And these are quite lovely, even though the word “healthy” appears in the title. Chocolate, banana, and no butter or oil. Plus, there’s a Greek yogurt protein kick in there. Can we all cheer?

I almost called these brownies. That’s how fudgy they are. Have I ever mentioned how difficult it can be to name some recipes? Or children?

With every single one of our children, we didn’t name them until they were born and we could look into their faces. I had a hard time committing anyway. Being a teacher made it a lot harder.

You see, I associate names with people. And while I really enjoy most of my students, I didn’t want to name my kids anything that I’d associate with my workplace. It’s just nice to keep home and work as separate as possible.

As a result, my kids have fairly obscure names (with even more obscure spellings) and while their names fit them quite nicely, it wasn’t an easy process. Names are so dang important. What if a kid gets the wrong one?

Forget about real people. Character names bug me, too. When Big from Sex and the City finally got a name in the last episode, it was “John.” Really?! John? That’s the best they could do for him? It was so unbelievably frustrating.

If you could name yourself, what would it be? Feel free to let that marinate, or share below! No, this is not that game where you come up with your accidental stripper name. This is you deciding what you would have been called, had it been your choice.

If this cake had a choice, it might ask to be buttery and full of fat. Actually, no, it wouldn’t. When I brought this to work, not only could people not believe that it was healthy, but almost everyone also asked for the recipe. Here’s a video tutorial, but see the full recipe below as well:

Aside from its health benefits, this cake (almost brownie) is super simple to make. Without butter to cream (and no oil either), it’s just mixing ingredients together. Have I mentioned that this cake is also gluten-free?

The only danger here is that you’ll convert to healthy cake and miss out on the Valentine’s Day splurging. Nah, I’m not really worried about that. But this is really good, whether it’s named right or not. In the end, it’s the taste that matters!

The problem with the packaged snack cakes is that they are kind of full of really bad stuff. Like that “crème” filling they all boast? Yeah. That’s made of animal fat, or some kind of hydrogenated something. Have it now and then. But we’re not in high school anymore, so eating it every day is not advisable.

How do you make easy snack cake? Well, you need a 9 x 13 pan and you need a recipe that mixes up in one bowl. And if you do it really well, there shouldn’t be much fat or bad stuff involved. Like with this apple cake!

This recipe was initially my mom’s, but I modified it. She loves this cake because it’s easy to make and tastes great. I agree with that, but I cut the oil in half just to see what would happen. Guess what? It worked. I also used apple pie filling instead of the apple slices the recipe initially called for to add more moisture, but not as much fat. And finally, I cut the sugar in half.

I tested this cake out at work, and a colleague had no clue that it had apple pie filling in it. She thought the apples were fresh. So that’s a good thing! I’d much rather use the canned stuff if nobody can tell the difference.

The result is a fantastic after-school treat. You can feel really good about giving this to kids, or about eating it all yourself. Save Little Debbie for a really bad day!