Category Archives: sweet snacks

Sweet snack recipes

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May 17, 2015

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breakfast, desserts, drinks, low syn, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

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easy mint chocolate chip smoothie

Right, before we even get started, I’ll need to put up the banner:

TWEAK

Today’s recipe is a major tweak session. Listen, I know, I know it’s not the Slimming World way, but this is something I disagree with them on. All of the ingredients used are syn free AND very good for you, and the only synned item is some dark chocolate, but what’s life without a little risk, eh? I’ve made my feelings quite clear on tweaking before and I’m not going to change for anyone! HARRUMPH. But before we get to that, here’s a little ramble…

The reason for the title of the post being ‘Good Morning Australia’ is because we’ve discovered a new app on our iPad – Wakie! Essentially it’s an alarm clock but one that actually connects you to the person who wants waking up. For example, some bronzed god in Australia may want waking up because he has to go to work at 11am, and I’m sitting in the UK available to make the call, and the app will connect the two of us. It doesn’t cost anything, it’s just like making a phone call, and we LOVE it. At first we were shy – lots of ‘So what’s the weather like where you are’ and ‘what you getting up for’, but now we wake people up by telling them jokes, or my most favourite, using the soundboard of Roy Walker’s catchphrases that we found on the internet from the old Radio 1 days. Imagine that – you’re fast asleep in New Zealand, your phone goes, you blearily answer it and you get ‘GOOD MORNING CONTESTANT’ blaring at you, followed by ‘IT’S A GOOD GUESS, BUT IT’S NOT RIGHT’. Haha! It works the other way too, we had a wake-up call from someone in America this morning, who told us a joke and then farted down the phone. She sounds like just our type of girl to be honest. It’s completely anonymous so there’s never a way of finding out who you spoke to, but it’s just great fun. Perhaps you should download it – you’ll know if you get through to us because it’ll be a litany of blue jokes, shrieks of laughter and ten seconds of Paul trying to press the hang up button and missing because he hasn’t got his glasses on and there’s four iPads in his field of vision.

Anyway, the good news is we’ve had no altercations with anyone today and it’s been an altogether pleasant day, even though all we’ve done is our grocery shopping and beetled about in the car. Are we the only couple who go out in the car just for a drive? I mean, I know the price of fuel means arranging a small mortgage beforehand, but there’s nothing better than just heading out on a sunny day, not knowing where you are going to end up. I think I get that from growing up with my parents, who would take us out on a drive to nowhere and always reply to the question of ‘where are we going’ with ‘there and back to see how far it is’. Helpful. To be fair to them, my sister and I were proper nightmares in the back of the car. Not as bad as Paul, mind you. He kicked his sister so hard in the side of her head for turning off his 911 CD that she spent a car journey from Glencoe to Aberdeen with ringing ears. To be fair, I’d have ringing ears if I had to listen to Paul’s music choices for more than ten minutes – I spend less time changing gears than I do pressing the ‘Skip Track’ button on my steering wheel to try and get past his Tracy Chapman nonsense. It’s no wonder the clutch in the Micra is fucked.

I’M SORRY: TRACY CHAPMAN SOUNDS LIKE A BEE WITH A COLD TRAPPED IN A BOTTLE. 

Actually, my parents once thought it would be a great idea to transport my sister, me, a tent and two week’s worth of camping impedimenta in a scalding hot Ford Escort to the bottom of France (from Newcastle). It wasn’t, and I think my sister and I started fighting from the second my dad started backing the car down the lane from our house. Bearing in mind that we were quite fractious siblings at the best of times (though we’re close now) this was a recipe for disaster. Anyway, clearly sick of remonstrating with us and smacking our arses, our parents threatened to leave us by the side of a road in the middle of rural France at some backwater petrol station. Of course, being kids, we were full of bravado, and we knew they wouldn’t dare. But they did – they bundled us out of the car at the petrol station and proceeded to drive to the exit ramp. Now, let me clarify, I believe their intention was to give us a little fright and stop a moment or two down the ramp and pick us back up. Only they hadn’t factored in the massive lorry that pulled out behind them, clearly with Paris’ entire shipment of Gauloises in the back and no time to wait for my parents to teach us a lesson in good behaviour. Being a one lane exit ramp they had no other alternative than to carry on down onto the motorway and leave us stranded, bawling. Oops. They came back around from the other side around fifteen minutes later after they’d driven like they had a bomb up their arse to the next junction and turned around and we were completely silent for the next couple of hours. So I suppose the threat worked. Anyway, don’t judge, they are great parents.

So today’s recipe is…gasp…wait for it…get Mag’s number dialled ready to press…A SMOOTHIE. Quick! Get the amyl nitrates and bring her around!

