Sweet potato crust quiche & mini quiches

 

Spinach/french bean quiche with sweet potato base –

Makes 1 large quiche (feeds 2) or about 20 muffin sized ones
250g thinly sliced sweet potatoes
200g french green beans, cut up in 1cm chunks
100g onion, thinly sliced
loads of frozen spinach (didn’t count how many chunks)
tumeric
mashed garlic
half a stock cube
freshly grated nutmeg
6 eggs
topped with 120 g greek cheese/any cheese of your choice

Chop up the green beans into 1cm slices, chop the onions and cook with the spinach, garlic, tumeric, stock cube and nutmeg until it’s soft (about 20 minutes). Top up with water occasionally (but not too much!)

In the meantime slice the sweet potatoes very thinly and line the quiche pan/muffins tray (I lined them with cake line/paper muffin cases) – can be several layers if you have too much, it doesn’t matter. If you want the sweet potato crust to be all around the sides, put them higher up because they will shrink in the oven.

Put the now lined pan/muffin into a hot oven and bake until done (about 25-30 minutes for the pan, and 15-20 minutes for the muffin tray).

Whirl the eggs in a bowl/jug and add to the cooked vegetables and stir, then add to the pan/muffins just under the top. They will rise, so don’t overfill.

Sprinkle the cheese on top, put back into the oven – put the oven down to medium heat now and bake the pan for about 30 minutes, the muffins for about 20 minutes or until the cheese is starting to brown slightly.

Tuna crust pizza

 

Tuna crust pizza

Crust – makes one pizza

1 large can of tuna in spring water
1 egg
20g grated cheese (best to use a mild one)

Drain the tuna and squeeze out all the water as much as possible, mix with the egg & grated cheese, press onto baking paper with hand to make it thin.

Bake in oven for 30 minutes on medium heat (or until it starts to get crispy on the outside);

I chopped up the toppings (pepper, mushrooms, onions, tomato) and baked them as well until they were soft;

Add concentrated tomato sauce on the baked crust, add toppings, add cheese, bake for another 10 minutes on high temperature.

Glorious.

Protein crust pizza – with pea protein powder

 

Pea protein crust pizza. Very good thin, crisp crust.
total calories incl toppings: 380 cal (depending on the type of cheese you use)

27 carbs/16 fat/37 protein

Recipe: for the crust:

makes 2 small pizze, or 1 large one

40g pea protein powder
20g instant oats (or normal flour)
1 egg
pinch of baking powder
pinch of salt
50g grated cheese
little bit of water if it doesn’t bind enough to make a smooth dough

Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones by hand, spread on baking paper by hand again (no need to grease, the cheese makes sure it’s not going to stick) and bake in oven until crisp (about 15 minutes on medium heat).

Then add toppings. I had olive oil on it, then tomato puree, and pre-cooked tomatoes, onions, green pepper and mushrooms, topped with 15g of cheese and herbs. Bake for 10 minutes again in a very hot oven.

I think next time I try it with less cheese to save it for the topping….

 

Sugar Free chocolate syrup/dip/sauce

It’s so simple and quick – you’ll never want to buy chocolate sauce again.

You’ll need:

10g cocoa powder

45ml water

1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum

any granulated/powdered sugar substitute (I used truvia) – use as much/little as you like

In a mug or small cup put in the water, mix in the rest of the ingredients with a small whisk or a fork. Whisk thoroughly until it’s starting to be gloopy.

Pour into a container. Lick the mug/cup empty. Or eat it all up. The whole thing has only 40 calories….

Banana ice cream – the fast way

Easiest ice cream…. and SO damn good.
Freeze two overripe bananas (or one large one).

Once frozen properly over night, take out and leave for about 10 minutes to slightly defrost. Chop into thin slices, put into a mixing jug with 10g of peanut butter (or any other nut butter), add some cocoa powder, cinnamon and maybe a drop of vanilla essence, plus a tiny bit of water and blend with a hand blender. Et voila.

