- If dessert is an indispensable e part of your da, make it count.

Today, desserts with a one two punch, they satisfy your sweet tooth, and deliver significant health benefits at the same time.

Check out this menu.

Honey yogurt tart with graham cracker crust.

Blackberry sage ice pops.

Three ingredient chocolate almond bark with cherries.

Pear Brown Betty.

Let's order them all right now on Ellie's Real Good Food.

(jazzy music) - [Announcer] Funding for this series has been provided by.

(hip hop music) And by.

(country music) - [Girl] Grapes from California, grown by families for families.

- [Man] And by Regal Springs Tilapia.

- [Announcer] Ellie's kitchen is provided by Clark, New England's Sub Zero and Wolf showroom and test kitchen.

- Hi, I'm Ellie Krieger and welcome to Ellie's Real Good Food.

For me, a day without something sweet is like a day without sunshine, and apparently that's also true for so many of you based on the feedback I'm getting.

Today, as requested, I'm gonna get you that something sweet in healthier ways.

First up, honey yogurt tart with a graham cracker crust.

I start with Greek yogurt, and you could use low fat or you can use full fat if you want.

Basically you just put it in a strainer like this that's lined with a paper towel, and you set it in the refrigerator for four hours to overnight.

This is how much of liquid comes out, basically that's whey.

But you wind up with this wonderfully uber thick yogurt that's easy to spread in a tart.

And so then you just make a graham cracker crust.

That's about one and a third cups of graham cracker crumbs, and then three tablespoons of melted butter go in there.

And a couple of tablespoons of water.

And just a big pinch, about an eighth teaspoon of salt.

Before I get my hands in here, we're just gonna spray my pie pan with a little oil spray.

Because now my hands are getting dirty.

You want it to be the texture of wet sand.

You're just coating all of the crumbs with the butter mixture, butter and water.

And then load it up into the pie dish.

And just press it with your fingers.

It won't come up all the way, and that's fine.

This is a nine inch pie dish, and I'm just gonna let it come up about halfway up the sides.

I'm gonna bake this at 350 for about nine minutes.

(smooth music) The crust has set, it's been cooked and cooled, so it's really important to let it cool completely before you start filling it with the yogurt.

Got the yogurt in the bowl here and remember that's giving you so much more than just creamy richness, it's also giving you calcium, protein, B vitamins.

It's yogurt right, but we're gonna make it sweet because this is dessert after all.

But the sweet thing I'm gonna use is honey which I use all the time, it's one of my go to ingredients for sweet and savory dishes.

And it not only provides sweetness, but it also provides other benefits.

Let's check out the secret life of bees and their amazing creation.

(jazz music) I am here all suited up with Dave Jefferson from Bloom Honey in front of these amazing hives that he has here, and Dave thanks for inviting us- - No problem.

- To check this out, this is incredible.

- Thank you for coming out, Ellie.

- Tell me, I really wanna know, what is the bonafide nutritional benefits of honey.

I love it, and I use it all the time.

- How much time do you have Ellie?

Because the nutritional benefits are robust and enormous.

It's a super food from nature.

Raw honey is chockfull of antioxidants, phytonutrients, polyphenol that fight cancer.

It has 22 amino acids, it has a whole host of important vitamins for the human body, it has 27 vital minerals, it has over 5,000 enzymes, it has pre and probiotics.

But what happens is that 90% of honey you see in the grocery stores has been heated too high, oftentimes pasteurized, but they also ultrafilter it.

The heating kills the antioxidants, it denatures amino acids, it kills the enzymes.

And the filtration means there's no natural pollens in the honey and no propolis, which pollen and propolis by the way are super foods in and of themselves.

- What's propolis?

- Propolis is this waxy substance that the bees use for example it seals the lid on the hive, they cover the stored honey with wax, and so propolis has health benefits in and of itself, as does pollen which is 40% protein, has all the essential amino acids.

- When you're in the store buying honey, what'd you look for?

