- You know that laundry list of additives you see on so many products at the market?

Well, I'm gonna give you the lowdown on that, and show you how to get beautiful color and bold flavor with this simplest, best quality ingredients.

Grilled chicken with cherry bourbon BBQ sauce.

Creamy yogurt ranch dressing.

Vanilla cupcakes with pink cream cheese frosting.

We're keeping it real, right now on Ellie's Real Good Food.

(upbeat, rhythmic music) - [Announcer] Funding for this series has been provided by (upbeat, drum-heavy music) And by (lighthearted, calm music) - [Announcer] Grapes from California.

Grown by families, for families.

- [Announcer] And by Regal Springs Tilapia.

Ellie's Kitchen is provided by Clarke, New England's Sub-Zero & Wolf Showroom and test kitchen.

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

Now, if you ask me, good quality food without added colors, flavors and preservatives, it generally tastes better, and it's often better for you.

When you're buying food at the grocery store or at a restaurant, what you really want is the same quality ingredients that you would use at home.

And there are many foods that we'd be tempted to buy that are so easily made much better at home.

Well, I'm going to show you this crazy good cherry bourbon BBQ sauce.

And I'm just starting off here with, of course, cherries, because I put actual cherries in my cherry bourbon BBQ sauce.

It's like a novel concept these days, somehow.

Anyway, I'm just gonna pit those.

And you could use frozen if you want.

Frozen, pitted already.

But I got these nice and fresh.

Just pit those using my trusty pitter here.

Okay, so those are done.

And I'm just gonna put those in the blender.

You're getting fiber in there, and you're getting sweetness plus cherry flavor, so there's just so much that goes in, just by immediately starting with a real ingredient.

Okay, starting with some tomato sauce.

This is just no salt added tomato sauce.

I'm gonna use about eight ounces, so half of this.

Instead of high fructose corn syrup, which I don't typically keep in my kitchen, right, who does?

I'm gonna use molasses, blackstrap molasses.

And I love molasses in this.

So, three tablespoons of molasses.

Molasses is an added sweetener, so it is a sugar technically, right?

And I add it, kind of, minimally.

So this isn't hyper-sweet.

But I'm also, while adding the molasses, adding this incredible depth of flavor and minerals and nutrients that you need.

One more.

Blackstrap molasses has iron in it.

Then some apple cider vinegar, three tablespoons of that.

So, now we get... We have those cherries in there for that fruitiness, we have the molasses for some sweet, we're gonna get some tangy with this apple cider vinegar.

And I just love to put some mustard in my BBQ sauce to add to that tang, such as regular yellow mustard.

You can use whatever kind you want, really.

Teaspoon.

So now to bring up that warmth from the cherries and the molasses, a pinch of ground cloves.

And then just salt.

1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Pepper and bourbon.

Now, you don't have to add the bourbon.

Frankly, I don't see who wouldn't, right?

(laughs) No, it's really good without the bourbon too.

So, if you're serving people that really are avoiding alcohol completely, then don't add it.

But it's not much, it's just a little for flavor.

Two tablespoons.

And last but not least, a few cloves of garlic.

And that's how easy it is.

And you can make a lot of it ahead of time.

It freezes well, actually, too.

(blender whirring) The cherries just add this incredible color.

I don't need any red dye.

I'm gonna put a little of it here for the recipe I'm gonna make now, to brush the chicken with.

Put the rest in here for drizzling.

Save some for later.

So, what I like to do with my chicken, and I really think this is one of the keys to really cooking chicken well, is pounding it to an even thickness.

Because what happens is, you know, chicken is naturally tapered on one side and kind of fat around the other side.

And so, it inevitably will cook unevenly.

So, you'll have part of it that's too undone and part of it that's too overdone.

So pounding it just like this ensures that you're going to get even cooking.

And that's really key to making it delicious.

You could use a mallet or rolling pin.

All righty, that's all it takes.

So I'm gonna just get my grill fired up here.

Add this to the rest of my chicken.

I'm gonna season this up a bit.

Little salt and pepper.

(water running in sink) (grinding) Then I'm just gonna brush it with some of the sauce.

Just a little for color and flavor.

And get it on that grill.

This one heats up really fast, so.

(chicken sizzles) Just needs about four to five minutes per side, and then I'm gonna serve it drizzled with some more sauce.

Chicken's ready!

See, you never thought you'd have this much fun cooking chicken.

(chuckles) Oh, that looks good.

And it's about to look even better, because I'm gonna douse this with more of that gorgeous, tasty sauce.