This makes four decent sized smoothies, so give a couple to the kids or just enjoy two!

mint chocolate chip smoothies

to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you’ll need:

25g of dark chocolate chips (we used Dr Oetker which are 6 syns, so 1.5 syns a serving), 80g of uncooked spinach, 40g of mint leaves, four frozen bananas, a teaspoon of vanilla essence and 750ml of almond milk (either use it as part of your HEA – you’re allowed 875ml of Blue Diamond almond milk, and you can use it in coffee – or syn it as 3 syns, or less than a syn per smoothie). You’ll also need a blender or some way of making it mush together, and we chucked in some ice for shits and giggles.

to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you should:

  • only thing to do is to prepare the bananas by freezing them – top tip, slice them first and lay all the slices out flat on a chopping board, and then freeze like that – that way you’re not having to cut up a frozen banana
  • blend the whole lot into a nice green blend
  • serve in a normal glass like a level-headed, reasonable person, or pop it in a fucking milk bottle
  • enjoy!

Two caveats – you DON’T need to be a complete bellend and serve these smoothies up in milk bottles like some vexing bearded hipster, but I’ll say this somewhat begrudgingly, they do look rather nice. We bought ours from Lakeland on Amazon – they’re pretty, but expensive. Click here for a link and there are cheaper alternatives!

Also, it might not sound especially nice, but this tasted delicious, like a mint milkshake. You can’t taste the spinach but it adds a lovely green and the health benefits are obvious. We had ours at noon and I’m not hungry yet so I’m going to say this can be used for a breakfast. Yes: technically it’s a tweak. But look at it this way. The banana is syn free. The spinach is a speed food. Mint makes your breath fresh and hot men will kiss you. Dark chocolate is good for the ticker and if you’re feeling particularly virtuous, just leave it out. You’re not drinking a bathtub of this stuff, you’re using it as a meal or a snack. Enjoy it, please!

J

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May 6, 2015

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breakfast, breast, desserts, low syn, lunch, poultry, quark, recipe card, salad, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

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chicken fattoush

Before we launch into day two, I’ve found a brilliant little feature hidden away in the background of my blog – I’ve got the ability to see what people search for to find my blog. It’s so I can tailor the pages in such a fashion to pick up google searches for SW recipes and the like. All very exciting to a data-nerd like me. But I thought I’d share some of the more…obscure searches that people have used to come across (literally, in some cases) my blog..

‘carrot cake overnight oats slimming world’

Excellent! One of my favourite recipes. Nice choice, google.

‘dont trust slimming world’

Oh no! What do they know that we don’t? Maybe it’s all a cult – that would explain all the fucking clapping, for sure. Maybe Mags herself is plotting to take over the world one watery curry at a time?

‘look at my chunky pussy’

Good lord. I like the fact that someone typed that into google too, like it was an instruction rather than a question…

‘1000 heartbeats shit’

I couldn’t agree more. Vernon tries his best, god love him, but you’re still essentially watching someone solve wordsearches during an echocardiogram.

‘miniature brown teapot with teapot and bread on’

I bet they were absolutely gutted when this appeared. For the record, I prefer my “teapots” colossal and without a “lid”, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, I’m talking about cocks again.

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‘chocolate in rainbow world’

God knows.

‘stocky hairy men washing each other’

They’d be disappointed. I wash Paul with the extendable hose from outside. However if watching two fat blokes grappling over the ped-egg and yelling nonsense at the TV melts your butter, get in touch.

‘can dogs have baked cod’

Yes, but only if it’s their birthday. 

‘is semen classed as a syn on slimming world’

No, it isn’t – but remember, only sluts gargle. 

‘young chubby has two at once and loves it’

No denying this one. It was the best night I’ve had in a while. Four fingers at once. But that’s a Kitkat for you (11.5 syns).

And my personal favourite:

‘wat syns.cn u see wen sum is busy with evil’

Words fail me. Seems like a good time to start then…

BREAKFAST

day2break

Red berry fruit salad with sweetened Quark

Nothing to this other than it’s a medley of different red berries and, because it’s SP week and you’re not allowed a yoghurt if you’re sticking to it 100% otherwise your consultant will be around to fling a dog-turd off your window, we mixed quark with a little bit of milk and some sweetener. I fail to see the point or the logic to it but we’re fully invested. I can’t imagine my body is going to shut down like Titanic’s furnace the very second a Muller passes my lips but nevertheless. The Quark (P) tasted alright, but…we used frozen mixed berries (all of them (S) foods)on the bottom of the glass that had been allowed to thaw (but not cooked, because christ I can’t handle two moans about bloody tweaking in one post) and chopped strawberries (S) on the top. That masked the taste. Pomegranates aren’t speed though, surprisingly, but you could swap them out for raspberries if you were desperate.

LUNCH

daytwolunch

Chicken fattoush salad

Note: this can easily be syn-free – just omit the olive oil. But I like a bit of oil on my dressing. Up to you…OH and in our haste this morning to make this before work, we forgot to take a picture. But it looked like the one above, trust me.

to make chicken fattoush you will need:

½ cucumber (S), 1 green pepper (S), 3 medium tomatoes (S), 6 spring onions (S), 1-2 chicken breasts grilled and cut into strips (P), handful of chopped coriander, handful of chopped parsley, as much leafy salad as you like, 1 tbsp finely chopped mint, 40ml lemon juice, salt and pepper, 1 tbsp sumac.

to make chicken fattoush you should: 

  • chop the cucumber in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds (you don’t have to do this, but it stops it getting soggy)
  • chop the pepper, tomatoes and spring onions into chunks
  • mix all of the above with the salad leaves, herbs and chopped mint and chicken
  • in a separate small bowl, whisk together the sumac and lemon juice until well mixed. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  • pour the dressing over the salad, and eat!

