June 2016 Entries

I'm following a gluten free and clean eating diet plan at the moment so I've adapted Nigella's recipe to suite my needs. I'm doing very well with it, and have lost 2 stone in 10 weeks :) I firstly made the gluten free cake batter using half rice flour and spelt flour, half butter and half vegetable oil and half the amount of sugar as I prefer my cakes to not be too sweet. I used almond milk and chopped almonds. I also used 100mls of whipped double cream, as its high in fat, and mixed it with 100mls greek yoghurt as I can have greek yoghurt on plan. It was abit runnier but it tasted amazing. I cooked the cake first as I knew it would shrink a little because I've used rice and spelt flour and was unsure as to how thick the cake would turn out. I was going to cut it in half and cook them again with the meringue mixture on top. As it turns out it was too thin to cut in half so I had to make another cake for the other half. I tried making sugar free meringue for the first time but it went wrong and stayed runny so I had to start again. Instead of using 4 egg whites I halved it to 2 so as its less calories. I followed Nigella's recipe for the meringue. I will have another go at sugar free meringue another time..I will get it right eventually! The jam, I made chia seed and strawberry jam by warming chopped strawberries with abit of water then adding 2 tablespoons of chia seeds to it when the strawberries had cooked abit then let it cool and thicken in the fridge overnight. It tasted lovely. I then assembled the cake. First layer with meringue side underneath, spread it with strawberry chia jam, then a layer of sliced strawberries, then the cream mixture. Then placed the other cake on top. It was quite unsteady as the cream mixture was abit thinner than whipped double cream but it held up. I then placed afew spoonfuls of the cream mixture ontop of the meringue and placed a slice of strawberry on top of that. The cake did seem abit over baked on the outside, abit darker, but it didn't come through in the eating of the cake thankfully. This was due to baking it twice. We had a family get together for Fathers Day and had this for dessert. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and I'd deffinitely make it again