With the sweet cherries, and molasses, tangy mustard and apple cider vinegar.

Just that touch of ground cloves and there's garlic in there, woo!

A few cherries, nice to garnish the plate.

Mm, that's an absolutely delicious sauce with all real ingredients.

Cherry bourbon BBQ sauce on grilled chicken.

(relaxing, rhythmic guitar music) Pretty much everything tastes better with a ranch dressing, right?

I know a little ranch dressing dip has gotten a lot of kids to eat their vegetables.

Well, I absolutely love ranch dressing, and very often we buy it at the store.

But I'm gonna show you how easy it is to make it even better.

Even better tasting and even healthier.

So, super easy.

Just starting off with half a cup of yogurt.

Now, here I'm using regular, so not Greek.

Plain yogurt.

And you can use non-fat, or low-fat, or whole milk yogurt, whichever you prefer.

And a lot of typical, kind of, ranch dressing recipes, call for mostly mayo as the base.

So, I use yogurt as the base and just add a little mayo.

So, two tablespoons of mayo.

So, this way, you're really getting a lot of nutrition there.

YOu're getting all that calcium and protein, and all the probiotics that yogurt gives you.

And a little mayo for that richness that you really want.

I think a lot of times, if you substitute only yogurt, it won't be rich enough.

And that's a mistake, I think, a lot of people make where they're modifying recipes, is, it's like like, too all or nothing.

A teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.

And 1/4 teaspoon of granulated garlic.

Some salt, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and some pepper.

And I'm gonna whisk that up and then put in fresh herbs.

So, just get this all integrated.

And you see how easy this is?

It's amazing and it tastes so fresh.

But I love to add those fresh herbs.

And you can do dried herbs too, if you prefer.

So, I'm just gonna do a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley.

And you can do other herbs too.

You could do tarragon if you want.

That would be kind of a neat twist.

Cilantro would be nice, fresh cilantro.

Any real tender herb, I guess.

This dressing lasts four days, five days, but it won't last, because you're gonna eat it up so fast because it's so good.

There we go, I love it when this happens, when it's the exact amount I want.

Some chives.

So the thing is, you can have great tastes, even better tastes, and even better nutrition, and avoid those additives that, frankly, they're not necessary.

And some are of more concern than others.

Just stir that together.

And this is great on a salad, of course, just like a dressing would be.

It's also great as a dip.

You might wanna spread it on your sandwich.

Right now, this is gonna be the dip for this wonderful crudite platter, which, of course, means raw vegetable plate.

But some of these things are blanched as well.

But I love to make it a little special, go beyond your, sort of, basic carrots and celery, and just branch out for some different things.

And going to the farmer market's the perfect way to do that.

Just get whatever looks fantastic.

So, here I have some snap peas, sugar snap peas, which are sweet, and juicy and crunchy, and kids love them.

Some baby peppers.

This is kohlrabi.

So, if you've never seen this, you've gotta try it.

So, this is what it looks like, and you probably have seen it like this and wondered what it is.

And I find it's at most farmer's markets, and sometimes in the grocery store.

And you can eat the bulb, which is what I did here.

Just peel it and cut it up, and you can eat it raw like that.

It tastes almost like a cross between a radish and jicama.

So, it's crunchy and has a little bite to it, and it's lovely on a crudite platter.

Cucumbers, of course, some carrots, multi-colored tomatoes.

And this is romesco and yellow cauliflower.

So, just fun to get different varieties.

Well, get this dip on there.

And it really is the centerpiece for a pretty fabulous veggies and dip.

Yogurt ranch dressing, can't go wrong with this.

(crunch) Mm.

(lighthearted, calming music) (upbeat, bass-heavy music) The grocery store can be a very confusing place.

So, if you're seeking better choices, you could wind up grabbing a package that looks and sounds healthy at first glance, but it might not be what you bargained for.

There are several strategies marketers use to make a product seem healthy.

A brown cardboard package gives an immediate sense of back to the earth goodness, as do images of farms, fruits, and vegetables.

But that doesn't mean these products are any closer to being farm fresh, or that they even contain any produce.

The word natural is also very popular on packaging, but it does not have a formal definition.

The FDA considers the term to mean that nothing artificial or synthetic has been added to a food, but there's a lot of gray area with the term.

And products labeled natural can still have more added non-synthetic flavors and preservatives than you might expect.

Healthy looking packaging often means a company is at least trying to make a better for you option, so it's a good place to start when navigating the store, but don't stop there.