For heaven’s sake though, have a mint after. All that onion!

DETOX WATER

daytwowater

Mint and cucumber

Someone posted a comment on a Facebook group I use about a ‘Sassy Water’ where, if you drink it, the nutrients and wonderful vitamins swimming around in your body would make you lose A POUND AN HOUR. Ridiculous right, and not least because Sassy Water sounds like a particularly ghetto-fabulous drag queen. But what made me more aghast – and I am a man who spends a good two hours of my day with my hand clasped theatrically to my lips with a ‘well fuck me’ expression – PEOPLE BELIEVED IT. People honest to God without theatrics believed it. How?! How do these people remember to breathe in AND breathe out? Imagine if losing weight was as easy as drinking a few glasses of water with the Tesco Reduced Items basket bobbing around in it like a turd in a pier? For goodness sake. Tell you what, maybe that searcher above was right and Slimming World is a big con after all, keeping us fat so we can keeps Mags in Bentleys and Montecristos. 

Just kidding, I love SW really. In the water today then:

  • mint from the garden, chopped up fine; and
  • enough cucumber to make a nun purse her lips.

Cucumber is good for the skin and mint is champion if your breath bleaches people’s hair as you talk. Still tasted like I was drinking a face-mask mind.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – WALKING

daytwobody

Today’s body magic was walking – into work and back again. I’ve mentioned before that walking into work is a chore (opens in a new window that one, so don’t worry, give it a read) but today was especially tiresome. At 5.00pm, I looked across Newcastle from my office and saw the sun bright in the sky, children playing happily and I could almost hear tinkly laughter from the street below. I got in the lift, travelled seven floors to the bottom, and went outside. It was like The Day After Tomorrow, with horizontal rain and hail. It felt like my face was being powersanded by God himself. Of course, I had a hoodie on, so I was fine, but Paul was immediately caught out by his cheap-o Tesco work shirt turning see-through so everyone could see his dirtypillows. It was an uncomfortable swim home. To top it off, the cows on the town moor thought it would be a jolly jape to start running together over the path with their shitclad tails swishing about, meaning we had to powermince to avoid them, slipping in the cowpats they’d skilfully and carefully left on the path whilst the rain and wind blew all around us. At one point I almost collapsed onto a bench and told Paul to go on without me. It was like Threads, and that shit’s real.

Of course, the rain, wind and bad weather stopped the very second I pressed the door-release on my car keys. 

God, if you’re up there, why do you hate me so? Is it the blasphemy? The sodomy? The fact I look better with a beard? Bah!

Anyway, in total, I walked 7.64 miles throughout the day (including a schlep around Tesco and my many walks to the photocopier) and burned 1308 calories. Paul managed a respectful 3.4 mile walk (into work and back – he forgot to leave his pedometer on). We definitely earned our dinner.

OH WHAT A SEGUE.

DINNER 

Well, this is embarrassing. It’s still in the oven! We’re having oven-baked meatballs but didn’t realise that they took over two hours to slowly cook. Great! I’ll post a picture tomorrow. Promise. Honest. But the recipe…:

ingredients: 2 large onions (S), 500g lean beef mince (P) (or pork, or turkey!), 2tsp dried oregano, 2 garlic cloves (crushed) (S), salt and pepper, 400g tin of chopped tomatoes (S), 400ml passata, 150ml vegetable stock, 2 medium courgettes (S), 1 medium aubergine (S).

recipe:

  • finely chop the two onions and put into a bowl with the mince, garlic, oregano, and salt and pepper
  • combine the mixture by hand and roll into twenty or so equal balls
  • titter at the word balls
  • place the meatballs into the fridge to chill, perhaps pipe a bit of Michael Buble in for them
  • trim and chop the courgettes and aubergine into chunks and mix together in a large roasting dish with the tomatoes, passata and vegetable stock
  • cover the dish with foil and cook for 50 minutes at 200 degrees celsius
  • add the meatballs to the dish, recover (the dish, not your dignity) and cook for another 40 minutes
  • serve!

We’re having ours with turnip and green beans because that’s the only thing left after we made sassy water.

DAY TWO DONE.

J

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April 15, 2015

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classics, desserts, low syn, quark, recipe card, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks

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slimming world classics – slimming world roulade

James here – before Paul rambles on about exercise, just a quick note to say that this is the final recipe in the Slimming World Classics week, where we took on seven Slimming World classics and tried them out. I’ll say this – for the most part, they were pretty tasty, but as with anything to do with Slimming World, you need to cook the buggery out of the sauce to make it thicker and add more taste. Unless you happen to like your dinner to look like the kind of shite-on-wheels that Ronnie Corbett is selling these days. The theme week was fun to do and we’ve got a few more pencilled in – but for now at least, it’s back to business as usual – five posts a week and a weigh-in! Enjoy.

If you’ve missed the Slimming World classics, here’s some handy links, but do read on afterwards…

I’m actually doing overtime tonight so I’m handing over to Paul, who wants to drone on about exercise. Go him! I’ll pop my head (the top one) through at the end to sass you to sleep.

