Reduced Sugar Fruit Cookie Pizza

Preheat oven to 375.

Spray 12 inch foil pizza pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Combine 1 pkg Pillsbury Reduced Sugar Cookie Mix with 1/3 cup veg oil, 2 Tbsp water, 1 egg, and 1/2 tsp lemon or almond extract. Drop spoonfuls onto pan, and press with fingers until even. Bake at 375 for 9-11 minutes, or until lightly browned. Set aside to cool completely.
Mix 1/4 cup each Reduced Sugar Cream Cheese frosting and Smuckers Sugar Free Apricot Preserves. Spread evenly onto cooled cookie, leaving a small border on the outside to resemble the crust of a pizza.
Slice your choice of fruits - I used strawberries, kiwi, peaches, and blueberries. Mix each fruit in a small bowl with a Tbsp of sugar free preserves, and arrange decoratively on pizza.

The cookie crust has 19 grams of carbs, of which 6 grams is sugar 4 grams is sugar alcohol. It also has 135 mg of sodium, 2 g of total fat. This is listed as the counts for 1/18 of the total mix for cookies. Definitely not something to have every day, but as a special treat it's really something.

Chocolate Berry Cheesecake Trifle

1 pkg Reduced Sugar Pillsbury Devils' Food Cake ( 1 1/4 cups water, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup oil)
1 can Pillsbury Reduced Sugar Chocolate Fudge Frosting
2 pkgs Jello sugar free Cheesecake pudding (3 cups skim milk)
3/4 pint fresh strawberries, half of them thinly sliced
1/2 cup Splenda, 1 tsp raspberry extract, 2 tsp water mixed together
Sugar Free Cool Whip

Make, bake and cool chocolate cake. Frost with about 1/2 can of frosting. (For ease of cutting I did it in a 13 x 9 pan)
Make the "syrup" of splenda and extract.
Whisk the milk with the 2 packages of pudding and set aside.

In a clear glass bowl, scatter the bottom with about a cup of cake cubes. Drizzle with 2 tsp of the syrup. Top with about half of the pudding mix. Top that with sliced strawberries on the outside of the bowl, and chunked strawberries in the middle. Repeat layers. End with cake, and top that final layer with sugar free cool whip, and a few sliced berries. I also put a couple of cubes of cake, all crumbled up.
You will use about half the chocolate cake, all the pudding, and about 3/4 cup of Cool Whip.

Truly decadent!

Meeting with the Nutritionist

So today Rob had his appointment with the nutritionist - a really wonderful guy named Rhys Wyman out of Andover. He gave us tons of great information, and lots of great advice. We learned a great deal! For example, Rob should be eating about 40 grams of net carbs per meal, and snack should be about 15 net carbs. Rob was thrilled to learn that he can have fruit - we've been avoiding it as we weren't sure about the rold of natural sugars in diabetes management.
So far Rob has lost 20 pounds, and I've lost 28. We are both really thrilled.
Next up on the agenda - a Labor Day party at my aunt and uncles... and I found that Pillsbury has a reduced sugar line of mixes - so I'm going to do a dessert pizza with fresh fruit... and a Chocolate Cheesecake Trifle with Strawberries, both low sugar. Will post pics.