Tag Archives: recipes

Adapting Recipes

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By Virginia Wright

Carrot Cake

Carrot Cake

Whatever your health goals are, adapting recipes, is a good place to start when wanting healthier versions. I’ll help you learn how to adapt recipes! For ten years I was a recipe developer on a low-fat recipe and health information website that I founded. I gained the name of “The Recipe Lady” while working there and I call myself– “Queen of Recipe Adaptation.” What I try to do in all my recipes is to change them up wherever I can to make them a healthier version. Many of the recipes that I created while a recipe developer, I will be bringing to my blog. They will be versions of recipes that I’ve adapted in some manner; cutting the sugar a little here, the bad fats a little there, cutting calories too!

How do you begin adapting recipes? You start by taking your favorite recipes and experimenting slowly, adapting them in small ways, such as in a cream cheese frosting recipe by substituting regular cream cheese for Neufchatel.

Example:  Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

If you want to make your favorite carrot cake and frost it with cream cheese frosting, here is an alternative recipe for the frosting. The original calls for confectioners’ sugar, regular  butter, whole milk, vanilla, and regular cream cheese:

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 box Confectioners’ Sugar

8 oz Neufchatel Cheese

4 Tbsp light margarine or Vegetable oil spread

2 tsp Pure Vanilla

4 Tbsp Fat-free milk, more or less

Cream non-hydrogenated margarine or Vegetable oil spread in large mixer bowl with Neufchatel cheese, add confectioners’ sugar alternately with milk, beat to spreading consistency ( an additional tbsp of milk may be needed, more or less, add a tbsp at a time until you reach the right consistency), blend in vanilla, mix well until frosting is a smooth consistency.

Savings in fat in the cheese alone…

1 serving Neufchatel Cheese    6 grams of fat

1 serving Cream Cheese   10 grams of fat

Tabulating results…

You save 4 grams of fat per 2 Tbsp serving

Then you will save more on saturated fat and cholesterol by using the Fat-free milk, you will save again using the light margarine or vegetable spread in place of butter.

Just Experiment with your recipes by adapting them.  Not all will turn out with the same texture or taste, but most of the time, the recipes won’t taste all that different than the original.  No palate death here!

Watch for the Carrot Cake recipe in upcoming postings…

Good Luck with your recipe! Visit often, to see what we are cooking up next!
-Virginia Wright

Author, Food Writer, Recipe Developer, Foodie & Queen of Recipe Adaptation

My Cookbook:  AYUH, ANOTHER DOWNEAST COOKBOOK: RECIPES FROM MAINE

© 2012 The Recipe Corner – Virginia Wright. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

– See more at: https://virginiawright.com/blog/?p=2011#sthash.eXcTSqMS.dpuf

The Recipe Corner

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Recipes @ The Recipe Corner

I’m so excited how the recipe corner is starting to shape up! It was suggested by fans that I start posting recipes on my writing blog instead of only on social media sites. Based on the requests, I am going to post recipes in a new section here on my blog, that I refer to as the recipe corner.                                                              (https://virginiawright.com/blog/recipes)

If you have a “Tried and True” recipe you would like to have posted at the recipe corner, send in the recipe to [info] [at] virginiawright [dot] com. In the subject area type: Recipe Submission. Please include your full name and the state you are from along with your recipe, adding that you give permission to post your recipe. All recipes are reviewed for consideration, and if your recipe is chosen, you will be notified when it is in the queue for posting.

-Virginia Wright, Author & Queen of Recipe Adaptation :-)

The Recipe Lady | @The Recipe Weekly

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Recipes @ the Recipe Corner

Hi, I’m the author of the children’s books The Princess and the Castle, The Prince and the Dragon, and my newest release “Crying Bear Yes Bears Cry Sometimes Too.” I’m also the author of the non-fiction book: Buzzzzzzzz What Honeybees Do. Buzzzzzzzz is available in Paperback and eBook;
and is a honeybee, beekeeping basics primer for children 4th-grade reading level to adult. I’m currently working on a number of writing projects and my latest release was a romance novel A Christmas to Remember.

