my pan again- I think the main benefits to keeping them in the pan is so they hold their shape slightly better and so you can cover them if you want- important if you need to clean your fridge- but if your fridge is funky-smell free, then covering them shouldn't be necessary.