Paul now. Tonight I’m gonna be talking about that awful, awful thing that we probably all despise (otherwise we wouldn’t be in this position) – EXERCISE. I know, I know. I dry heaved a bit too. Don’t worry, it’ll pass.

Body Magic, the fancy-dan name that Slimming World gives it, is such an essential part of the programme but the one that is most overlooked for some reason, apart from a glistening sticker that gives waved momentarily under your nose now and again. This is something I never really understood. Exercise, alongside Food Optimising will surely yield even more impressive results – so why not make more of a song and dance about it? I suppose they probably know full well that our fatties balk at the idea of doing any kind of movement and like to shy away from it just so it doesn’t put us off. A shiny sticker now and again though helps keep that sweaty finger in that quark-filled pie.

I’ve always had a funny relationship with exercise. No, funny isn’t the right world. Negligent. Avoidant. Fearful. Even as a young lad (and I’ve pretty much always been big) I absolutely detested exercise of any form which wasn’t really that easy growing up in a farming town where all the stuff to do was hidden away in fields a mile or two from the house or up a tree or hay bale. I once told my (let’s admit it, dim) friend that there was a speed limit on the paths just so I could bike a bit slower and stop my chunky little thighs from chafing.

There have been certain sports over the years, surprisingly, that I actually have really bloody loved, even if it made my chest ache, and when I played them I couldn’t get enough and no amount of truffle-shufflin’ could get in my way. Shinty, for example (no it’s a real thing – I promise. It’s like a gayer version of hockey) I REALLY loved but after only a few lessons of it in school it buggered off and was replaced with ‘apparatus’.  It may also be because me and my bong eye managed to hurtle the ball through a pane of the caretakers greenhouse. Still the manliest thing I’ve ever done in my life). I had a brief fling with Rugby too which I also loved (some for obvious reasons) but various things, namely fags and laziness, stopped this in its track. So, apart from that I’ve never really been that into exercise.

We did join a gym last year though. A big, fancy one called David Lloyd. We paid for the whole year upfront with the thought that if we did so we’d be more inclined to use it (and because she gave us a giant custard cream). We went every day without fail for about five weeks and then never went back. A shame because we both really enjoyed going and I missed it when we didn’t go, and unfortunately the motivation to go back just hasn’t come either.

A few people at work play netball (I work with a lot of ladies) which I used to love as well, but again, too gay. But all of this got me thinking – exactly WHAT will get us motivated to exercise more? I can’t help but think that at some point we’ll need to start putting in some serious exercise to shift some weight – as men we tend to ‘plateau’ with our weight loss. A few things come into my mind – I’d like to start going to the gym again, but a nice, comfortable one. David Lloyd was fancy but it was full of ‘roided up chavs or posh folk that scoffed and sneered as us fatties shuffled into the room. It was like a Smell-o-Vision porno, except all the sexy action was next door and you were just left with the moist air and Piz Buin. Going back to rugby would be a good choice too but that’s something for the future – heaven knows I’ll have to shift a lot more tit if I don’t want to be confused for an advertising hoarding or the entire scrum every time I slow down to catch my breath. I bent down to tie my shoelaces the other day and someone stuck a ‘VOTE UKIP’ poster on my left arse-flank. Aaah.

Team sports I think are definitely the future for us. We aren’t the most sociable of people at the best of times (Bowser has more contact with the neighbours just by shitting in their flowerbeds) so it’ll definitely help with our socialising abilities. I quite fancy the idea of lawn bowls but James has completely put the kibosh on that, saying we’re too common and we’d only get asked to leave once we started carrying on and doing Janice Battersby impressions at each other at top volume. Spoilsport. A shame really as I’d already picked out a lovely cream cardigan for just the occasion.

So the hunt will go on. For now, we’ll probably continue with what we’re doing – doing a thirty minute or so walk to and from work in the mornings and evenings. Nice and gentle and easy is the ticket – I used to walk 6 miles a day to and from work which I could only sustain for a week at the time before either a hole was worn in the thigh of my tracksuit bottoms, my feet went on strike or I broke the shower tray in the cubicle at work (oops – my bad) so all of that was pretty self-defeating.

And so on that note, if exercise is the enemy of the fatty the antidote is the friend – CAAAKKE. Here, if you’ve ever wanted to be me, this is exactly what it sounds like when I call James from the supermarket and tell him I’ve used the Nectar points on a chocolate finger.