- You're looking for something on the label, first don't be fooled by something that says pure all natural honey, it could be pure and all natural but it's been heated to 180 degrees and ultra filtered.

You wanna see raw honey.

- What I love about honey besides that it is that sweetener that has benefits is that it also is different from wherever it comes from.

I love how honey reflects the area from which it's produced.

- The bees make honey by visiting flowers and collecting nectar from different types of floral sources and each type of flower or plant has its own essence in the nectar, so if you are collecting orange nectar, you're gonna make orange honey.

If you move your bees to the avocado trees while they're flowering, it's gonna be avocado honey.

One is a light color and very citrus-y, which is the orange, whereas the avocado is dark and very bold in flavor.

If you wanna make varietal honey, you need to pull for example the orange honey before other flowers are blooming, and add other nectar sources.

Otherwise you wind up with what's called wildflower honey.

- And you were saying also, this is shocki, how many bees work to make this jar of honey?

- To make the amount of honey in this jar, bees need to collect nectar from more than two million flower blossoms and fly for more than 55,000 miles.

- It's a lot of work.

- It sure is.

- Well I value it.

- They're busy bees for a reason.

(laughing) - Yes.

Now that's what I call vitamin B, get it?

Okay, that was a bad one.

Anyway two tablespoons of honey.

And three quarters of a teaspoon of lemon zest.

Really just lightly seasoning this yogurt so that it really comes across as a pie filling, as a tart filling.

I don't want any of the acid from the lemon juice, just that lemon flavor.

Just get this worked together.

And the honey gives it this smooth texture too.

I'm gonna just pile this into the tart shell.

Another key aspect of this is when you're spreading the yogurt around, you wanna spread from the top as opposed to dragging it from the bottom because if you drag it from the bottom or are too aggressive with it could bring the crumbs up from the bottom.

Now just on top, variety of berries.

Whatever you get, whatever looks great at the market.

I'm just gonna use a mix, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries.

I'm just gonna scatter those around.

If you want you can make a pattern, you can do whatever you want, or it can just be fuss free.

I'm generally into fuss free.

This just goes into the refrigerator just to set four hours at least or up to a day ahead.

It's all set, literally all set.

Just gonna cut a piece, now always the first piece is the hardest to get out, right?

With any kind of pie or tart.

Now that's a beauty.

Honey yogurt tart with a graham cracker crust.

(jazzy music) Blackberry sage ice pops.

You want a cool treat that's delicious and has benefits?

This is it.

Just starting with three quarters of a cup of boiling water, essentially you start off by making a sage tea.

Three quarters of a cup of boiling water, and a third of a cup of fresh sage leaves.

If you wanted to do thyme here that would be nice, maybe a little bit less thyme because it can be intense.

Herbs in dessert are so wonderful.

What I'm just going to do is muddle this a bit just to crush the leaves and let them extract their essence.

You can smell it right away.

I'm just gonna pull the leaves out because they've done their job.

And to that I'm gonna add a quarter cup of honey.

Putting it in the hot water here because I want it to dissolve, so it's dissolved in the pops.

Just gonna stir that until it's dissolved.

We have sweetened sage tea there.

And now I'm gonna put my blackberries in the blender.

Get this in here.

So about two tablespoons of lemon juice.

And that's all there is to it.

Give that a blend.

(whirring) Once you have this beautiful sage blackberry puree you wanna strain it so that you wind up with no seeds in your pops, get real intense blackberry flavor.

Gorgeous color, I think the color's intoxicating.

I like these because they're great for kids.

Popsicles are kid food kind of, but these have that grown up kick to them with the sage added.

Just fill up the pop molds.

(smooth music) Then just get them ready for the freezer.

At least five hours in the freezer, but of course you can leave them in there longer.

Then we get to taste them.

Alright they're frozen and I'm just gonna run them under a little hot water, a little warm water to release them from the ice molds.

That should do it.

Get one out.

