Recipe: Lightened Up Rainbow Baked Cheesecakes (Gluten Free!)

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It's my birthWEEK! AKA: My birthday is on Friday so I get to make delicious cakes and treats all week long and no one can question me.

I really love birthdays. Planning the perfect gift, baking a tailored cake, working out the perfect way to celebrate, spoiling the birthday person with love.... but when it comes to my birthday? I'm not so keen. 

You see, I am incredibly lucky and have everything I need and want - so when it comes to my birthday? All I care about is cake. 

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I was talking about birthday cakes with a friend a couple of months back when she told me that her daughter really wanted a cheesecake for her birthday... but Emily just didn't know how to make a cheesecake look festive. 

"They're beige, Kristy.... she's turning six. How do I convince her to just go with a cute character cake or even cupcakes?" she asked me. 

But if a girl wants cheesecake, she wants cheesecake - and I have to say I agree with little A that cheesecakes are ridiculously delicious.... so I put my thinking cap on. 

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And thus, these cheesecakes were born. Rainbow Tie Dye Baked Cheesecakes (also known as Unicorn Cheesecakes in our house). They're super simple and turn cheesecake from something beige into something seriously fun.

And that's what birthdays should be all about, right? Turning a regularly beige day into something awesome - and of course it should involve some kind of cake too! 

So let me share the recipe with you! >> 

Recipe: Lightened Up "Fairy Bread" Cake

I think one thing every Australian kid thinks about when they think of a kid's party is fairy bread - so naturally, when I was thinking up ideas of what to make for our Australia Day get together this year, my mind went straight to this Aussie party treat!

But I didn't want to make normal fairy bread. Forget boring old white bread, slathered with butter and liberally covered with sprinkles - I wanted something bigger and better.

I wanted a Fairy Bread Cake!

But in true Kristy style, I didn't just want any cake. I wanted to create a Fairy Bread Cake which was absolutely delicious but also healthier, lower in fat and sugar and gluten free. I like to make things easy for myself, can't you see ;P 

So I set to work on creating exactly that. 

What I came up with was the most incredible cake that the entire SIL family became instantly obsessed with. And when I say entire I mean even my fussy sister who "hates cake" and usually won't even try a single bite asked me if I'd make this cake as her birthday cake from here on out because she loved it. 

The only thing wrong with the whole family loving said cake? Less cake for me! :P 

With a fluffy, butter cake base and buttercream frosting topped with sprinkles - you would never guess this cake was healthier in the slightest - and that's what makes it so awesome.

You can have your cake and eat it too, without a speck of guilt as it's lower fat, lower sugar, gluten free and whipped up in minutes. 

Best of all, this Healthier Butter Cake Recipe is the perfect base for any kind of cake - so you can use it for birthday after birthday and celebration after celebration; whether it's topped with pink princess-y decorations or chocolate fudge frosting and dinosaurs. 

So let me give you the recipe so that you can make it yourself! >> 

Recipe: Coffee Cheesecake with a Chocolate Cookie Base

I'm the baker of the family. That means I'm always the one in charge of making something special for everyone's birthday - and it also means I'm the one in charge of making my own birthday cake. 

Some might think that's a bad thing - but for me, it's an incredible opportunity. It means I can experiment with whatever I feel like on my birthday. It's my birthday today and I made the best birthday cake ever so I had to share it with you right away! 

This year, my birthday kind of snuck up on me. In the last week I've been trying to think of what cake I wanted for my birthday - but I just couldn't decide... 

Then I realised: I didn't want cake. 

But that didn't mean I didn't want a birthday dessert. First I wanted cookies... then I wanted cheesecake... but then I got stuck on a coffee kick in the last week and all I could think about was coffee.... and chocolate... ohhhh chocolate always wins.... and cheesecake... hmm... 

Then yesterday, it hit me.... A coffee cheesecake with a chocolate cookie base. 