The remix overeggs the pudding a little but christ, James even looks like Brendan. SPEAKING OF OVER-EGGING THE PUDDING…

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James may have put a slight editorial bias on the picture. But, plot twist, it’s actually James typing now, so on we go.

to make slimming world roulade, you’ll need:

4 eggs, 1 tub of quark, 5 tbsp artificial sweetener, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp vanilla essence, fruit (we used strawberries).

to make slimming world roulade, you should:

  • take all of your expectations of this being a taste sensation and put them in the nearest bin
  • oven onto 180°
  • seperate the yolks from the egg whites which is an absolute piece of piss with one of these egg separators!
  • whisk together the four egg yolks, half the tub of quark, four tablespoons of artificial sweetener, baking powder (hence half a syn) and vanilla essence, set aside
  • whisk together the egg whites until it’s stiff enough to satisfy – whisk half into the egg yolk slop and then fold in the rest – you need to be delicate here, you’re not trying to put out a burning tramp – you want to keep the air in, see
  • line a baking sheet with paper, pour the mixture in, spread it finely and bake for 15-20 minutes
  • use the time to think about your life and what the hell makes you think this is going to taste like anything other than a sweetened omelette with the consistency of a pump-filled cloud
  • once it’s done, allow to cool – you’ll not get the full effect of the flavour if you go in warm
  • mix the rest of the quark with the tablespoon of the sweetener and spread it over the cake, dot it with strawberries and roll it up like an eggy bifta
  • enjoy.

Paul thinks it tastes ‘OK’. I think it tastes exactly like what it is – an eggy, hyper-sweet TURD. 

If you’re short on time, there’s a far quicker recipe:

  • nip to ASDA and buy a pack of these:

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  • smear a Muller-fucking-Light on the top
  • enjoy whilst crying tears of shame.

Look – Slimming World has syns, use them on a slice of bloody cake and enjoy it. Fair enough, choking this down might get you your Body Magic award, but COME ON.

I think I’ve managed to hide my disdain well.

J & P

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April 14, 2015

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drinks, low syn, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, vegetarian

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a thick, meaty guide to Options on Slimming World

We’re out and about tonight so no real post, but I made this for you guys and girls – it’s a guide to Options.

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My good friend Phillipa, knowing my kitchen is awash with volcanic red Le Creuset and other expensive frippery, decided I needed a cup with a handle made from a cock with a skidder down the side of it. I’m not going to lie, I totally love it, and it’ll sit proudly on my windowsill so ole Vinegartits over the road can get her gusset damp over it! Options aren’t a bad option on Slimming World, especially if you’re like us and you find yourself craving chocolate last thing at night and it’s a toss-up between getting a McFlurry or having some angry sex.

There was also a penis cake, but that’s an entry all on it’s own. I had to bring it home because I’m not convinced I could have got away with putting it next to my desk at work and offering it out. I mean if I can’t do that with my own penis I can hardly see a cake version winning. Another friend of mine once made a cake where it was basically a vagina with a baby coming out. Who on Earth thinks that’s a good idea? I felt so guilty cutting through the baby’s head that I could barely go back for thirds. Man I miss baking.

…long entry tomorrow, fnar fnar, starring…cake!

J

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March 16, 2015

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desserts, low syn, quark, recipe card, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks, vegetarian

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tiramisu – 1 syn, 5 syns, take your pick!

James (doing overtime again) says two things: people will never know the trauma of trying to diet with over 200 chocolate eggs surrounding you, and damn – a disappointing new song from Muse. Ah well. Over to Rose West…

Do you know what gets on my wick? And I mean really gets on my wick? Staff tuck shops. You know the ones I mean – some enterprising colleague decides to clear out a filing cabinet drawer and stuff it to the brim with chocolate and crisps and all sorts of delicious treats. These are also the ones that probably send around 30 CC’d emails around the office every other day for some Cake Sale event that going around. Comic Relief. Sports Relief. Colon Relief. That last one was made up, but equally as satisfying, believe me.

Now, I know my anger with this one is misplaced. I’m not angry with the drawer (it’s a very pretty, sleek affair) or with what’s in it – oh no. A slightly-undersized Snickers at hand provides a national service on-par with the NHS in my book. And the cost is entirely reasonable, especially when the menstrual vending machine wants to charge three-times that amount on a battered, broken Twirl. No, my anger on this issue is placed solely at the type of people that do it. Wholly pleasant people, naturally, but they’re always tiny, or skinny. The one in my office is completely lean, not an inch of fat on him and it was the same in my old office. How do they do it?! I can only assume they have complete self-control, something probably unnatural inside them that stops them from diving headfirst into it like Scrooge McDuck does into his pile of money which is exactly what I would do if I didn’t think I’d get stink-eye from the typists.

I managed to stay away from our drawer at work for a whole 14 MONTHS (I refused to be allowed to be told where exactly it was) before succumbing to a 40p can of Diet Coke and since then it’s like an aluminium Mermaid, sending out a siren song, enticing me to just drop a few coins for a roll of Rolo’s with the label in Turkish. Gah, it drives me mad. I try my best to instruct everyone around it to form some sort of Transformers-style Berlin Wall whenever I hoist myself off my orthopaedic chair but it never works. So the fault is entirely theirs that I’m so fat. Yup.

Keeping a mental note of what sweet treats have syn values can be a right fanny-on. I always like to save a copy of those pictures you often see fly around Facebook that has syn values printed over various bars of chocolate. I have to suck air through my teeth as I notice the 5 different notification bars at the top and the MS Word red-squiggly line under some words (one day the world will know how to do these things properly. And I will be happy) but on the whole they’re very useful.