The only way to really know what's in a product, is to turn the package over and read the ingredient list.

(lighthearted, joyful music) Jamie, my guest today, loves to bake with her kids.

But she does have a hard time navigating all the artificial baking ingredients.

- My kids love deserts, and I find deserts particularly challenging to find natural recipes that don't have artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives.

Is it yummy?

- [Girl] Yeah!

- [Boy] Mhm.

- [Jamie] Good!

- Jamie, I'm so happy you're in my kitchen.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Yeah, so you love to bake with your kids, right?

- I do.

- And they must love it.

- Of course!

- And the end result is the best part.

- Absolutely (Jamie and Ellie laughter) - Well, I have some delicious vanilla cupcakes to share with you today.

This is a really great recipe, and it's gonna look beautiful, taste great, and it's all real food.

- Sounds fantastic.

- It's gonna be fun.

So, I thought we could get started with the dry ingredients.

A cup a cake flour.

Cake flower, as opposed to all purpose, keeps them really tender.

And then, I'm also going to use whole wheat flower, so I can get that going, actually.

And this is whole wheat pasty flour, so it's whole grain, but it doesn't taste like whole grain.

If you wanna get it, we also need 1/4 of that.

So, if you wanna get it.

So, we need 3/4 of a cup of that.

So, do you sometimes use, like, whole grains in your baked goods?

- I haven't, so this is new to me.

- [Ellie] Oh good, yeah.

And I think whole grain pastry flower's perfect for that, because you don't want cupcakes that taste healthy, right?

You just want them to taste like cupcakes.

I know that's how I feel about it.

So, we need 1 1/2 teaspoons of the baking powder, and then a 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Okay, so while you do that, I'll get the wet ingredients going.

So, I have three tablespoons of unsalted butter, softened.

And I'm just gonna put a cup of sugar in there.

I don't use much white sugar, but sometimes it's fine, right?

- It is dessert - We don't have to be all or nothing.

It is dessert, exactly.

And, again, we want it to taste like dessert.

So, I'm just gonna cream this together.

So, actually, while I'm doing this, would you mind whisking that all together so it's nice and incorporated?

So, I'm just gonna add three tablespoons of the canola oil.

And you can use, like, an olive oil too.

Like, a very neutral olive oil, if you wanted.

The idea is to get that healthy fat in there.

And I think what's great about baking with kids, is that they learn so much about measuring.

It's math, it's science, you know?

And so, making it from scratch really offers so much more even than just the nutritional aspect of it.

- Absolutely.

- So, I'm just gonna do this.

Here you go.

- Yep.

- So, you feel concerned about additives in general?

- I do.

I think the natural label is very confusing, and I think it's very hard to navigate what ingredients are actually in the food products that I buy.

- Yeah, it's so true.

It can be so confusing.

And cooking at home is really the antidote to that-- - You know exactly what's going on - Because if you're cooking from real ingredients.

Exactly.

So, you get the science, you get better flavor, because you're having all this, you know, really fresh food.

I can take this.

And so now, once this is all worked together.

So, we have in here, I put in some unsweetened apple sauce, and that allows us to also substitute some of the butter.

There's the canola oil and two eggs, right?

So, now we can put in, like, maybe sprinkle in about half of that flour.

Or not flower, but the dry ingredients I Should say.

- [Jamie] The mixture.

(laughs) - [Ellie] Now I'm gonna put in 1/2 cup of milk.

You can empty your cups All right, thank you.

Yeah, you can just dump that in.

Perfect, thank you so much.

It's so fun baking with you!

- You too!

- Great, so, I'm gonna just stir in now some vanilla.

Because they are vanilla cupcakes, after all.

So, just 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, and then I'm just gonna make sure that it's all well integrated.

I'll just use the spatula for that.

Kinda like to get my hands in there.

So, we have this all ready, and we can just fill our... - The best part.

- Yeah.

Well, the best part's eating, right?

- That's true.

- Can you reach that okay?

- [Jamie] Yeah.

- So, one thing I find, even about using, kind of, boxed batters, you know, those mixes?

Is that most of them, if you read that ingredient list, it's really shocking.

- Absolutely.

- [Ellie] I mean, it's like hydrogenated vegetable oils, gums, preservatives, colors.

The thing is, it's just not necessary, and I think it's really important to note that you don't have to, like, freak out about this stuff, but if you don't have to have those ingredients, and they're not really helping... - Well, and I find that it doesn't actually save that much time to really use the store bought mix.

