Stacey's Raspberry Yogurt "Cheese"cakes

For Cake'n'Bake Club's healthy theme, I decided to bake some mini-raspberry cheesecakes. These cheesecakes are low-fat, low-calorie, sugar-free, and cheese-free. Yep, no cheese. I shouldn't really call them cheesecakes, but "yogurt and tofu-cakes" just sounds a bit weird. Anyway, the recipe I started with was Chocolate Covered Katie's Greek Yogurt Cheesecake, but I made one or two tweaks along the way. (As a side note, I love Katie's blog - everything looks so yummy and usually low-fat/sugar-free!) I baked my pretend-cheesecakes in a mini-muffin pan, firstly because I thought they would be easier to share this way, and secondly because I thought a bit-sized treat was more in-keeping with the month's theme! I did some very, very rough working out and found that each mini-cheesecake had 38 calories and 0.9g fat - not too shabby (although, it goes without saying that this will vary depending on the brands you use!) They didn't really taste like cheesecakes though, and if I'm honest I wouldn't make them again. They mostly tasted just like raspberry yogurt, but the stevia made them taste a little artificial. Still, it was fun to experiment and they didn't taste bad - they just didn't taste cheesecakey enough for me! :-)

Please note - you will need a blender for this recipe!

Prep time: 20-25 minutes
Cook time: 30-35 minutes
Chill: at least 2 hours, preferably overnight
Makes 24 mini-cheesecakes

Ingredients:
100g Almond Biscotti (my recipe for home-made almond biscotti is here)
5 tbsp almond milk
Punnet of raspberries
150g silken-firm tofu
350g low-fat natural Greek yogurt
5 tbsp stevia-extract sugar alternative
15g cornflour

1. Lightly grease a mini-muffin pan and pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4.
2. Start by whizzing the biscotti in your blender until it's in fine crumbs. Add the almond milk, and whizz again until they combined to form a paste. Put 1tsp of the biscuit mixture into each muffin hole and press down with the back of the spoon. Pop this in the fridge whilst you prepare the "cheese" filling.
3. Count out 24 raspberries and put these to one side. Put the tofu into your blender and puree until smooth. Add the yogurt, the remaining raspberries, the stevia and the cornflour and blend until all have combined.
4. Spoon 2tsps of the yogurt/tofu mixture onto each biscuit base, then gently press one of the reserved raspberries on top of this. 
5. Bake for 30-35 minutes until set and starting to brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before popping into the fridge to set overnight.
6. When ready to serve, carefully turn the cheesecakes out of the muffin pan. I'd recommend you try one before serving, just to make sure they are OK ;-)

Jen's Granola

Decided to make this as a quick, easy option for cake club as I was short on time and I love granola (just baked another batch to have as breakfasts for the next week or so).

Makes a large jar - about 6 portions. Quantities were halved (though they really don't need to be exact) and recipe based on one from BBC Good Food website. Anything goes in this it seems - so use whatever nuts/fruit you fancy!

88g nuts - recipe said peanuts and pecans but I don't like peanuts and the pecans seemed very expensive so I used blanched almonds and hazelnuts.

225 g rolled oats - chunky ones

25 g sesame seeds

25 g sunflower seeds

a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds

a sprinkling of poppy seeds

43 g berries - I used cranberries, raisins, dried apple and mixed peel.

50 ml honey

63 ml sunflower oil

I blitzed my nuts in a food processor first to knock them down in to bite-sized pieces, then just mixed everything together in a bowl except the berries/dried fruit which I added about 5 mins towards the end of baking time.

Bake at 170 C fan oven for 20 mins ish, stirring occasionally. To crisp it up more leave it in for a couple of minutes extra/as long as it takes!

Serve with milk or greek yoghurt.

The finished product!

Steph's (Healthy) Pistachio Cookies!

Phew, have finally figured out how to post on this thing!

So for healthy bakes, I wanted to do something sweet (because I thought it would be a challenge). The problem seemed to be that anything "healthy" involved nuts, which, although they are fabby for you in terms of protein and the like, are crazy high calorie so whatever it was wouldn't have any impressively low stats. But this seemed to fit the bill, no egg yolk, no butter, not much sugar... voila, health in a cookie. I wasn't a big fan, as I don't really like a lot of nut, but they seemed to go down well. And I had a chance to use the food processor I got for xmas (yoohoo).

I am well aware of, and apologise for, the fact they look like falafel. The original recipe said to use food colouring, but I thought it would detract from healthiness. Turns out, a bit of green might have made them a little more exciting and less chickpea-y. Woops.

Pistachio cookies
(makes ~ 10, adapted from this beautiful blog http://mondomulia.com/2012/09/25/pistachio-cookies/)

110g pistachios (reduced from the original because I didn't buy enough, and went hunting around my baking stash to find more)
110g ground almonds
2 egg whites
80g sugar

- Grind half the pistachios finely (like ground almond-y texture), and the other half roughly, and keep them separate.
- Mix the ground almonds and finely ground pistachios together and add the sugar.
- Stir in enough egg white to make a paste. Add more ground almonds if it seems a little wet.
- I guess this would be the point to add green food colouring to make them more sweetie-like.
- Roll into balls and roll in the coarsely chopped pistachios. Place on a baking tray (they don't spread much because there's nothing in them to melt, so don't worry about lots and lots of space in between)
- Bake for 12-14 minutes at 170c, flattening them with a spoon about halfway through cooking.
- The original recipe sprinkled them with more sugar afterwards, but in the spirit of healthy, I resisted. And then went to raid the Christmas biscuits.................

Happy new year!!

January - Healthy New Year!

After all of the indulgences of the festive season, we decided to try our hand at a little healthy baking this month, and what a feast we had!

Catherine brought a Gnocchi Bake, Jen baked some delicious Granola, Megan made us some Fruit Roll-Ups, Ruth baked some Teriyaki Chicken and Cabbage Wraps, I baked some Raspberry Yogurt Cheesecakes, Steph baked some amazing Pistachio Cookies, and Tom baked some Cheeseless Pizzas!

Even though the treats were lighter this time, we still left with fully tummies and tupperware filled with leftovers :-)