Baked Long Johns

I don't know about you, but as soon as I start a diet, I then immediately start craving anything and everything unhealthy... specifically pizza and donuts. Call me crazy, but I love a good, fresh Hot and Ready Pizza from Little Caesars and I could easily down a donut as dessert. I warn Cody that if I ever go off the deep end, I could go crazy eating donuts!

Imagine my surprise when I got in the latest edition of my Healthy Cooking magazine and found a recipe for glazed long johns! Now, from what I imagine at the grocery store, a long john has that pudding filling in the middle, which is NOT my idea of the perfect donut. I thoroughly read the recipe and was so happy to find that there was no filling in sight, so I knew this would be the next recipe I tackled for my New Year's Resolution!

Here's the recipe:

2 C. all-purpose flour
1/2 C. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 eggs
3/4 C. FF milk
1 tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Glaze
3/4 C. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 tbsp. butter
4 1/2 tsp. FF milk

In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, butter and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.

Transfer to eight 4-1/2 in x 2-1/2 x 1-1/2 loaf pans coated with cooking spray. Bake at 325 for 18-22 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately remove from pans to a wire rack to cool completely.

In a microwave, melt chocolate chips and butter. Add milk; stir until smooth. Dip tops of doughnuts in glaze. Return to wire rack; let stand until set.

{1 long john equals 291 calories)

Here's the real deal on how this went down: My mini loaf pans were in the freezer housing chicken stock, which obviously made it difficult for me to cook the long johns in them. So I used muffin pan and make sure that I made 16 muffins so I would know how many calories 2 muffins were.

As the muffins were baking and I went to make the glaze, I realized that I did not have mini choc. chips in my freezer like I thought {note to self: always make sure you have the items for a recipe!!} I then tried to use mini- m&m's in place of the choc. chips... and yeah, that did not work out at all!

After throwing away a burned chocolate mess, I made a simple powdered sugar glaze to dip the muffins in. Even though these look *nothing* like what the magazine picture, they still turned out really great. They certainly aren't an exact match for a donut, but it's a pretty great alternative when you want something sweet without ruining your diet!