Yorkshire Curd Tarts

 

 I was flicking through a Weightwatchers recipe book called the Book of Recipes (see what they did there?) looking for some healthy meal ideas, and I came across a recipe for Yorkshire curd tarts. As the letter for Alphabakes this month is Y, and my boyfriend's mum was coming to dinner and we are both on a January diet (or semi-diet in my case!) I thought it would be a great idea to make for dessert.

It's a traditional Yorkshire dessert - a pastry tart with a filling made from butter, sugar, milk and egg and raisins or currants. As this is a Weightwatchers recipe it uses cottage cheese - but don't be put off!

To make a dozen small tarts, you need:

125g shortcrust pastry (I used Jus-Rol)

125g cottage cheese

finely grated zest of 1 lemon, or a dash of lemon juice

25g sultanas

25g soft brown sugar

pinch of ground nutmeg

1 egg

Preheat oven to 180C. Roll out the pastry and cut out circles and place in a tin. I used a whoopie pie tin but you can use a mini tart tin or a shallow cupcake tin. I sprayed the tin with Dr. Oetker Cake Release first.

 

 

Push the cottage cheese through a sieve into a bowl and beat in with the lemon, sultanas, sugar and egg.

Divide the filling between the pastry cases and bake for 20 minutes.

They've risen and gone golden brown on top.

 They were very easy to remove from the tray thanks to the Cake Release. These are bite-sized and if you are following Weightwatchers, the entire recipe has 31 ProPoints so it depends if you get more tarts out of your mixture and how many you want to eat!

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the challenge I co host with Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is Y.

I'm also sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen, and Laura at How To Cook Good Food, as they are looking for healthy recipes this month. This is a Weightwatchers recipe that uses cottage cheese to make it lower in fat, which is definitely healthier than a lot of desserts!

I'm entering Maison Cupcake's Dead Easy Desserts challenge for the first time, which is for any dessert that takes less than 30 minutes to make.

January's Four Seasons Food, hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux, has 'virtuous' as its theme this month. I always feel virtuous when I cook a Weightwatchers recipe!

Vietnamese Prawn Stir-Fry

I adapted this recipe from one in Slimming World magazine  but I did go a bit overboard on the spice! I've toned it down a little for this recipe but really it is a matter of personal taste.

To serve 2, you need:

300g straight to wok noodles

bag of mixed stir fry veg or a selection of veg such as beansprouts, red pepper, mange tout

Fry Light

1 lemongrass stalk, diced

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes

1/4 tsp ginger puree or a 1/2 inch piece of root ginger, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

100ml vegetable stock

2 tbsp soy sauce

200g large prawns, peeled

dash of lime juice

Spray Fry Light into a wok and fry the onion then add the lemongrass, garlic and ginger and the chilli flakes.

Add the vegetable stock and soy sauce then the vegetables. Cook until they are softened or wilted or cooked through - it will depend on what vegetables you use. If you use carrot or red pepper, slice it into matchsticks.

Add the noodles and prawns, stir through and cook for a few minutes.

Sprinkle a dash of lime juice over the top to serve. I think I used too much of the chilli flakes and next time I might leave it out entirely! I liked serving it in a triangular bowl; I think the shape works well with this kind of dish.

I'm sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen, and Laura at How To Cook Good Food, as the theme for January is "healthy".

 

Similarly the theme for Four Seasons Food this month is "virtuous". The challenge is hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux.

 
I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for the challenge Bloggers Around the World, as the country this month is Vietnam.

 

Spinach, Cottage Cheese and Roasted Garlic Cannelloni

 I was trying to find ways to eat more vegetables and decided that spinach and ricotta cannelloni would be nice. I was browsing for recipes on the Slimming World website to see if there was a lower fat version and indeed I came across a recipe for spinach and cottage cheese cannelloni. It wasn't quite as nice but it works out as only one syn on Extra Easy so to me it's well worth making this instead of the full fat version.

To serve two, you need:

8-12 cannelloni tubes (the ones I used were quite small)

1 tbsp parmesan cheese

100g spinach leaves

125g fat-free natural cottage cheese

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1 egg yolk

250 ml passata

pinch of sweetener

1 garlic clove, roasted and the filling scooped out; or raw and crushed

salt, pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Bring a pan of water to the boil and cook the spinach leaves for a few minutes until they have wilted.

Drain the spinach in a colander and finely chop. I was amazed at how much it reduced down!

Mix the cottage cheese with a little seasoning, the nutmeg, garlic, egg yolk and the spinach.

Spoon into the cannelloni tubes and place them in a small baking tin lined with tin foil. The cannelloni tube on the right is meat, for my boyfriend (I'm not vegetarian so don't mind cooking the two together) - that's why it's a different colour!

Mix the sweetner and passata and pour over the cannelloni, making sure the pasta is completely covered.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the pasta is soft.

Sprinkle over parmesan cheese if desired to serve.

I'm sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen, and Laura at How To Cook Good Food, as the theme for January is "healthy".