So I set to work. Yesterday afternoon I started with the cookie base, making a chocolate version of our favourite Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe and baking the cookie dough straight into the bottom of my cheesecake tins. Then I tweaked our Healthy New York Baked Cheesecake Recipe and turned it into an incredible coffee cheesecake and poured that on top to bake once more. 

I anxiously waited for it to chill and last night I tried my first one. Hellllllllllllllo heaven. Seriously, ridiculously, good. So good that you need to make this ASAP - and so good that I'll be making this recipe again on Saturday for my birthday party!  

So let me give you the recipe! >> 

How to Host Your Own Healthy Brunch Party! (with recipes!)

 I loveeeeeeeeee breakfast foods and I love entertaining - so it's only natural that I came up with the idea to host a Healthy Brunch Party! I wanted to create a menu that was healthy and gluten free but still absolutely delicious - and the whole brunch party idea is totally adaptable to suit a wide variety of food needs. 

As soon as I decided to host a brunch party, I knew what I had to have. After the success of our DIY Healthy Icecream Sundae Party, I knew I wanted to created a Yogurt Parfait Bar for our Brunch Party. 

These gorgeous Swish Plastic Martini Glasses ($6.95 each at Kitchenware Direct) made our parfait bar a little bit fancy - but totally kid friendly (and klutz friendly) too as they're made from unbreakable polycarbonate (and they're even scratch resistant!).

Then we needed our toppings!

I used a bunch of different sized square bowls to hold our yogurts and toppings with spoons and forks for easy topping! You can use whatever yogurts and toppings you like or have available. 

First we had our fresh fruits - juicy blueberries, watermelon chunks and sliced bananas. These are the last things you want to prepare (especially the banana) so your fruit stays nice and fresh. The watermelon and blueberries can be prepared in advance, but don't slice your banana until the very last minute or you'll have a brown soggy mess. 

For a little bit of crunch and a flavour boost we had shredded coconut and gluten free blueberry granola (Freedom Foods Crunchola - NOTE: this is no longer gluten free).

For our yogurt bases we had low fat vanilla yogurt and low fat plain greek yogurt.

And of course, regardless of how organised I am, I always forget something until the very last minute - this time it was some "sprinkles" - we also had chia seeds and cinnamon for adding that final touch to the yogurt parfaits. 

Just so everyone knew what they were putting in their parfaits, we had these gorgeous Limoncello Styling Tags ($4.95/12 pack). Holding them in place took some thought power - for the raised tags, we attached them to bamboo skewers which we stuck into tiny tea light candles placed behind each bowl. The ones at the front we simply stuck on with blu-tack. 

And what's a brunch party without muffins?! We went with two types of muffins for our brunch party - our favourite Buckwheat Banana Muffins (click for recipe)  and Mango Yogurt Muffins. 

Our muffins were piled up onto these gorgeous footed comports ($14.95 for the smaller one and $19.95 for the larger one) which I know a couple of our friends wanted to take home with them :P I'm a big fan of footed things at the moment - bowls, mugs, cake stands - you name it!

The mango yogurt muffins tasted incredible and I'm kind of addicted to them - but they're a little bit ugly so I think they might need some work. That said, if anyone wants the recipe, let me know and I may have to share them - just as long as you don't judge a book by its cover ;) 

Even though I like sweet breakfasts, I know that not everyone does - so we had to have a savoury stand too! Which is this 3 Tiered Cake Stand ($39.95)

On our savoury stand, we had; 

• Our Healthy Spinach and Ricotta Frittatas made in mini muffin pans 
• Our Healthy Crispy Potato Cakes which we doubled the recipe for and used half regular potato, half sweet potato and baked them in mini muffin tins. 
• Our Healthy Mini Sweet Potato and Feta Frittatas

We also thought about doing some Mini Bacon and Egg Sandwiches (cutting out bread, bacon and eggs with cookie cutters) but decided we had more than enough food for our little party! 

