I like my cheesecakes two at a time…

As wibbly and wonderful as they are, I don’t often make cheesecake. Why, you might ask? I’ll tell you why.

Don't pretend you wouldn't...

Because the cheesecakes I make for two people usually serve around 18 very hungry people and contain the same amount of calories as a whole hog roast. An hour down the line I can invariably be found guiltily checking my post-cheesecake-stuffed face in the back of a spoon to see if I’ve instantly ballooned.

This week, I decided to take on the challenge of making a Weight Watchers-

friendly cheesecake. Adapted from this BBC good food recipe, I liked the miniature theme – it’s always easier to feel satisfied after you’ve had your own whole version of something, rather than a slice of the whole with more winking at you from the fridge.

These turned out really delicious. I’m not sure you would know they were low-fat without being told, but hey – I’m biased. But the lovely @princesspurling went back for seconds, and my boyfriend almost wept when he realised that between us, we’d eaten the last four of them – so I did something right.

It’s also a super quick and easy recipe, so great to do at the last minute if you’ve got an occasion the next day. And at only 6 propoints each (or around 240 calories), by law, I have to eat them two at a time.

If I knew much about wine (other than how to drink a bottle of it and stay standing), I’d say that these are like a good one – they only get better with age.

What are your favourite cheesecake recipes?! I’d love to know and drool,  so do share – low-fat or otherwise!

Raspberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 8 light digestives (I used Tesco’s)
• 45g/1¾oz light margarine (used because I had no butter in, but it worked well!)

For the filling

• 300g/10½oz light cream cheese (Tesco have BOGOF on Philidelphia Light 300g packs right now, so they worked out £1 each – bargain!)
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 90g/3¼oz caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 free-range egg, plus egg yolk
• 3 tbsp soured cream
• 100g/3½oz raspberries or mixed red berries (I used frozen

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line your muffin tin with eight muffin cases.
2. Take your anger out on the biscuits by popping them into a plastic bag and smashing them to bits with a rolling pin. Or whizz them in a food processor if you’re not that angry/have one. Melt your margarine and mix well.
   

   All ready to go into the oven - raspberries peeking out.

3. Pop some into each muffin case and pat down gently to create your base.
4. For the filling, beat the cream cheese in a bowl until smooth, then stir in the plain flour, caster sugar, vanilla extract, egg and egg yolk and soured cream and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. I did this in my food processor with the whisk attachment ’cause I’m lazy and in awe of it’s snazzyness.
5. Pop a couple of berries in the bottom of each case, and then spoon the mixture over the top, filling almost to the brim of each case.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the filling is set, but you’ve still got a lovely little bit of wibble.
7. Remove and leave to cool for around 30 minutes. Pop them on a plate and chill for at least an hour – preferably overnight.
8. To serve, peel off the paper cases and decorate with some berries. If you’re feeling flash, add a bit of whipped cream and a cheeky wink.
   

   Aren't they pretty?

Get your five-(cakes)-a-day

I love cake. I love baking it, eating it, sharing it with friends and loved-ones, trying to be better at making it, and trying to making people smile with it.

But, like a tumultuous literary love story,  my affair with cake is dangerous. I pore, obsessively, over cookbooks, agonising at what to bake – which springy sponge will bring me closer to baking perfection. Essentially, I try to find the Platonic form of the cupcake.  I bake. And then – inevitably – I eat.

And cake loves me too

I joined Weight Watchers 8 weeks ago, and – for obvious reasons – was forced to put my affair on hold. That is, until this week.

I recently nominated Bristol-based One25 – a wonderful organisation which helps women trapped in street sex work to build new lives – as our office’s Dress-Down Friday charity for the next few months. Last Friday, we started our office fundraising.  Clearly, this was the perfect occasion for cake; cake for a great cause; awareness-raising cake; cake to celebrate transforming the lives of women. But….Weight Watchers?

At this point, some of you might say ‘but you don’t have to eat any of the cakes?’. To you, I say, ‘get a grip, you utter buffoon. Of COURSE I’m going to eat the cakes. Not all of them, but at least two, JEEZ!’

Harry Eastwood's beautiful book of cakey amazingness

But have no fear – waistlines and worries were saved thanks to cakes made with…vegetables?!? 

Yep, you heard me right, vegetables. In this instance, courgettes. A little while ago, while perusing cake books on Amazon, I stumbled accross a book with endless (110 to be precise) 5-star reviews. Finger poised to order, I spotted a mention of grating butternut squash and scattering ground almonds which stopped me in my tracks.

This was Harry Eastwood’s first book, packed to the rafters with gluten-free, guilt-free, bakes, written with love and made by lovingly grating many, many vegetables.

Most of the recipes use no butter, making them deliciously low in fat, and the calorie and fat content for each is listed in the back. Perfect for the intrepid cake-explorer who wants to avoid developing their own ‘cake shelf’, these bakes have been some of the best ones I’ve made, and although it may seem utterly bonkers, I thoroughly recommend it.

This week, I went for American Vanilla Cupcakes,  so-called because of their supreme, L.A-esque, lightness and low saturated fat content – only 1 gram per cake!

Flour- check. Sugar - check. Green veg - check..?

