Apricot Plum Crisp with Maple Nut Froyo

As my parents get older, I worry more and more about their future health.  My family has never been a very active one.  While my mom spends most of her days on her feet at her hospital job, my dad works in an office and has been sitting for a good portion of his life.  Aside from my ballet dancing when I was younger, exercise was always an "Event" in our family rather than a daily routine--to exercise, my parents would drive us forty-five minutes to this reservoir to walk a mile or two.  (Arguably not the most efficient way to exercise!) And, all of us in my nuclear family have a soft spot for ice cream.  So... statistically speaking, this does not bode well for any of our health(s) in the future!

So this year, for my dad's birthday (and Father's Day), I decided to reinvent his favorite birthday dessert that I make him every year into something healthier.  He adores maple nut ice cream, and so this time around, I came up with a maple nut frozen yogurt, accompanied by an apricot, plum, oat, and buckwheat crisp.  The frozen yogurt is made with 2% fat Greek yogurt--still thick and creamy, but without the actual heavy cream, milk, and eggs.  The only sugar in the frozen yogurt comes from the maple syrup, which is pretty much unavoidable when you're making maple nut ice cream. :-)  As for the crisp, my family likes tart and not-too-sweet desserts, so the filling of apricots and plums really relies on natural sweetness in the fruit, with only a bit of sugar sprinkled in.  The crisp topping is made with equal amounts of butter and thick yogurt to help cut down on the amount of butter needed--an idea that I 'borrowed' from 101 cookbooks.  The topping is also made with no gluten--just oats and buckwheat flour, both of which add a natural nutty sweetness to the crisp.

Even though this dessert was waaaaaaay healthier than my dad's normal birthday fare, it worked out really deliciously.  The slight tang of the yogurt went perfectly with the sweet maple syrup in the maple nut froyo, and the crisp was bursting with juicy goodness, which mixed so well with the melting nutty froyo scooped on top--all in all, I deem this Healthy Dessert Success.

Anyone have any favorite healthy dessert tips to share?  I of course remain very much committed to heavy cream and butter, but it's always good to explore the options!


Read on for recipe...

This week, in photos.

TGIF!  I've never really used the phrase "TGIF" much because, growing up, I loved school, and weekends were just those days stuck at home without school, but, boy oh boy, am I so glad this week is over.  As you may have noticed, there hasn't been a recipe up for the week, which is the result of failure after failure in my kitchen.  I've lost my baking mojo!  (Also, this is what I get from trying to drastically fiddle with unfamiliar recipes.)  The first "cake" I pulled out of the oven this week was basically more like a pudding, collapsing in on itself--note to self: this is what happens when you try to *double* the amount of caramel in the cake.... (Upon posting an iPhone photo of this cake on twitter, multiple people commented that it looked like hot dogs and ... er... vomit--not a good sign. --> Also, I can't believe I just used the word 'vomit' on a food blog!) The second "thing" I pulled out of the oven leaked butter like nobody's business--even Paula Deen would have been shocked, I think.  Finally, I was able to manage to pull something super yummy and (more importantly) *not* disastrous out of the oven--cherry chipotle BBQ mini pizzas with smoked gouda and red onions--but those went directly from the oven to Irvin from Eat the Love and Melanie's pie party/potluck at 18 reasons in SF.  So yeah, no recipe for that one, either.  (Although, I am obsessed with the homemade BBQ sauce that I used for this pizza, so I *might* just remake it again for you all.  *might.*)

Outside the kitchen, though, this week has been packed with awesome fun: seeing The Bad Plus (one of my favorite jazz groups) at Yoshi's (here's one of my favorite pieces that played that night--I'm adopting it as my new theme song); dropping by beautiful UC Santa Cruz for a work meeting; sitting in a cafe chatting, iPhone-ography-ing, and eating dessert with friends on Memorial Day after working on refinishing my dining room table (it's almost done!); watching the latest incarnation of our department rock band make its re-debut (yes, we have a department rock band); and hanging out with old and new blog friends at the pie party.  So, I can't say that the week was a total bust.

One more thing that I did this week was go out to lunch with my good friend Toni and photograph it for an Oh Joy! feature.  (I'm super-excited to be on the Oh Joy! lunch series, so please go check it out!)  Here's what happens when you put two photographers together for lunch:

Yeah, pretty much.

Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and much more success in the kitchen than I've been having lately.  Also, if you've seen my baking mojo out and about on its illicit 'vacation,' would you kindly point it back in my direction, please?