Look at that, I love this because it has a little sippy straw for the melted bits because you don't wanna miss any of this, blackberry sage ice pops.

Don't even save them for the kids.

(smooth music) Three ingredient chocolate almond bark with cherries.

If you're a chocolate lover like I am, this is really gonna do it for you.

Three ingredients, dark chocolate, dried cherries, and almonds, and that's all there is to it.

And it comes together so deliciously.

You're basically making candy here but it is candy with benefits, so I'm just gonna chop the rest of this chocolate up.

The darker the chocolate, the higher percentage of cocoa solid, so 100% chocolate would be 100% cocoa solids but that basically is way too bitter to eat.

So the less percentage of cocoa solids, the sweeter, the more sugar, the more milk, and things like that are in there.

I find that generally 60 to 70% cocoa solids is the perfect balance between tasty and healthy.

I'm gonna get this melting, I have here double boiler.

I'm gonna put three quarters of the chocolate in.

This is my cheat method for tempering chocolate.

You put some of the chocolate in and melt it and then you add the rest of the chocolate off the pan.

It's really key that you don't get any water or steam in the chocolate because chocolate does not like water.

The water should also not really be touching the bottom of the pan, it should be at least two inches from the bottom of the pan, and just lightly lightly simmering.

Now I'm gonna take it off of the pan and move it to a towel and add the rest of this chocolate in and let that melt, the idea here is that the temperature of the chocolate should change gradually.

Chocolate likes gradual change as a rule.

Maybe that's why we get along so well.

Just about there, beautiful.

I'm gonna pour this into a nine by 13 pan that I've lined with a little bit of parchment.

And I'll be licking that bowl later, thank you very much.

I'm just gonna spread this out evenly.

Doesn't have to cover the whole thing.

Not letting that go.

Alright, good.

Now I'm just gonna sprinkle lots of almonds, which I've toasted here, and this is where it really is dessert with benefits because you get all that great nutrition from the nuts.

But seriously as a snack in the afternoon if you're gonna eat some chocolate, make it dark chocolate, and have it with nuts and dried fruit, and get the benefits of the crunch and flavor and nutrition.

And those dried cherries for their chewiness and tartness.

You could use raisins here if you wanted to.

I just love the tartness of the cherries.

You could really use any nut as well.

That looks great, I'm just gonna put this in the fridge to set for one hour, and then I'll come break it up and it'll be ready to eat.

(soft music) One hour later, chocolate.

And you just take it off the paper like this, and you break it up however you want.

Big pieces, little pieces.

This one's for me.

I'll break that one more, don't worry.

You wanna stor it at room temperature.

Once it sets in the refrigerator, you wanna keep it in a cool area.

And there you have it, three ingredient chocolate bark with cherries.

(smooth music) My guest Nicole loves to bake.

She's a mom and a teacher, so she's always looking for tasty but healthy treats for her kids, at home and at school.

I'm keeping Nicole after school today, thankfully.

So we're cooking together, we're baking this fabulous pear Brown Betty.

It's a cross between a crisp and a pie in a way, but the topping is made with bread crumbs.

It's really quite simple, down home kinda thing, and really really tasty, and it's easy to make healthy because you can use whole grain bread.

We'll start off just making some bread crumbs.

I take the crusts off because this way when it bakes, it all browns evenly so you don't have different levels of doneness essentially in the bread.

We'll just stick this in the food processor.

- Is the goal to make them bread crumbs or to chop it up?

- No really to make it bread crumbs.

It could be really a little coarser bread crumbs if you want or it could be fine.

It's one of those things, you can't go wrong.

This is whole grain bread, so when you talk about having some benefits in your dessert, this is one of those things that why not, you're getting the fiber, you're getting the nutrients and whole grain.

I'm gonna get that in here.

And then I put some walnuts in there also if you wanna toss those in, and I'm just gonna chop that up a little here.

Of course you could do that with your knife too but since we have the food processor going.