And this got me thinking – how exactly can you enjoy a sweet treat on Slimming World? I’m sure you’d agree with me that desserts are by far the most neglected part of any diet. Dessert for me is the absolute highlight of a meal. I always position myself as close as possible to pregnant ladies on meals out because I know they’ll never let me down and I can at least half-pretend to have a pudding in solidarity. After I’ve spent a week telling them of course that the baby would want a dessert, and have you seen the dessert list? And oooh, you must be craving crumble by now. Never fails. It’s almost worth the effort knocking them all up.

Where was I? Oh yes. Dessert. Or Pudding if you’re rough (just kidding). Like me you’ll probably balk at the idea of a bowl of sliced fruit with a spoon of Splenda slung money-shot style over the top of it, or a bowl of Quark with an Options stirred in. These aren’t all bad, but they always seem to lack that indulgent factor that makes a dessert a dessert. That’s why, with this baby, I’m sure you’ll be pleased. Slimming World Tiramisu! The Cilla Black of the dessert world, granted, but this really was delicious. Just healthy enough to keep you on track, and indulgent enough to make you giggle like a horny housewife at a meter reader. A few elements of this are the standing Slimming World fare– quark, Options, sweetener, but to add a bit of depth to it I’ve added a spoonful of Baileys – one – for a bit of creaminess, two – for a boozy taste that you need for Tiramisu, and three – for a bit of boldness to the flavour. We like to use the mantra that a few syns are good for you – it’s those that keep you on track. A syn-free diet will only lead to ruin. This is great for a weigh-in night treat.

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Here’s the recipe, and this will serve up two big portions, or four small ones.

to make tiramisu, you’ll need:

Tub of Quark (I’d use the Golden Acre or any ‘thicker’ style of Quark – a ‘spoonable’ one won’t quite give you the right texture, unless you put the whole thing in the freezer for an hour or so, so it firms up, two Cappucino Mullerlights, 1tsp sweetener, 2tsp of Camp (one syn), 50ml Bailey’s (eight syns), pinch of sea salt and a pinch of cocoa

to make tiramisu, you should:

Throw the lot together and mix. I used a stand mixer and it was done in less than a minute. Stick a sponge finger at the end and pretend you didn’t eat the rest of the pack whilst it was mixing. 5 syns a portion, or 2.5 if you’re having a smaller one. You could reduce the syn value to just 1 if you’re feeling virtuous if you left out the Bailey’s, but I think it gives it a kick. As always, please give it a go, and let us know what you think!

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February 11, 2015

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breakfast, desserts, low syn, overnight oats, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, taster ideas, vegetarian

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carrot cake overnight oats

A very quick post tonight as I have an electrician coming around and we have to go scour the house to make sure there aren’t errant bottles of lube on the bathroom shelving or other such nonsense. He’s going up in the loft and I’m not 100% sure I can say with certainty that there isn’t a box of condoms just out of reach near the loft hatch where we’ve had to hastily hide things when people come around. So that’s that. Tonight’s recipe is a delicious variation on the overnights oats recipe that seems to get so many slimmers moist at the gusset – this one combining all of the flavours of carrot cake without all of the fat – in fact, you could easily make it syn free if you want.

slimming world carrot cake overnight oats

to make carrot cake overnights you should:

tip a cup of oats (not being all American, it’s just easier to say cup because you need an equal amount of oats to almond milk – 35g is your healthy extra so match that with milk) You can use yoghurt I suppose, a toffee Muller would be nice, but I enjoy almond milk because you can have an absolute shit-ton on SW and still be within your HEA. So yeah, oats and milk into a jar. Grate a medium carrot in there and add a mashed up banana. Add half a teaspoon of cinnamon powder. Either use a tsp of brown sugar (two syns, if that) or some sweetener (bleurgh) and mix it all up. Add a few raisins if you want – 25g is 4 syns, but I added about 8 raisins so at the very most it’ll be half a syn, so I didn’t even count it. Make this syn free by using a syn-free yoghurt, sweetener and no raisins but goodness me, you might as well suck your thumb for all the taste that’ll have. Mix it all up, put it on the side if you don’t like it cold in the morning or fridge it if you prefer. Enjoy in the morning!

Some people will tell you adding a mashed banana means you have added a tweak, but I say bugger off to that. You’re eating the same amount of banana that you would if you just ate a banana normally, so there’s no extra sugar, syns or effort needed.

Enjoy! Share this recipe, it’s a really good breakfast variant and a sneaky way of getting some superfree in!

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January 25, 2015

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classics, desserts, low syn, quark, recipe card, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks, taster ideas

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chocolate orange cheesecake

Do you know, I post these recipes every day in a Facebook group full of lovely ladies and get plenty of nice comments – but today I posted a comment asking how many syns were in man-jam and it’s like my phone has turned into a rampant rabbit – it’s never stopped buzzing. Negligible amount of syns, if you were wondering. Some say it’s great for a diet and it is in my case, my jaw hurts so much I can barely eat a grape for an hour afterwards. Haha.

So, today’s ‘thing’ was geocaching, combined with taking another rescue dog out for a walk from Bryson’s Cat and Dog Shelter. Geocaching is one of those activities which is incredibly hard to explain and sounds terminally dull until you get out there and try it yourself. Put succinctly, it’s a treasure hunt where no-one wins, but everyone has a good time trying. It’s completely free to play and is an interesting way of seeing new sights in your local area or injecting some fun into a routine walk. I can almost guarantee there will be a fair few caches near you right now.