Most delicious ice cream. Didn’t even bother putting it into a bowl, just ate out of the jug.

Baah Baah – Sheep’s cheese egg omelettes with rice flour

I had some sheep’s cheese left and thought I’d experiment with some rice flour that needs using up, and came up with this recipe:

4 omelettes/100 calories each or 400 in total

22g carbs/22g fat/26g protein/1g fibre

You’ll need:

3 large eggs or 4 small eggs

25g finely grated sheep’s cheese (I used Parlick Fell Hard Sheep’s Cheese, crumbly and mild)

25g white rice flour

200ml water

pinch of salt, pinch of bicarb and pinch of baking powder

optional: dried thyme or any other herbs you want to use.

bit of coconut oil for the pan, although if you have a non-stick pan it works without any oil too.

I will experiment with different ingredients next time, such as dried chillis, anchovies etc

Mix the ingredients and let them stand for a few minutes and well, make the omelettes as you would do with normal pancakes

Blackberry cake – simple, no fat and fluffy

Foraging for food is great, and especially now in Britain we’ve got an abundance of free food. Today I went down to the railway, where I saw tons and tons of blackberries growing wild – and no one ever picks them! This is a shame, such a waste of free and delicious food.

I picked almost a kilo, and thought I’d make a simple cake topped with the blackberries – or brambles as they are also called in England. While I was leafing through my cook books for a recipe, a neighbours cat that is basically living in our garden kept me company:

I found a simple recipe in one of Delia’s books, and it goes like this:

You’ll need:

75g flour

50g brown sugar

pinch of baking powder

4 small eggs or 3 large eggs

a few handful of blackberries (but it works with all kinds of other fruit as well)

Separate the egg whites from the yolks. Whisk the yolks with the sugar for about 5 minutes with a handmixer until it’s light and creamy. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until they are stiff (but make sure to clean your whisks, even a drop of egg yolk will prevent the egg whites from getting stiff!). – Edited to add: best to do the egg whites first, and then the yolks. Saves you cleaning it! (Thanks N. for the tip)

Fold the egg whites and the sifted flour and baking powder with the sugary yolk mixture, very slowly and carefully, you don’t want the bubbles to deflate.

Spoon into a cake form or a tin (lined with paper) and sprinkle the fruit on top of it.

Put into a pre-heated oven (180 degrees) for about 20 minutes, check with a wooden skewer if it comes out clean. When you see the sides of the cake come off the tin, it should be ready.

Cool, and enjoy!

Chocolate Protein Flapjack

So, part of a bundle I bought from The Protein Works was a box of protein flapjacks – bloody expensive, that stuff. But oh so good. Thought I make my own… they’re easypeasy and can be tweaked to your hearts content. There’s no added sugar at all, the whey protein has sucralose in it. You can buy whey protein with Stevia too.

Makes 16 slices with 145 calories per bar

pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees and line a square tin with baking paper

Ingredients:

100g porridge oats

100g fine milled oats (or another 20g porridge oats)

100g Whey Protein chocolate flavour (or any flavour that goes well with chocolate)

50g Whey Isolate 97 unflavoured

10g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon poppy seeds (optional, give the extra crunch)

100g crunchy almond butter (or any other crunchy nut butter)

220ml coconut milk

30ml water

Mix the dry ingredients with a spoon, then mix the coconut milk in and add the almond butter, stir well.

Pour into the square tin, smooth out and pop into the oven for about 15-17 minutes.

Cool on a rack and slice into 16 slices.

Fingerfood and a Focaccia for a barbecue

Just sharing a few pictures of pastry and a focaccia I made for last weekend’s barbecue :

Almond Strawberry Polenta Cake

I saw this great recipe today in the latest Waitrose magazine – they called it a Strawberry & Nectarine Polenta and pistacchio cake. Now I don’t have pistacchio at home, but I do have plenty of polenta. And fresh strawberries. I made the recipe with cream cheese instead of the Greek yoghurt they asked for, and also left out most of the sugar.

My take on this goes like this: