Cake Batter Protein Shake Recipe

I used to be a manager at Gold's Gym and while I worked there I got addicted to their protein shakes.  They have a huge smoothie bar with tons of flavors- how could I not?  There's a little secret though.  Most of their recipes aren't that great for you.  The Carb Cutter which only comes in Vanilla or Chocolate is the best option, since it's just the protein mix BUT sugar free chocolate or vanilla syrup is always added & blended.  If you've ever had just a straight protein powder & water mix you probably know why.  The rest of the flavorings are full of sugar and even worse for you (lots of berry, tropical fruit, etc flavor offerings) but all of those generally start with a vanilla protein powder base.

Bearing that in mind, and wanting to add more protein to my pregnancy diet, I pulled out my container of vanilla Muscle Milk.  I had tried mixing it with greek yogurt and chocolate PB2 in the past and was not impressed, so here goes round two.

I wanted something sweet and thanks to a milkshake I saw (but didn't drink! le sigh) I decided to try out a cake batter flavor.  Now, when I make chocolate chip cookies, I follow the Nestle Toll House recipe BUT I add a box of Jell-O Instant Vanilla Pudding Mix and the cookies come out chewy and mouth watering.  I thought maybe this pudding mix could help me here.  My mom is a professional cake maker and her frosting (which everyone RAVES about- my 3 year old refuses to eat a cake with store bought!) has butter extract, so I also grabbed that.

If you want more protein or a thicker smoothie/milkshake texture I would try adding greek yogurt.  I hate greek yogurt and couldn't even drink a smoothing with it hiding under Chocolate PB2, so I didn't try.  If you like it I bet it would be great though!  I like thinner smoothies.  My husband adds normal yogurt to fruit smoothies and it feels like drinking snot to me.  To each their own!

Ingredients
1 scoop of vanilla protein powder- I use vanilla Muscle Milk
1/2 teaspoon imitation butter extract
1 tablespoon sugar free Jell-O Vanilla Instant Pudding
1 cup water
2 cups ice cubes
Sprinkles to garnish

Method
This is kind of important unless you've splurged on a Vitamix blender or something.  Add water first.  If you add the protein powder first it tends to clump up cheaper blender blades.  Even at Gold's with our giant commercial blender, we do it this way.  After water I added powder, ice, butter extract, pudding mix, and then blended it all up for about 30 seconds.  Pour into glass and sprinkle some sprinkles on top if you want!

Results
I.love.it.  I'm drinking one now.  I am diabetic and pregnant and struggle to get enough protein, especially since meat kind of turns my stomach right now.

Nutrition
I am not a nutritionist.  I have two college degrees and neither are in nutrition.  This may not be exact, but my best guess will have to suffice.

1 scoop of muscle milk, if mixed with water, is 100 calories, 6g carbs, 12g protein.  1 serving of Jell-O Sugar Free Instant Vanilla Pudding Mix is 80 calories- I MAYBE used 1/8 of that.  The bag I bought says it has 4 servings, I used 1 tablespoon of that and it still looks mostly full.  At worst I'd say you're looking at 110 calories unless you overload on the sprinkles.  Double your Muscle Milk to 2 scoops and you get 210 calories, 25g protein and 13g carbs.

Chocolate version coming up soon! :)

DIY Fruit Snacks

Between my son and my husband we go through a LOT of fruit snacks.  I'm lucky if a 42-pouch box lasts us a week!  If any other kids are here, forget it, I'm lucky if I get 4 days.

I've always wondered if I could make them- thanks to Pinterest I've made a LOT of stuff I used to buy from food to cleaning products and more (check my archives), so today I gave it a shot.

I modified a recipe I found online, so here's what I did-

1/2 cup water
3 .25oz packs of unflavored gelatin
1 pack of jell-o mix (raspberry, in this case)

Add all 3 to a pot or sauce pan and set heat to medium.  Stir until all of the gelatin and jello mix are fully mixed.

Pour into your mold and let it set.  This made EXACTLY enough to fill this mold of mine.  I did 20 minutes on the counter, and when it was still too sticky and un-solid, I put it in the fridge for another 10.  Bingo.

I needed a small paring knife to get the snacks out.  I just ran it along the 4 edges of each square (really, it didn't take that long) and then popped the square out.

One thing I noticed is they still felt kind of sticky, so I sprinkled a very, very, very light dusting of powdered sugar over them and shook them up.  Now they felt perfect!

They passed the taste test here!  I happened to have saved a bunch of Gerber plastic baby food containers which are great little portion sized storage containers for these.  They do not need to be refrigerated.

Happy eating!  Now, I'm off for a manicure, sorely needed if you can't tell...