I have a serious sweet tooth. I blame it on my grandparents, who always had homemade cookies on the counter and who never restricted the number of times I could visit the jar. That being said, the holidays almost made my sweet tooth hurt.
In the past three weeks, I think I consumed more butter cookies, peppermint bark, and rice pudding than should be humanly possible. In fact, if you add in the number of Jelly Belly Beans I ate, I’m pretty sure I consumed more than my own weight in sugar. This could be hard to come back from, seriously.
I don’t have any New Year Resolutions to avoid sweets or anything like that, but I do want to focus on being healthier. I decided to ease myself in to healthy eating again slowly with this perfect breakfast or lunch croissant. Topped with baby spinach, I am bringing the vegetables back in to my diet this week. But to make it a little bit easier (because they don’t have a spinach Jelly Belly you know) I added some candied nuts to the top. It is perfectly delicious, and quite a bit healthier than a butter cookie!
(Note: I used this method to candy the nuts and it worked like a charm: Cafe Johnsonia – How to Make Candied Nuts.)
Gouda and Apple Croissant with Baby Spinach
Ingredients:
1 large croissant
2 slices of Gouda cheese
1/3 cup baby spinach
1/2 Gala apple, cored and sliced
2 to 3 tablespoons candied pecans or walnuts
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit
Slice croissant in half and top each half with cheese. Place on baking sheet and bake until cheese is melted, about 6 to 8 minutes.
After removing from oven, top both halves with apple slices and baby greens. Sprinkle nuts over the open faced croissants and serve.
Makes 1 serving (if you can eat both halves of the croissant – I couldn’t.)
Were you able to stick to healthy eating over the holidays?
Katie | GoodLife Eats says
I too am making it a goal to get back to eating a bit more healthy. I’m relieved in a way that holiday eating is over because by the end of December I was almost eating mindlessly with all the sweets around.
This sandwich looks so good! I can’t wait to try it. I have everything but croissants at home right now.