Other ideas we had for our savoury stand that you might like to use were;

•  mini corn fritters
• ligthened up deviled eggs
• savoury muffins 
• mini lightened up buttermilk biscuits 
• mini toasted sandwiches.

The possibilities are endless - we also thought of doing mini pancake stacks, mini baked donuts, french toast sticks, waffles - the list goes on and on. You can take all of your favourite breakfast/brunch foods and come up with a combination that works for you!

But tell me, what are your favourite brunch foods? 
And have you ever been to/hosted a brunch party?
I think pancakes are probably my favourite brunch food - and waffles, but I'm always too lazy and too hesitant to get out my waffle iron as everything sticks to it.

This post is sponsored by Kitchenware Direct, however, all opinions, recipes and ideas are Kristy's own and she has not been influenced by the company in any way.

How to Host Your Own Healthy, Allergy Friendly Sundae Party

These days allergies are so common. Too common. It seems like everyone knows at least a handful of people with allergies. I know how it feels to be left out because of those allergies, that's why I love coming up with creative ways to entertain that include everyone - regardless of allergies!

This summer, Target Australia asked me if I'd show them how we do summer entertaining - and what's better than an ice cream party?! We just do things a little differently here in the SIL house to make sure everyone can be included!

 Our little ice cream party was pretty much an allergy sufferers dream, it was; 

• All Natural 
• Gluten Free
• Sugar Free
• Nut Free
• Egg Free
• Dairy Free
• Vegan 

And perfect for a wide variety of diets. But how did we do it? 

Our secret weapon was the Yonanas Machine (available at Target) but if you can't get your hands on one, you can also use a high powered food processor or blender. 

We went for three simple flavours. You do get the best results for fruit soft serves when you add a banana (as it adds a creamy texture) but we had some banana haters joining us so we wanted to make sure they had options. 

All you have to do is pop your fruit into your yonana machine or food processor and whizz away. Before you know it, you'll have a deeelicious icy treat. 

SIL Tip: Make sure you slightly defrost your fruits before blending/putting through the yonanas machine or they may come out really icy. 

Next, we needed some toppings! We went for: 

• White and Milk Chocolate Chips 
• Granola (Freedom Foods Crunchola Granola is gluten free if you can tolerate oats - read more here NOTE: this is no longer gluten free) 
• Chocolate Rice Puffs 
• Sprinkles 
• Shredded Coconut 

And of course the sauces, 

• Homemade Vegan and Sugar Free Caramel Sauce
• Homemade Vegan and Sugar Free Chocolate Fudge Sauce

 Then, it was time to get creative! Our Sundae Bowls of choice were these super cute footed bowls from Target (currently on sale for $10.50 for a set of four) and we filled them up with our sundaes. 

The combinations differed from person to person - and there's no guessing who added melted PB to the list of toppings (obviously not nut free, but girl needs her PB!). 

We had everything from Banana with Chocolate and Caramel Swirls to Blueberry with The Lot and Watermelon and Coconut.

One of my favourites? Banana with Chocolate Rice Puffs, Coconut, Chocolate Fudge Sauce and Peanut Butter. Monkey Madness ;) 

Our Tips for Hosting Your Own Healthy Sundae Party: 

• Keep it simple - don't put out too many things, you'll overwhelm yourself and your guests 
• Make the "icecreams" in advance - The morning of our sundae party, we whizzed up our "icecreams" and then put them into clean containers. We then sealed the containers in a zip lock bag (this stops them from freezing too hard) and stored them in the fridge until we were ready to devour them! 
• Find out what your guests can/can't have - Make sure that everyone's safe by finding out exactly what everyone can or can't have - and be careful of cross contamination! 
• Enjoy! - Have fun with it and do it more often. This was the perfect party addition because who doesn't like a DIY Icecream Sundae bar?! 

But tell me, what would you put on your dream sundae?

I love chocolate, bananas, peanut butter and coconut so any combination involving any of those items (or all) is perfect for me!