What is a cache, then? Members of the public from around the world hide containers – some of them tiny little tubes, some proper Tupperware boxes, some massive chests – all over the place. The idea is that you’d never find them unless you were looking for them, but by searching for them you’ll often be taken to interesting places you didn’t know, or pretty views, or just cool spots. The containers will hold a log-book and you sign your name to say you’ve found it – and that’s it! There’s no prize, although some of the containers will hold little trinkets like bouncing balls. How do you find them? Using the GPS on your phone, which most smartphones these days will have. Log onto geocaching.com, see if there are any nearby. Download the geocaching app onto your phone (£6.99 for the full version, but there’s a free ‘intro’ app which does the same thing). Then go out to your chosen place, and follow the compass and clues to your cache! Done!

Or, to explain in it an overly twee but rather nice way, here is the official video:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/1YTqitVK-Ts]

Urgh, do your teeth hurt like mine do? But no – it’s genuinely really fun!

So, we looked online, and there was a lovely trail of eight geocaches near the cat and dog shelter. We immediately acquired number one, which was a tiny magnetic cache stuck behind one of the exchange boxes in the street. Then we picked up this little beauty:

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She was a staffie cross, and boy was she strong – the path was icy and I swear to God, I skated half the way around the walk. Like the other week though, she was so excited to be out and about! How people can just ditch these dogs is beyond me. We were warned that she was nervous around dogs so when someone approached me on the path with a big fuck-off Alsatian, I went and hid in the bushes to the side of the path. Only the stupid old duffer then stood directly in front of my way out with the dog, checking his phone, oblivious to the fact I was ankle-deep in freezing mud. Mind he sharp shifted when I shouted ‘I’M NOT BLOODY STANDING HERE HOPING TO GROW ROOTS, FOR FUCK’S SAKE’. Oops.

It was a lovely two hour walk, with a good mix of caches – one stuck under an old deserted railway platform, one under a postbox, one disguised as a branch of a tree and my personal favourite, a camouflaged lunchbox hidden in a rotten tree-trunk covered in hay with the only clue being ‘Part My Hair’. We found five of the eight and some pics are below:

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You can see in the top pictures the little magnetic cache with just enough room to hide a logbook and pencil, the second set of pictures shows the ‘wig’ cache and the third was the hardest, just a tiny bit of wood hidden in an old tree.

Geocaching is great fun, free and perfect for body magic. Give it a go. More on this next week.

Finally, a recipe for you:

chocolate orange cheesecake

This makes four cheesecakes or two big ones for us fatties.

to make chocolate orange cheesecake, you’ll need:

ingredients: two chocolate orange options (1.5 syns each), 500g quark and four lighter lemon alpen bars, little sugar stars to decorate (optional, one syn per tsp I reckon).

to make chocolate orange cheesecake, you should:

recipe: microwave your alpen bar for five seconds just to loosen it up, chop it up and press to the bottom of a glass. Mix together the quark and options and place on top. Chill for a couple of hours and decorate with stars.

extra easy: it’s a dessert, so it’s all about syns, but really, not much at all. Two light alpen bars is your HEB, and you only need one each here so you can have another one another time. Let’s call the options one syn and the stars another, so in total – two syns each, but if you swap the stars out for tangerine pieces, it’ll be a syn each. Delicious and simple!

J

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November 24, 2014

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breakfast, budget, classics, desserts, overnight oats, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

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sowing my overnight oats

christ, that’s a revolting image!

Weigh in post coming tomorrow because my photoshop isn’t working for some reason and I can’t make a banner, but because I’m all about the bass style I want to do it properly. I was going to have a night off tonight but Paul, being a darling husband, has just nipped to ASDA to get me some milk and to make me a hot chocolate, so, I feel I should return the goodwill by posting a quick recipe on here. Remember: this post was never meant to be, hence being short! It’s overnight oats time!

how to make overnight oats:

overnight

Put simply – measure out the oats, place in the bottom of the jar, top up with yoghurt and then lots of syn free berries. The oats absorb the yoghurt and the fruit juices and creates a lovely little porridge. You can mix it up with other fruits and yoghurt, just make sure you’re choosing syn-free options or synning accordingly!

Handy thing to make before bed to save time in the morning.

One last thing – Paul actually farted me awake last night. How classy is that – it wasn’t the pitch or volume, just the sheer overwhelming stench. He’s the only one who can take a fragrant thai green curry and make it smell like a cat shit drying in the sun.

Isn’t life a joy…

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November 21, 2014

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desserts, naughty, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks

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chocolate orange rainbow fudge

Breaking with tradition a little here, but I thought I’d post something I made a while back for a bake sale at work. Before you all start trying to eat the monitor, this is definitely not a slimming world friendly recipe. Given there are only two ingredients – condensed milk and chocolate, with some colouring and flavouring on the side, I think Margaret, our fearless leader, would be furious if I even attempted to work out the syns. So, in the spirit of oncoming Christmas, I’m not going to! Here it is, behold in all of its wonder…

Admittedly, this isn’t something you’d eat a lot of, but it is so easy to make and looks amazing. Sadly, it is also fairly expensive to make if you don’t have the colours and flavours in already.

