introducing the low-syn Greggs style festive bake

Oh god, we’ve succumbed. We’re giving in to the tidal wave of barely-literate posts about using Weight Watchers wraps for all sorts of things, from Cornish pasties to incontinence knickers, and making our own recipe for the Greggs festive bake. Well: a Slimming World friendly take on it. If you’re not familiar with what a Greggs festive bake is, let me clarify for you: it’s what mothers who are more earring than human push into their toddler’s mouths instead of a sausage roll at Christmas-time. You’ve got to make an effort for the bairns, after all. If that analogy is a little too mean-spirited for you, swap it out for this one: Greggs is responsible for at least 93% of the crumbs you see stuck in the corner of Northern folks’ mouths. Barely a sentence can be finished in Newcastle without someone opening their mouth and:

Greggs opening a new shop in there; or
half a stottie falling out.

To put that into perspective, there’s over 29 Greggs stores in Newcastle alone. Hell, there’s even an outlet shop on the West Road that sells their leftover stock off cheaply. I mean, that’s commitment to earning a crust, no?

Anyway, the Festive Bake – a combination of stuffing, chicken, cranberry, pastry, heart disease and I think onion, superheated until it is hotter than the surface of the sun – causes much excitement up here. People talk about the arrival of the festive bake as if it’s the second coming of Jesus – my facebook is awash with people getting a froth on when they go on sale because it heralds the arrival of Christmas. We don’t buy into it – no disrespect to Greggs, but I refuse to go in since they stopped keeping things warm.

Nevertheless, we’re all about giving you what you want, so please, find the recipe below. Before we get to that, though, I wanted to draw your attention to this:

We absolutely nailed it – our revised target was £3,000, and we’ve done it – if we can get it up to £3,200 that means that, with Gift Aid, we’re donating £4,000 to a charity that means the world to us! If you can find a spare quid to donate, please do! As an addendum to that plea, just a word of FUCK YOU to the person who left us a comment bemoaning that we are asking for money. You don’t need to donate, you don’t need to share, you don’t need to do diddly-squat – but we’re not getting a penny of this money, we’re not doing it for us, and anyway, it’s our blog. If you have a problem with the infrequent (and only temporary) Christmas charity requests, you can kiss the most tainted part of my ring! We’re never going to apologise for doing good.

Anyway, hush. No negativity! The recipe makes enough for four.

to make a Greggs style festive bake, you’ll need:

two big fat chicken breasts;
a nice pack of bacon medallions;
one big fat white onion;
330g of Philadelphia lightest (3x HEA) (you might want to use Quark, but please, have some dignity)
4x Weight Watchers white wraps – can’t find them in the shops? No need for tears: just swap out for wraps of near enough the same nutritional content – 1 wrap is a HEB choice
1 tsp dried sage if you’re common, or, if you’re as bent as a butcher’s hook like me and have a herb garden, a few leaves of fresh sage
1 tsp of garlic powder
2 tbsp of cranberry sauce (we use the Tesco Finest cranberry because we’re classy, which works out at 4 syns)
Paxo stuffing mix – we use 25g of made-up stuffing in this recipe – to be honest, with the added sage, you could cheerfully leave it out, but we’re all about being authentic – 25g is 1.5 syns

So, assuming I haven’t had a mild brain injury, that works out at 5.5 syns. For the sake of argument, we’ll call the bakes 1.5 syns and get on with it.

If you need a good deal on chicken or bacon, our Musclefood deal allows you to create your own hamper – no more packages with stuff you don’t want to eat, like bumholes or lamb. Come, take a look: it’ll open in a new window.

to make a Greggs style festive bake, you should:

oven on to 190 degrees, please
dice up the chicken, bacon, onion and fingertips – you want everything roughly the same size
can’t be arsed with all that knife work – then throw it all in a blender and roughly pulse – you want uniformity, you do not want a puree
squirt a few squirts of oil into a hot pan – use Frylight if you must, but honestly, you’re better off using Castrol 4-Stroke than that muck
cook everything off, adding the garlic and sage as it heats through, until the chicken is cooked, the onion softened and the bacon a bit crispy
- if you’re using fresh sage, just chuck the leaves in whole but remember to take them out before you stuff the pasties
once all is cooked, stir in the Philadelphia, plenty of salt and pepper, stuffing (if using) and cranberry sauce on a low heat – it’ll soften down and bring everything together – maybe add a touch of chicken stock if you think things are a bit claggy,
allow to cool – we actually put ours in the fridge overnight to settle but that’s not necessary
stuff your wrap: put the wrap in front of you, place the filling in a rectangle in the middle, then fold in your flaps so the meat doesn’t fall out
brush with egg or milk, top with some black pepper and if you’re feeling saucy, a grating of Parmesan, throw them onto a non-stick baking tray then stick in the oven to cook for maybe 25 minutes – keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn
serve with an ambulance on stand-by

Delicious! These freeze really well too!

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