Sweet Treats

I haven't exactly followed my plan of making one sweet treats per week, but here are a couple that I have tried that are absolutely delicious!

Chocolate & Berry Roulade
I made this for my family when I had them up for dinner and it was a big hit, even my mum who does not eat desserts had half a portion.

Makes 6 servings - 5pp per serving

1tsp cornflour
1tsp vanilla extract
1tsp malt vinegar

1 tbsp cocoa powder
4tsp cold water
4 medium egg whites
200g caster sugar
200g weight watchers cream
350g mixed berries (i used blueberries, blackberries and raspberries)

Line a 33cm x 23cm swiss roll tin with baking paper and preheat the over to 150 C, fan 130C or Gas Mark 2.
Mix the cornflour, vanilla and vinegar together. In a seperate bowl combine the cocoa and water.
Whisk the egg whites into soft peaks and then whisk in the sugar 1tsp at a time (this does take ages when you don't have an electric whisk, but its def a bit of a bingo wing workout). Finally whisk in the cornflour mixture and fold in the cocoa mixture.
Spoon the mixture to the tin and bake for 45 to 50 mins. Turn it out to a large sheet of baking paper  and remove the lining paper. Leave to cool, it should be quite springy, i place a damp tea towel over it to make sure it stayed soft enough to roll.
Once cool spread with cream and scatter over the berries, roll it into a roulade and then dust with cocoa powder.

We were really looking forward to dessert so I forgot to take photos - the is one and a half portions left over anyway :-)

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

As you can tell I like chocolate. I made these for my bookclub. Someone else had brought a dessert but everyone still had a cupcake. I thought they were yummy and would definitely make them again. 

Makes 12 cupcakes - 4pp per cupcake

175g of fresh cherries

25g cocoa powder

150g self raising flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g dark brown sugar

75g low fat spread

1 egg

1tsp vanilla extract

150g virtually fat free natural yoghurt

Preheat the over to 180C/fan 160C/Gas mark 4 and line a muffin tin with paper cases.

Stone the cherries and reserve 6 cherries halved for decorating (unless all cupcakes are going to be eating soon after baking I would leave these out as they do not keep as well) and roughly chop the rest.

Reserve 2tsp of the cocoa for the icing  then sift the rest of the cocoa, the flour and the bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar, low fat spread, egg, vanilla and yoghurt and beat with a electric whisk until light and fluffy (you can do this by hand like i did but it is really tough, electric whisk is top on my need to buy list).

Stir in the chopped cherries and spoon into the paper cases.

Bake in the centre shelf of the oven for 15-18 mins until risen and feel springy in the centre (mine took a little longer than this, about 20 minutes)

Cool on a wire rack - this is what they looked like cooling.

Now for the icing - the recipe calls for 100g of low fat soft cheese and 15g of icing sugar beaten with the reserved cocoa powder. But well I didn't like it - I didn't think it went with the cupcakes and I would have rather eaten them on their own than with this. But I wanted icing - the total pp in the recipe is 43 and I worked out the icing to be 6pp. Since there is 4pp per cupcake counted, the recipe could be up to 48pp in total and they would stay at 4pp. So I figured I had 11pp to work with to make my own icing. All I did was melt some dark chocolate, add 2tsp of icing sugar and a splash of milk to keep it smooth. You could use milk chocolate or white and it would be lovely too - much nicer than the cream cheese icing. Though both options are there to be used :-) Finished product below.

Will post a few more recipes in the next few days! But for now I need my sleep.