Here is what you need – 1.1kg of white chocolate, 710g of condensed milk. Orange essence, chocolate essence. Gel colours. Cheap chocolate works fine in this recipe because you’re not eating a lot of it, or at least you shouldn’t if you want to live past thirty and not be buried in a piano box. A quick work on the colourings, I use Wilton gels from Lakeland, as adding liquid into this mix can cause problems, but a small drop of colouring should be alright. As for flavourings, try and use essence rather than flavouring, they are more expensive to buy but last longer as you don’t need so much. Again, I buy mine from Lakeland.

The key here is to take your time. The first three layers, if you have slightly angled loaf tin, need slightly less ingredients than the top three. So, if you have an angled tin, use 167g of chocolate and 115g of condensed milk for the bottom three layers, and 200g of chocolate and 125g of milk for the top three. Line a loaf tin with foil, allowing some foil to hang over the side so you can lift the fudge out later, taking time to smooth out the edges and get it nice and crinkle free. If you have a straight loaf tin, just divide your ingredients by six so you have uniform layers.

For your first layer, which in my case was pink, put your chocolate and milk into a bowl and melt in the microwave. Gently. You want to stop every ten seconds or so and stir, and you stop microwaving when there are a few bits left in there, as the residual heat will melt them when you stir. Add a drop or two of essence, chocolate in this case, and a drop of food colouring. Mix well, don’t be stingy with the time you take, as the better you mix, the nicer the finished product will look. Once you are happy with it, pour it into the loaf tin, taking time not to get it down the sides and keeping it tidy. Let it settle for a moment or two, making sure it has reached all corners, and then lift the tin and sharply tap it on the worktop a few times, which breaks any bubbles inside the fudge. You’ll always get some, but this minimises it. Now pop it into the freezer and go do something else for forty minutes – you want the fudge to be cold with almost a skin on it, as this will stop the next layer from melting into the one below.

Now, it’s a case of building it up, repeating the above process for each layer, remembering to alternate the flavours and taking time to make sure the chocolate has melted but not seized, the bubbles are out and that you pour carefully. Remember to slightly adjust to compensate for your angled tin.

Once the sixth layer is complete, pop it in the fridge for a good few hours, and I actually prefer overnight. The more time you give it to set the better. When you’re ready to serve, very gently lift out the fudge using the foil handles and carefully unwrap. You should have a block of fudge which doesn’t look great until you start trimming the rough edges off and cutting it into pieces. Lovely! A top tip: pop your knife in warm water before cutting, and make sure it is sharp for good clean lines with no blended colour. Wipe the knife each time you cut a piece. Enjoy!

You can tinker with the flavours, the colours or the look of this very easily, and why not, if you’re not confident, have a trial run with two layers just to get the jist of it…

Finally, credit to the original recipe goes to the wonderful, talented Yoyomax, who continues to inspire on YouTube. Great work.

Enjoy!

J

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October 10, 2014

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desserts, low syn, recipe card, sweet snacks, taster ideas

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low syn chocolate mousse

desserts! The tricky stage of any meal on a diet. Normally, Paul and I would keep it restrained, with maybe just a tub of Ben & Jerry’s each to slobber down as we shriek our way through some reality TV in our knickers. 500g of B&J Cherry Garcia is 37 and a half syns, which actually, isn’t TOO bad if you’re craving a massive sweet treat. But this low syn chocolate mousse also hits the spot.

Now, I’ve had a bad day today – full of sweets, and I was given my flu jab yesterday by someone who I’m not entirely convinced wasn’t trying to kill me and who might as well have used a fucking bayonet, so my arm hurts. Paul however came to the rescue and made me chocolate mousse Slimming World style. I’ve marked it as 4 syns for the lot but it’s not even really that, as the recipe makes four servings with one option and a bit of cream, so you could fudge the numbers and go for 2 syns. But then, why cheat yourself when you can treat yourself? Christ, I just vommed.

to make low syn chocolate mousse, then:

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Two easy treats! If you’re being very good, the jelly is the way forward, and so easy to make. We buy bags and bags of the frozen fruits from Sainsburys – it’s a great way of upping your superfree for an easy finish! The chocolate mousse is equally as easy. You don’t need to fanny about putting it in a piping bag, but I think Paul wanted to use my fancy piping bag stand from Lakeland. Any excuse to ratch about in my baking cupboard! With thanks to Emma on the comments, the jelly is actually 1.5 syns a sachet, but divided between four pots means less than half a syn a jelly – so go for it!

Final question – does anyone know why cats go so mental if you place a strand of cooked spaghetti on their backs? Sola goes tearing around the house like she’s in riding around a wall of death. Mind, we’re having a bit of bother with both cats – Bowser keeps trying to get his end away but we cut off his space-hoppers when he was young, and Sola is having nothing of it and insists on trying to claw his eyes. But then we found them both snuggled up in an old shoebox this morning without a care in the world. They’re the Contrary Marys of our street.

Anyway! Enjoy.

J