- Just right here?

- Yeah, I like to pulse it just like that.

Excellent, thank you.

You could use hazelnuts, you could use almonds, you can use whatever nuts you want in here.

Walnuts are just classic.

Now we have two tablespoons of butter there if you wanna put that in.

- Can you make a Brown Betty with other fruits or just pear?

- Totally, you can make it with pretty much any fruit that you'd make a pie with.

- Oh, great.

- Or a crisp.

Two tablespoons of brown sugar.

You're gonna get this sweet breadcrumb-y topping as this all bakes together.

If you wanna give that a stir, I can add this stuff, just getting that together, and then a half teaspoon of cinnamon.

Already you're getting that real homey feel.

And then just a little tiny pinch of salt.

Once that's well integrated, if you wanna work on doing that, I'll cut up this pear, last pear, I have most of them already done.

I have five already cut up.

- And does the skin make a difference as far as flavor or texture?

- You know what, a lot of desserts, you don't want the skin because it would interfere.

But in this case it's so rustic and homey that the skin works perfectly and so much nutrition is in the skin, and so it's a great opportunity to leave it in.

I'm gonna put this in a pan on medium high heat and just get them started cooking essentially.

I'm gonna add just about a tablespoon of lemon juice and that's gonna keep them bright too.

Two tablespoons of maple syrup because I want it to be a little bit sweet, and that's the other thing I find people when they're baking pies, they add so much sweetener that it almost takes away from the delicious flavor of the fruit.

Of course it depends really on the sweetness of the fruit so what I do recommend is using the two tablespoons and then tasting it after it cooks down a little bit and you can decide, does this need more because maybe the fruit wasn't as ripe as you wished.

That was cornstarch by the way, two teaspoons of cornstarch, a little ginger, and a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon.

You know what's really nice in here, a little cardamom if you have.

- Never used that before.

- That's a fun warm spice to use.

I'm just gonna put this into a pie dish.

Just spoon this into the dish and then we'll top it with the crumbs, and so you can see how easy it is.

I mean this is the kind of thing, you decide at the last minute practically that you want dessert.

You have everything essentially on hand.

The thing is if you can do it in a healthier way that also satisfies you, why not, right?

And then we'll just get that topping.

- Sprinkle it on?

- Yeah, and that should cover it pretty well.

We can even do it with our hands if that's easier.

(whispering) It does, doesn't it?

(laughing) Perfect, this just gets baked for 40 minutes now.

We have our beautiful baked Brown Betty.

Can you smell how wonderful it is?

- Yes, it looks delicious too.

- Yeah, so we can put some yogurt on top.

And I thought a little drizzle of maple syrup too.

You could do vanilla ice cream, a little scoop.

A scoop of frozen yogurt if you want.

- Thank you.

- There we go, and a drizzle of maple syrup?

- Yes please.

- I know you want that, ooh la la, lovely.

It came out really nice.

- Really good, thank you.

- Dessert with benefits is definitely the way to hit the sweet spot where delicious and healthy meet.

Don't you think?

- Certainly, and kids would like it.

- 70% cocoa solids, dark chocolate.

And cherries, dried cherries, and almonds, which I've toasted here, skin on almonds, that's kinda nice.

Lemme do this over, I'm just gonna do this differently.

I have a different plan, new plan.

(speaking off microphone) (screeching) (speaking gibberish) She's a mom and a teacher, so she's always looking for tasty but healthy treats for her kids, at home and at school, bam.

(laughing) - [Announcer] For these recipes and much more, go to ElliesRealGoodFood.com.

Also connect with Ellie on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Funding for this series has been provided by.

(hip hop music) And by.

(country music) - [Girl] Grapes from California, grown by families for families.

- [Man] And by Regal Springs Tilapia.

- [Announcer] Ellie's kitchen is provided by Clark, New England's Sub Zero and Wolf showroom and test kitchen.

(rain pattering) (flute music) (soft music)