Cooking with Greek Yogurt

A couple weeks ago, Mike got a coupon from Meijer for 3 free Yoplait greek yogurts.  I have tried greek yogurt before and was not a fan, but you can't beat free!  Since I definitely knew I didn't like it by itself, I told him to get just plain yogurt and I would try to find some recipes to use it in, as to not be wasteful.  Smart plan!  I saw a recipe on Pinterest in the past for a smothered chicken using mayo, but also saw a similar one using greek yogurt ( http://pinterest.com/pin/142778250656712070/ ).  I decided to give this one a try.  

The recipe was so simple - 4 chicken breasts (I used 2 breast cut into 4 pieces), 5 oz plain greek yogurt (fat free), 1/2 cup parmesan cheese (recipe was for shredded, I used grated because that's what I have), seasoned salt, garlic powder, and black pepper. All you have to do is mix it all together and put it on top of the chicken in a baking dish, then it goes in the oven for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees!  So simple!  This was only 5 WW points plus for 1/4 of the whole dish!  To complete the healthy meal, I paired it with the WW quinoa & spinach recipe and broccoli.  Mike & I LOVED this meal.  The kids were somewhat picky, but they both ate all of the chicken.

After that recipe, we still had 2 containers of the greek yogurt.  Also on pinterest, I looked up "greek yogurt" and saw a cheesecake using a store-bought graham cracker crust and cherry greek yogurt.  Roughly using the recipe I found, in addition to a couple others, I decided to wing it and make my own individual blueberry cheesecakes.  

I mixed together 2 containers (5 oz each) plain fat free greek yogurt, 1 egg, 1/3 cup splenda (could also use sugar, but I still had some free boxes of splenda that I had never used), 2 tbsp cornstarch, 1 tsp (ish) vanilla extract, and 1 cup unsweetened frozen blueberries.  To make the crust I used 10 low-fat cinnamon graham crackers (definitely too many, could have used about 6 instead) with 3 tbsp melted country crock light margarine spread.

I put cupcake liners in my muffin tins, put some of the graham cracker mixture on the bottom (pressed down to make a crust) and then filled each cup with my "cheesecake" mixture.  Since I had way too much graham cracker mixture, I topped each cup to use the rest of it.  Then I baked it for 20 minutes and immediately put in the refrigerator to cool & finish setting up.  Mike and I each had 2 last night, but they were even better this morning once they had cooled overnight.  These were only 2 points plus per cheesecake!!!  (For 2 it was 5 points total).  I think by reducing the graham crackers, it would probably bring it down to 4 points for 2 of these.  These were so tasty & light - definitely will make again!!!  These would also be good with other fruits, or even plain!  What we need to try for next time is no cupcake liners (they stuck quite a bit) and doing just graham cracker on top and then flipping them out. We'll see!  Either way, they are delicious and really do taste like cheesecake, only no cheese!!!