These cupcakes are really some of the lightest, fluffiest, and most delicious I’ve ever eaten. The grated courgettes puff them up like little white clouds, and the absence of butter makes them seem vaguely saintly.

Harry recommends that these are topped with her ‘snow meringue icing’ – a tooth-achingly sweet, marshmallowy frosting, which looks simply beautiful.

But, despite its wonderful texture, I found it a little too sickly for my taste. This time, I went with a basic buttercream.

Sadly, at the time of making said buttercream, I had enjoyed several large glasses of wine, and it all went a bit Pete Tong.

Too emotionally exhausted (read pissed) from the late-night frosting debacle, the cakes were iced at 7.30am, bleary-eyed and mildly hungover. The end result, as you’ll see, was far from professsional, but the cakes

And with fruit on top, SURELY one of your 5-a-day?

were enjoyed with ‘ooh’s and ‘aaaah’s and cries of ‘courgette?! Really?!’ by colleagues.

Having totted up their Weight Watchers points like a massive saddo (7, if you’re interested), I gleefully enjoyed one (and a half) guilt-free.

Lessons learned: always, always have your butter at room temperature when making frosting, and never, ever, try to make frosting after a bottle of red wine.

Meat and Sequins

Anyone who knows me will know that food is a big part of my life – which is why my constituent parts are perhaps a little bigger than they should be.

So when I spotted the chance to volunteer at Bristol’s very own barbecue festival, Grillstock,  during the same weekend as St. Paul’s carnival, you can hardly blame me for grabbing it with both hands and turning my weekend into a full-blown meat feast. With a side of coleslaw.

My weekend kicked off with the carnival on Saturday – a vivacious, colourful and noisy celebration of all things Carribbean, and a real sensory explosion. We stood in a jam-packed Portland square, filled with friends, couples, and families with children clutching balloons and blowing plastic horns – their chubby faces painted like tigers and superheroes. Clutches of multicoloured feathers peeked above the tops of heads and we followed them to the procession.

Saturday was my first carnival experience, and I discovered a love of processions. There were schools, community groups, dancers, drummers, disabled groups, older people and even mothers with their toddlers strapped into their buggies in full spangly costume. And all of them were proudly moving, dancing, and laughing together like a sequinned, smiling snake wiggling through the city on a belly full of jerk chicken.

You can’t help but smile at feeling like you’re part of it.

On the theme of chicken, as a foodie (and a sentimental one at that), I particularly love the fact that almost every house in St. Paul’s with a slither of a front yard turns into a restaurant for the long, hot summers day.

Signs homemade from old carboard boxes hang proudly from gazebos alongside colourful – but much less authentic – printed banners, offering ‘wicked jerk chicken’ or ‘mama’s curry goat’ (with ‘fried dumpling’ often scrawled on to the edge as a crispy afterthought).

Of course I ate some. It would have been rude not to – a two-finger salute to Caribbean culture. I went for curried goat with cocunut infused rice and peas and a dumpling. I love curried goat; I don’t know whether it’s the unusual, slightly exotic, cut of meat or whether I genuinely love the taste, but there’s something about it that feels really special.  Cooked right, it falls off the bone and melts in the mouth and is divine. I would recommend Agnes Spencer’s version of the dish, served at the Tobacco Factory Sunday Market and other local events.

Full of rice and peas and stubby beers, I decided to give the afterparty at Lakota a miss and headed home to get some rest ahead of a day’s work at Grillstock.

It’s safe to say that if I thought I’d seen a lot of meat on Saturday, Sunday was a whole new….meativerse.

Upon arrival, I was almost instantly surrounded by mountains of pork loins, lamb shoulders, chicken, burgers, and what looked like entire cows covered in a variety of rubs, marinades, herbs and spices – all smoking and grilling away in what seemed like hundreds of seriously mean-looking barbecues – one of which looked decidedly like a steam train.

Throw in a barbecue competition, some very dedicated grilling gurus from all over the world (like the inimitable Dr. Bbq, right), some beautiful hot rods and some appropriate rootin’ tootin’ music (including hell-raisin’ Hillbillies Hayseed Dixie),  and I was in meat heaven. 25 -degrees-and-sunny meat heaven. The team – pulled togther by Bristol Event Volunteers – were a great bunch. I had a particularly great time getting to know two of my fellow volunteers and all-round fabulous ladies Em and Sarah – known to the twitterverse as @bristolbites and @princesspurling.

Of course, I was also hard at work. In between some mad dashing about to keep the King of the Grill competition running smoothly and meeting the headliners backstage (see starstruck photo, left) I had to force down free samples of juicy, enormous, marinated ribs from overall winners Bad Byron’s Butt Rub; deliriously creamy key lime pie and some beautifully tender kangaroo from Bodeans; along with a host of other fabulous nibbles from the teams and exhibitors.

But competition was very important. Every single team was deadly serious about barbecuing – with the atmosphere often like an episode of Masterchef – but once the judging was done, all were more than happy to share the fruit of their grills with us humble volunteers and members of the drooling public. If they’re anything like me with baked goods, I imagine they do this to stand back and watch the smiles and hear the groans as they taste the finished products into which they’ve put so much elbow grease.

I can confirm that there were many, many groans. A few were ’cause my feet ached from the harbourside cobbles, but the vast majority were pure, unadulterated, foodgasms.

It was a great day.