This is currently day two of my sugar and dairy cleanse.

It’s tough, I’m not going to lie. This was my first real meal and it was…good. The pancakes are great, they aren’t soft and fluffy but they are dense and hearty, they have that nice whole wheat flavor and leave you feeling good. The peanut butter though…I wish I didn’t put that on the pancakes. It is unsweetened, natural peanut butter and it is absolutely disgusting. I’m not a big fan of peanut butter to begin with, unless it’s loaded up with sugar, so I don’t know what made me think that I’d like it this way. If you like unsweetened peanut butter or just want to add regular peanut butter, go for it, it’ll make these pancakes even better!

On top of that, I don’t really like bananas either. I should have started off slower, but I haven’t given up yet and I’m doing much better! Now, more about these pancakes.
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I don’t know if the title scared you.

It’s scaring me a little.

No sugar AND no dairy for a week? This is going to be tough…or really easy and I’m exaggerating…but I think it’ll be tough.

Since starting this blog I’ve been baking A LOT and it is great. I’ve been learning a ton about baking, different kinds of foods, techniques, and much more, however..I’ve also gotten a bit of a sugar dependency.

I have these really intense sugar cravings. They need to stop. I need to go cold turkey on sugar for a little bit so I can get myself back to normal.

I was inspired by Joy The Baker’s juice cleanse. Sadly, I can’t afford to do a juice cleanse, so I’m just cutting out sugar and dairy.

I consume a lot of dairy, I always have, and yes…dairy is healthy..but I drink too much milk and not enough water, I need to balance out better.

I need your help though. I still need to bake! For my sanity and for you guys. I just don’t have any sugar and dairy free recipes. Please leave suggestions in the comments below (if it’s a link, it might not show up right away but I will get it) or email me at ryansbakingblog@gmail.com

Any kind of recipes are great, from cakes to candy and beyond!

Please include the recipe source or if it’s your recipe, please tell me how you would like to be credited!

I’ll probably only use two recipes (since I’ve been doing three posts a week, and I have another post planned for next week!) but I’ll keep the rest saved and probably use them over time!!

Thank you guys so much!! Let’s hope I don’t break down and end up chugging a red velvet cake shake by day two.

I thought meringues would be harder to make, honestly. I’ve heard some sad stories about sticky meringues and things just not working out, but these were surprisingly easy. Maybe because it isn’t humid at all and there wasn’t much moisture in the air so everything worked in my favor.

These meringues have a subtle brown sugar flavor and are light as air, they are crisp but almost melt in your mouth. They also only require three ingredients: egg whites, brown sugar, and salt.
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As a kid, I loved brown bread. It’s prominent in New England, which is where my dad is from, and he would order a few cans a couple times a year and when we would go up to visit his side of the family we would buy some to bring home.

It’s a dark bread made with whole wheat flour and molasses, it tastes great spread with cream cheese or butter or it can be turned into a sandwich. It comes in a can pre-baked and can be eaten right away or warmed up or toasted. I prefer it slightly warm.
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I don’t read Harry Potter, I read the first four books when they came out but lost interest. I’ve also only seen the first movie. I’m not sure why, I’m just not that interested in it. These cupcakes, however, are based off of “butterbeer”, which is a drink served in the Harry Potter series. In the fictional world it has a small alcohol content, but in the real world it doesn’t have any alcohol (and neither do these cupcakes).

Basically, this is a straight up butterscotch cupcake. The cake itself is butterscotch, filled with a butterscotch ganache, and topped with butterscotch buttercream, and then a butterscotch ganache drizzle on top.

I love butterscotch. I’ve included it in blondies, cookies, and even a butterscotch cream pudding so these cupcakes are like a shrine to one of my favorite flavors.
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I was conflicted about these: should I call them truffles or cake balls? They are balls of cake, sure, but when I think of cake balls I think coated in chocolate or some other kind of candy coating, and these are coated in a mixture of powdered sugar and cocoa powder, like chocolate truffles.

I decided to go with chocolate cake truffles.

This isn’t so much a recipe as something you can do with leftover cake and frosting (from things like leveling a cake, leftover cake, if you break a cake because part of it gets stuck in the pan, etc) or you could just bake a cake solely to make these.
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For Valentine’s Day I thought I’d spread some cupcake love to tons of people. I baked up two batches of mini cupcakes, one chocolate and one red velvet, and topped them with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

I just wanted to make a quick post to show off the cupcakes and also give quick links to the recipes again. For the chocolate, it was originally a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, and it was super moist (a little too moist to be a cupcake I think, it makes a PERFECT cake but I’ll stick to this recipe for cupcakes).

The red velvets were just miniature versions of this these, which are my favorite red velvets, I refuse to even try any other recipe because I’m convinced they do not get better than this.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Hope you have a good one!

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, I knew I had to make some red velvet. I just made Valentine’s Day Funetti Cupcakes and already have an amazing Red Velvet Cupcake recipe so I did some digging through my bookmarks and some scrounging around on some other food blogs and found red velvet doughnuts.
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Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and I really wanted to put up a couple recipes to celebrate. I already have a great red velvet cupcake recipe up on the blog that I’m too in love with to experiment with new recipes, I really think that is the best one. However, I’m always up to try new vanilla recipes (since it’s my favorite flavor) and I wanted to be a little bit more festive so I tossed some Valentine’s Day heart sprinkles into the batter.

I really hate box mixes but I love the idea of funfetti, so I did some hunting and found a from-scratch recipe that I adapted using the appropriate sprinkles. You could vary this for all the holidays, using black and orange sprinkles for Halloween or rainbow for birthdays or any variation you can think of.
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Tofu might not be what you were expecting to see on the blog today but go with me on this. I said in my lasagna post that I wanted to start cooking more and posting some cooking recipes (still dominated by baked goods, don’t worry) so I thought I’d share one of my favorite foods with you: barbecue tofu.

A lot of people tell me tofu weirds them out, the consistency and the taste, but I don’t really get it. To me it’s like a firm marshmallow that you can flavor into almost anything. In this case it’s cooked and drenched in a barbecue sauce mixture. It makes a great side dish or even main course, I used to buy it at Whole Foods from the buffer with some vegan meatloaf: my favorite dinner combination ever. I have yet to make my own vegetarian/vegan meatloaf, but when I do I’ll give you guys the recipe!
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