One of my Facebook friends posted the recipe to this Healthy Chocolate Cake as a gluten free, low carb idea. From there, I ended up using this recipe from Eating Well Living Thin, and I worked out the Slimming World syn value for the ingredients given. By my reckoning, it's 31 for the whole cake - mine has cut into 12 generous slices but as it's so rich, you could easily serve smaller pieces. That made it a chocolate cake which looked very promising, for just 2.5 syns a slice! We couldn't resist trying it out.
Last night you saw the food processor full of gooey chocolatey goodness. Those of you lucky enough to be twitter friends of mine also got the bonus picture of my boyfriend - and this picture too, the product as it came out of the oven looking - much to my surprise, if I'm totally honest - like a real, normal, full fat chocolate cake! Risen tall, unexpectedly tall - with a cracked shell like a brownie. The whole flat smelt delicious. Our hopes were very high as I wrapped it in cling film, put it in the fridge and went to bed for the night, dreaming of soft, moist, creamy chocolatey cake crumbs!
It still smells good today, it definitely does have that going for it, though I can't say I'm 100% happy with the overall result. Have you ever had a bitter chocolate torte? It's reminding me of something I tasted in Austria, though I can't at all remember the name. It's got a beautiful moist texture, it's just very 'dark chocolate' when my palette is of course used to MILK and SUGAR and FAT and all the things we're trying to avoid at the moment! I think with a little more sweetener it would be magnificent, and we will be trying it again for sure - but I've already made some improvisations with what we've got.
Yesterday I was talking to the boyfriend about a craving for trifle, so I went hunting for syn free custard recipes (with custard being sugar, egg yolks and milk, I couldn't see that there would be syns involved - but I like to check these things against the greater knowledge of the Google masses!) - it turns out that my boyfriend doesn't actually like trifle, which put paid to that idea. (Next time he's on a conference I'm getting my sugar free jellies, SW custard, fresh berries, and making a trifle that will last all week. Probably. Unless I eat it in one night for dinner.) However! Not to be perturbed by his lack of enthusiasm, I made SW custard today and had my slice of this cake with lashings of hot custard and a handful of soft raspberries. The sweetness of the custard and the fruit made this cake absolutely amazing. In my opinion, it just needed that little bit of extra sugar (or sugar substitute) to make it really sing - and boy am I glad I went with my instinct on that one. It was incredible. I'm now upset that I took a slice to my mother for her to try ("yes mum, I've made a cake with kidney beans in... no, it won't taste like kidney beans!") when it would have impressed her one hundred times more as a warm dessert with custard and fruit.
But you know me, so we're taking it one step further and trying another approach to getting my own way in the Menu War with my beloved boy - tonight's dessert is going to be chocolate cake and raspberry 'trifles' and the custard is setting as we speak. I hope it turns out as nicely as the hot dish! Plus, one slice of my cake created these two small trifle bowls - which makes this a 1 syn dessert! If you wanted to make it even more special, a bit of non branded low fat squirty cream on top would be but half a syn for 2 level tablespoonfuls making this into a really luscious party treat that you can 'afford' to have every day on Extra Easy!
I also treated myself to those little glass dishes from a charity shop recently and think they're delightful, so I imagine that when pudding is finished I will make us both wait to dive in whilst I take a series of artistic photographs. I'm sure you can't wait to see those tomorrow :P
So far today has been a really good day - delicious fruit breakfast, a second batch of the 'KFC' chicken made for lunch (and totally demolished, given that I then had to make a special trip to his workplace to deliver it to him still-warm) and a dinner that I've not made in a long time - Imam Bayildi, made 'my' way, with a sneaky sausage in there too using a few more of our syns and getting things out of the freezer ready to be replaced with bags of frozen vegetables and other SW staples. Tuesday is a neglected day, I think, so I hope yours is shaping up as nicely as mine has.
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