- [Ellie] That's so true.

- And then you know what's going inside, as well.

- All right, so these just go... Great job, I mean, like, a high-five on that so far.

- (laughs) Thank you!

- And then, these just go in the oven, 350 for 20 minutes.

- Okay, perfect.

- [Ellie] So, the cupcakes are done, they've been cooling.

So, I wanna show you how easy it is to make delicious frosting that's beautiful.

Beautifully colored and also good for you, so.

I mean, all good things start with beautiful, fresh ingredients, so just some raspberries.

So, we're going to make pink frosting.

And just blend that up with a little bit of water.

Let's see.

(blender whirring) Does look good.

So beautiful.

So, we're gonna use this color and basically though, I just wanna use the juice.

So, what's gonna happen here, is we're just gonna strain out the seeds.

Because you don't want seeds in your frosting, right?

We're just gonna real use those raspberries.

So, if you can do this, actually, all we need to do is work this juice through and keep the seeds in the strainer.

And what we're gonna do is ultimately add that to this.

This is some cream cheese.

Some reduced fat cream cheese actually, neufchatel.

Just whipping that up with a cup on confectioners sugar.

What I find in most frostings that you buy in the store, it's pretty much all hydrogenated fat.

I mean, it's shocking to me.

- [Jamie] It is.

- And it doesn't need to be.

And I love cream cheese frosting for this reason.

Because you get that creaminess, and you can do it, kind of, with less fat.

- Yep, and it tastes great.

- Exactly, taste, it's all about taste.

All right, so we'll just add some color in and you can, we'll see, you know, you can kind of modulate however you want.

And you can do different variations on this.

So, here I have a couple other ones.

I have a purple that I do with grape juice.

I just boil down grape juice and then use that in the same frosting base of the cream cheese and the confectioners sugar.

And also, I love the matcha.

So, that's just green tea powder, and you just dissolve that in some water and you use that as the base mix.

So, we'll just let this chill for two hours, because it needs to sit a bit.

And then we will frost those cupcakes!

- Yay.

(relaxing, focused music) How's it looking?

- Awesome.

- Woo.

Oh!

Thank you.

- (laughs) Let's try it.

We have to test it.

It's lovely.

- Mm, very good.

It's delicious.

- Yeah, it's, like, not too sweet, and I taste the raspberries, do you?

- They absolutely come through.

- Mm, so good.

Well, okay, it passes muster?

- Absolutely.

- All right, so we can just frost these.

We can use all of these frostings.

And I kind of tend to frost not toO high.

Like, I don't pile it on too much.

I mean, that, to me, is the thing.

It just tastes better.

When I try those pre-made frostings, made with all that hydrogenated fat, it doesn't even taste good.

If it tasted good, I might say, "All right, it's worth it."

(Ellie and Jamie laugh) Maybe I'll do another green.

And then we can decorate them with ballerinas and toys and stuff.

And you can bring them home to your kids, they'll love it.

- Oh my gosh, (laughs) - All right, I'll do this, you pick the toy.

- Okay, oh my goodness, what do we have here.

- Some prima ballerinas.

- Oh, wow!

(Ellie and Jamie laugh) These are beautiful.

That's really keeping everything fun.

- [Ellie] And we have some cute circus clowns and horses and stuff too.

- As if my kids needed more excuses to love dessert.

(Ellie and Jamie laugh) - That looks nice, I wanna see a horse on a dessert.

There we go.

All right, I say we grab one and taste it.

- Yeah, agreed.

- All right, ready for nothing.

Wow, that's so pretty.

- They are so pretty.

- [Ellie] Mm, they're so good.

- Mm, really good.

- Vanilla cupcakes with pink cream cheese frosting.

As always, keeping it real, and hitting the sweet spot where delicious and healthy meet.

- Yum.

- So good.

Don't talk, just cream.

Shut up and cream.

Just say, "Ellie, shut up and cream."

- Edit that.

- So, it has one strip of lemon zest, a leaf of bay, otherwise known as a bay leaf.

(laughs) Hm.

(laughs) (crew laughing) I don't want this one.

(laughs) I gotta do this again.

(Ellie and crew laughing) No snorting!

- [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 (upbeat, bass-heavy music) And by (lighthearted, uplifting music) - [Announcer] Grapes from California.

Grown by families, for families.

- [Announcer] And by Regal Springs Tilapia.

Ellie's kitchen is provided by Clarke, New England's Sub-Zero & Wolf Showroom and test kitchen.