Check out my cookbook Ayuh, Another Downeast Cookbook: Recipes From Maine

For ten years, before authoring my books, I was the Senior Writer for Lowfat Weekly, a website, I founded. (If you’ve read my other blogs, then you are familiar with a post that told about why I closed down that website). In brief, while working at Lowfat Weekly part of my job as a recipe developer, included adapting recipes to healthier Low-Fat versions. I LOVED that challenge! As a food blogger, I was known as “The Recipe Lady,” and I enjoyed interacting with our viewers, emails, chats, and such.  The problem I was having is that I didn’t want to only develop low-fat recipes, as it left no room for old-fashioned recipes that make you think of your “Mum and home.” I literally have hundreds of recipes that I’ve developed and adapted before Lowfat Weekly, during, and since working there. My recipes are made from ingredients that I already have in my cupboards, on hand– and trust you do too! They are mostly recipes that you will be familiar with, but in some cases, will be posted with “this cook’s” designer twist. These recipes are also some of “my family” favorites and will become yours too. You will find recipes on my blog that have been passed down from my mother, grandmothers, aunts, sister, friends, and friends of friends. All my recipes (most) are “quick and easy” to make including Old-Fashioned Heirloom Recipes, Low-Fat Recipes, Gluten-Free Recipes, Low Carbohydrate Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes, Italian Recipes, Fish and Seafood Recipes, Desserts, and more. In the search block, you can look up everything from dandelion green recipes to honey butter.

-Virginia Wright                                                                                                                           Queen of Recipe Adaptation

Please visit my blog often for recipes, and to see what I’m cooking up next…

These are my granddaughter’s Abigail and Elisabeth. They were visiting with their grammie, the recipe lady, and receiving a cooking lesson.

Cooking Lesson

Honey Butter Recipe the Whole Family Will Enjoy!

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My husband, a former beekeeper, one summer when we were beekeeping that we would be able to take off some honey from the hives. I was so, EXCITED, and geared up my taste buds for some of that long-awaited honey. I thought about what I would do with the first tastings of pure honey from the “Wright Family Farm,” and the family suggested homemade biscuits. So, I decided I would get my Honey Butter Recipe out and share it online, as it makes for a delicious topping on biscuits. There are all kinds of different recipes for Honey Butter, some call for raw egg, some call for confectioner’s sugar; some add cinnamon…such as mine does.

Experiment for yourself, and when possible, buy pure honey from a Natural Beekeeper that opts not to use chemicals in their beehives. When I talk about “Pure” honey, I’m talking about honey that corn syrup has not been added to it, to stretch the honey. I’m also talking about honey that is taken off a hive where the beekeeper doesn’t use any chemicals in the keeping of their bee colonies inside the hive. Yes, it is true, beekeeping is simple, but complicated– a hobby for some, a source of “money for honey” for others…

Click > SPICY HONEY BUTTER RECIPE

-Virginia Wright

Queen of Recipe Adaptation

A Book to Learn About HONEYBEES, HONEYBEE BASICS: 

BuzzzzzzzzWhat Honeybees Do by Virginia Wright

© Virginia Wright

New Year, Hope, New Beginnings, and Chances…

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With the new year, for some, it brings distress thinking about being another year older. For me, it brings promise of hope, new beginnings, chances, and a blessing of yet another year.

For those who are new followers, before I began writing children’s books, I was writer, and senior editor for ten years for an online health and recipe website named “Lowfat Weekly,” that I founded. I loved, loved, loved, writing about health issues and the challenge of adapting recipes to healthier versions. But while I always warned, for folks to go to their primary care physicians with health issues– I still received questions about health issues. People sharing their ills, trials, and hopelessness. I answered every email, but was very cautious to never give any medical advice. However, I started receiving emails that made me feel that I was being tested, seeing if I would break that boundary. With much thought and decision after ten years of writing health articles and designing good food in the test kitchen to make healthier alternative recipes…I closed the door on Lowfat Weekly.

But from the time I was a little girl, I loved writing. I wrote my mom poems, and whenever I wanted to say “anything,” I put it in a note.

There is more to this story, but for now…I shall end saying please look to the New Year for a new beginning, and never give up your hopes, or dreams.

-Virginia