Holiday Baking

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Truvia® Natural Sweetener for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Lately, I and the daughter have been doing a lot of work in the kitchen. It started when I told her that she is my kitchen helper. She loved the idea. We started with baking ready to bake goodies like cakes and cookies until it became not just a bonding time with mom and daughter but on special occasions my daughter wants to bring some to any family gathering we go to. We have been baking so often now that it worries me about our calories and sugar intake. Of course, this is because we don’t just bake but we eat what we bake too.

So I searched for recipes with fewer calories and less sugar and the found this recipe:

Brownies with Truvia® Natural Sweetener

Ingredients:

3 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate

¼ cup cup unsalted butter

¼ cup canola oil

2 large eggs

3 ½ TB Truvia® natural sweetener spoonable

¼ cup white granulated sugar

½ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 TB skim milk

¾ cup all-purpose flour

½ tsp baking powder

 

Directions: Mix all the ingredients while you preheat the oven to 325 Fahrenheit. Place baking chocolate, butter and canola oil in a large microwavable bowl. Heat for 30 seconds and stir. Repeat and stir to melt the chocolate. Whisk together the eggs, Truvia® natural sweetener, sugar, salt, vanilla and milk in a separate small bowl. Add the egg mixture to the chocolate mixture and stir. After sifting the all-purpose flour, fold it into the chocolate mixture using a rubber scraper. Do not over mix. Pour batter into a square pan and bake for 22-25 minutes. Do not over bake. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack for at least 20 minutes.

Truvia® Baking Blend, designed for easy, at-home baking, is a blend of Truvia® natural sweetener and sugar. It provides sugar-like taste and texture in recipes but with 75% fewer calories and twice the amount of sweetness than sugar. Only 1.5 pound bag of Truvia® Baking Blend has the equivalent sweetness of 3 pounds of sugar, which is approximately 7 cups, enough to make 13 pies, 9 batches of cookies or batches of brownies. You can buy them at retail stores nationwide in a 1.5 pound bag with a closeable, easy to use pout spout.

Now that I have shared with this brownies recipe, do you have your own to share and we can re-create it by using Truvia®. I would appreciate it if you can leave a comment on my blog.

For more information and recipes, please Visit the Truvia® website for more tips and information on Truvia® Baking Blend.

 

Giftcard.com

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of GiftCard.com for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

 

After my last year's holiday shopping experience, I am revising my traditional gift ideas into something that will be more convenient for me in terms of buying gifts for family members, friends and especially for the kids. For the holiday season, I usually shop for two families, two close friends, one step daughter and of course my husband and Isabella. I am counting a total of fifteen Christmas presents all together.

Still shopping until Christmas Eve last year was not fun at all. Thank God for good friends who volunteered to pick up my food orders otherwise I would not be able to make it on time for Christmas dinner. This year, I found a solution to my problem. I want a stress free, no traffic and relaxing Christmas shopping. I will be buying all my presents at GiftCard.com, the largest online store for hundreds of brands of gift cards. It is a one-stop shop for gift cards like Zappos, Callaway, Foot Locker, Visa, Best Buy, Target, Lowes, Old Navy, Toy R Us, Outback and more. For sure, I would get the Toys R Us and Best Buy for kids and Outlook for the husbands and wives. You have the option if you want your gift cards delivered by mail or sent as e-gift cards. The feature I really like at Giftcard.com is they can personalize a gift card for you which to me is something so cool. A simple personal touch on the gift card makes it more meaningful to give this Holiday season.

I will definitely promote Giftcard.com to my friends. Please check them out at Giftcard.com and try them too. Let me know which one if your favorite gift card and would you personalize it too? Also, Giftcard.com is now on Twitter. Do not for get to follow them at @GiftCardLab. Happy shopping.

The Boss Is Out

It is a quiet day at the office today. Our boss went to another branch to interview applicants sent by the employment agency. That is an old branch but it has been revamp since the branch manager retired at the beginning of this year.  They need seasonal drivers that will service the Philadelphia area. I do not know what made my boss went down there to personally meet the applicants. He has not done this with the previous ones.

Some of these temp hires get lucky when they are eventually absorbed by the company they work with. Our receptionist for one, she got a permanent position after working for six months with the temp. My boss liked her performance so he offered her the job. She was so happy because she is a working student and at my job, they are more flexible with your hours when you have to do something for school.
Everybody is aware that she is not staying for good. Once she is done with school, she will be looking for a job in line with the course she is taking. As long as she gives sufficient time for us to get a replacement, it is fine.

At Chipotle

It was our first time to try Chipotle until one day a new branch was opened nearby. We stopped by and tried it. And, we really really like it. The set up is not new because we frequent Qdoba and another Mexican restaurant which I cannot remember the name right now. I ordered the burrito bowl which filled me up, hubby had the chicken quesadilla and daughter one of the kids meals. Now we know why a lot of people go to chipotle. We are one of them now.

A Day Off and A Lunch

My husband took a day off today to do some work in our house (change the lights to energy saving induction lamps) and go to motor vehicles for the car inspection. I know that the last day of the month is still on Saturday but since we already learned our lesson from the past, we will never do our car inspection on the last day of the month anymore.  Other than the car inspection, he also has to go to the town center to get a street parking sticker for the new car before we get ticketed by doing overnight parking on the street. If our drive way can only fit two cars at a time, we don’t have to get this sticker anymore.

On a day like this, we normally have lunch together. During lunch break, hubby came to my job  and he brought me to this nice outdoor restaurant for lunch. It is located on the hilly side of town, overlooking NYC with tables on the patio.  It was a little breezy but we still took one of the tables outside the restaurant. I had a soup and salad while hubby had lobster pizza. The food was delicious was great. We stayed a little longer for coffee until it was time for me to go back to work. It was really a perfect day to have an outdoor lunch together.

Veggies From Neighbor

These are fresh vegetables from our neighbor. This is the second batch this summer. He always invites us to his house and do the harvest ourselves. My daughter had fun especially cutting the ampalaya and okras. One of her favorites is tortang eggplant. Me and hubby love the ampalaya with egg or cook it with sardinas. lol. 

Let Us Pray for Philippines

If you are a Filipino, you probably heard about what happened in the Philippines two days ago.  Another storm struck the country again, bringing non-stop deadly rains in Metro Manila and neighboring provinces since Monday. It was raining for almost two days and they were saying that the amount of rain that fell is more than what Ondoy (another storm) brought in 2009. Classes, work and even trading has been suspended due to neck-deep waters on roadways. The water submerged cars and houses forcing thousands of people to flee their homes for safety.

I have been glued on TV watching the live telecast of news from my hometown. The rescue operations were being fed via satellite, and you can see that they do not have the necessary equipments for these emergencies. You see people on the roofs shivering while waiting for somebody to get them. The hospitals were running out of gas for their emergency generators. The evacuation centers are all getting filled up with not enough bathrooms or shelters for those affected by the flood. They are saying that help is on its way but do they have enough resources to do so?

All we can do is pray for everybody’s safety and that the rain will stop. The death toll rises every day and the damage left behind is not yet accounted for. A lot of infrastructures were damaged. Hope the Philippines can get back in due time and life be again normal to a lot of people.