Let them eat cake!

11^th June 2014

Balance – never let success go to your head and never let failure go to your heart.

I have a feeling this week I shall mostly be sampling cake!  On a positive we’re raising money for Diabetes UK (£85.35 yesterday) and I am managing to only have a sample.  Also knowing this was likely to happen I skipped breakfast first thing and had a bit of cake at the meeting instead and actually the cake I had was a Filling & Healthy version of Carrot Cake (only 2pp on a ProPoint day), haven’t got the recipe off the member yet but I will do I promise because it was good.  

However my winner of the day and don’t get me wrong they were all good but this was just mwah and would be fantastic on a Sunday for pudding, was Dorset Apple Traybake. I loved it obviously because it was delicious, she’s obviously a great baker because it was so moist and light, however I also loved it because it has apple in so adding some fruit to the cake, balancing it out a bit.  Fran who made them told us on facebook “the recipe says makes 16 but they're enormous. So I spread mixture into a large and smaller tin & got 27 reasonable six pieces. Yummy with custard 2”

Dorset apple traybake

Simple-to-whip-up apple cake that can be cut into bars or squares for a tea time treat

Prep: 20 mins Cook: 50 mins

Cuts into 16 pieces (or more – it’s all about the portion sizes)

Recipe total = 118pp, that’s

16 slices = 7pp each slice 

22 slices = 5pp each slice

27 slices = 4pp each slice

• 450g cooking apples (such as Bramley)
• juice of ½ lemon
• 225g butter, softened (48pp)
• 280g golden caster sugar (30pp)
• 4 eggs (8pp)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 350g self-raising flour (30pp)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• demerara sugar, to sprinkle (1tbsp = 2pp)

Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Butter and line a rectangular baking tin (approx 27cm x 20cm) with parchment paper. Peel, core and thinly slice the apples then squeeze the lemon juice over. Set to one side.

Place the butter, caster sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour and baking powder into a large bowl and mix well until smooth. Spread half the mixture into the prepared tin. Arrange half the apples over the top of the mixture, then repeat the layers. Sprinkle over the demerara sugar. 3 Bake for 45-50 mins until golden and springy to the touch. Leave to cool for 10 mins, then turn out of tin and remove paper. Cut into bars or squares.

I thought it was delicious, I’d be more than happy to have a small slice with a little  custard on as a pudding on a Sunday.  It also seems a really easy recipe and it’s also freezable, which is a super bonus, desert ready in the freezer for whenever, I will be making this now at the weekend for mom. 

 Anyway enough of this cake talk, or not just one more :) my sisters fruit and oat bars seemed very popular, they were the first to completely sell out, again a healthy take of sweetness and a great quick breakfast full of goodness, so here’s her recipe;

Fruit & Oat Breakfast Bars

Total Propoints = 44pp which works out at 3pp if you get 13/14 slices from it.

On a Filling & Healthy day the total ProPoints in this recipe would go down to 23pp, so it would only cost 2pp a bar from your weeklies if cut into 12 portions.  Replace the sultanas with all blueberries and that would come down to 1pp.

120 g Asda Dried Skimmed Milk Powder (11pp)

170 g Porridge Oats    (17pp)

225 ml Skimmed Milk   (2pp)

1 medium (raw) Egg, whole (2pp)  

1 teaspoons (level) Baking Powder   

1 teaspoons (level) Vanilla Extract   

8 teaspoons (level) Low Fat Spread (4pp)   

100 g Sultanas (8pp)          

50 g Blueberries   

Mix all wet ingredients, then stir into dry ingredients, finally adding fruit.

Pour into a 9 x 7 inch greased tin for 30-40 minutes in a 180oC/350oF/GasMark4 oven until golden brown.  Cool and cut into bars.

Two excellent examples of finding a balance with the sweet stuff, still getting the sweet fix but coming it with some healthy at the same time and having a reasonable portion size.

Right off to get ready to do it all again, tempted to throw some warm muffins in the oven this morning if I have time before my meeting, we shall see or maybe rock cakes again they go down well.  Although there’s a banana cinnamon muffin recipe for 2pp each in the Everyday Favourites cookbook that’s caught my eye.

I’m off, have a good one, it’s all about a BeYOUtiful Balance remember, have a good one. xx