the purple carrot: Easter brunch, Icee Izze

Hey, all! Hope everyone had a great Easter full of celebration! Smile

We started our Easter at church, followed by a brunch full of delicious food! Erik and I, of course, contributed to that food. But first …

Ice Cream Maker, Meet Izze As I was reading through the ice cream maker recipes the other night, I saw icee recipes! Basically, you can use any drink that contains sugar (they suggested Kool-Aide and Pepsi, ha, and I think we all know I’m not going to use that).

Enter: Izze! Sweetened with fruit, and no added sugar, and considering how much I love Izze, it was the perfect choice.
Simply put the drink into the ice cream maker, turn it on, and let it spin for about 15 minutes.

It was so good!! I’m a kid at heart, and I’ve always been about the icy drinks, always. Easter Brunch

Now back to Easter. We had a brunch at church after service, and here’s what Erik and I contributed:

Thumbprint Cookies
I used a recipe from 101 Cookbooks. They ended up tasting really good, but the batter was too wet, and the cookies spread more than they should have while in the oven. Oh well!

I love the simplicity of ingredients in this recipe. I topped mine with no sugar added strawberry preserves. Cold Pasta Salad It contained basically onions, carrots, celery, grape tomatoes, local pepper jack cheese, olive oil, and red wine vinegar. Blueberry Lime Muffins
I didn’t know what to think of these at first but they’ve since grown on me. I think next time, I would add a little more lime juice, and use fresh blueberries instead of frozen (I only had frozen).

Ingredients:
-- 1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
-- 1 cup raw cane sugar
-- 2 teaspoons baking powder
-- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
-- 1/2 cup low fat sour cream
-- 1/3 cup coconut oil
-- 1 teaspoon lime zest
-- 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
-- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-- 2 large egg whites
-- 1 large egg
-- 6 ounces plain Greek yogurt
-- 1 cup blueberries

Directions:
-- Preheat oven at 350 degrees.
-- Mix together dry ingredients in large bowl, and the wet ingredients into a medium bowl. Add the wet mixture to the dry, and stir together.
-- Pour mixture into muffin pan, sprinkle blueberries evenly overtop, and bake for 25 minutes. I decided I really like lime/lemon flavors in baked goods. It always reminds me of my mom’s lemon poppy seed bread which I loved when I was little. What’s your favorite flavor or ingredient in baked goods??