Similarly the theme for Four Seasons Food this month is "virtuous". The challenge is hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux.

 

 The theme for this month's Cheese Please is winter warmers - baked cannelloni is a great dish for a chilly winter's evening. The challenge is hosted by Fromage Homage.




Pasta Please is asking for recipes using garlic this month and I've used garlic in my cannelloni (though I forgot to take a photo of it!). The challenge is hosted this month by The Spicy Pear on behalf of  Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.



I am also sending this to Simply Food's Let's Cook... with green vegetables as I've used spinach here.

Indian Vegetable Curry

I made this vegetable curry for dinner on New Year's Day as I thought it would be a nice healthy start to the year (and I was cooking for my boyfriend's mum, who is vegetarian). The recipe comes from a book I picked up in the charity shop called The Creative Vegetarian Cookbook. I was surprised that the title was so generic, as curries are so popular these days they are always named after the region or have a proper name like bhuna, tikka masala etc, rather than just "Indian curry". I didn't think the book was that old even when I saw the publication date was 1996, until I remembered I was still at school that year and it was 18 years ago! So maybe the name can be excused.... in any case it was a very tasty dish. I haven't come across the use of milk in a curry before either - these days you are much more likely to see coconut milk, but if you use skimmed milk instead of coconut milk it's a good way of reducing the fat in a curry.

To serve 4, you need:
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
4 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 onion, finely choppped
half a pint of milk
oil for frying
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
400g tin of tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp brown sugar
1 vegetable stock cube dissolved in a little boiling water
vegetables: the suggestions in the recipe book were mushrooms, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes and okra, but I used cauliflower, butternut squash, red pepper and green beans.
2 tbsp fat free plain yogurt (not in the recipe; my own addition)

The recipe actually begins by telling you to grind the spices together to make a powder but since I didn't have cumin, mustard or coriander seeds I just used the ground spices in the first place. Fry the chopped onions in a large pan, add the spices, ginger and peppercorns and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring.

Add the milk and vinegar - the vinegar will make the milk look like it's split but the curry turned out fine.

Add tomatoes, tomato puree, sugar and stock. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for up to one hour - though I thought mine was thick enough after half an hour.

I par-boiled my butternut squash chunks and cauliflower florets and added them along with green beans and red pepper to the curry.

Simmer until the vegetables are cooked and thoroughly combined with the sauce.

I added a couple of tablespoons of low fat plain yogurt to make the curry creamier just before serving.

I served the curry in a large glass bowl so my guests could help themselves; I also had bowls of rice, naan bread and poppadoms on the table. It was a real Indian feast!

I'm sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen, and Laura at How To Cook Good Food, as the theme for January is "healthy".

Similarly the theme for Four Seasons Food this month is "virtuous". The challenge is hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux.

I am also sending this to Simply Food's Let's Cook... with green vegetables as there are green beans in this curry, you could also add broccoli or any other green veg.

Helen at Fuss Free Flavours is challenging us this month to include an extra portion of veg. This vegetable curry gives you several of your five a day, but if it's something you already make, how about adding one extra type of veg to normal?

Slimming World-style Low Fat Chocolate Swiss Roll

 Members of my Slimming World group have been raving about a "half syn cake" for ages; it's so low in fat that is is half a syn for the entire cake. The cake doesn't use any flour or butter so it comes out very flat, so I had the idea of rolling it up to make a Swiss roll. I thought it would be much nicer as a chocolate Swiss roll so I added cocoa powder, which is 1 syn per level tablespoon. I used two in the cake and one in the filling, meaning this whole cake worked out at 3.5 syns, or just over half a syn a slice as I cut it into six pieces.

You need:
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tub Quark
3 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp Splenda or other sugar-free sweetener

Preheat oven to 180C. Separate the eggs and whisk the whites until you have soft peaks.

 In another bowl, mix the eggs with 2 tbsp Splenda, half the tub of quark and the baking powder and 2 tbsp cocoa powder.

Mix well and fold into the egg whites.

Line a Swiss roll or shallow baking tin with greaseproof paper and spray with Fry Light, then pour over the cake mixture.

Bake for 20 minutes then allow to cool. When cool, turn over and remove the baking paper.

Mix the remaining cocoa powder and sweetener into the rest of the quark.

Spread over the cooled cake

And roll up to make a Swiss roll.

Slice to serve. It doesn't look all that amazing but it's a decent cake for only half a syn a slice. My boyfriend even enjoyed it and asked for second helpings, which means it's definitely as good as a non-Slimming World cake!

I'm sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen and Laura at How To Cook Good Food, as the theme this month is healthy recipes.

The Four Seasons Food Challenge, hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux, is themed around healthy or virtuous recipes as well this month so I am sending over my low fat Swiss roll.

The star ingredient of this month's Tea Time Treats is egg, and since eggs are one of the only things in this cake I think it's perfect! The challenge is hosted by Janie at the Hedgecombers on behalf of Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked.