Becca Jane St Clair

I love Chinese food. But Chinese food isn’t very Slimming World friendly unless you make it yourself…and the biggest hurdle for me has always been making a tasty sauce. My husband and I like gooey Chinese food, and lots of the recipes I’ve found online just aren’t gooey enough. I have tried using orange Fanta, and while that was good, it still wasn’t satisfying. The other day I was looking at a recipe for orange chicken and suddenly it dawned on me to use orange squash (which is free on Slimming World).

If you follow my exact recipe, this is a syn free meal that serves two comfortably, three if you bulk it out further. The nice thing about a stir fry is you can make it as big as you need it to be. Because all the ingredients are free on Slimming World, you also can play around with the taste of the sauce to get it to fit your specifications. I’ve made this three times, and the first time I didn’t do any measuring other than the squash, the second time I did measurements so I could blog the recipe accurately, and the third time I did a combination of measuring and estimating. All three times it turned out quite tasty!

You will need:

400G diced chicken (or there about. I sometimes cut up two breast portions, and I also used a packet of stir fry turkey last time)
6 TBS double concentrate orange squash (I used Robinson)
4 TBS soy sauce
3 TBS tomato puree (called paste in the US)
2 TBS red wine vinegar (I’m sure other vinegars could be used)
1 TBS Chinese five spice
2 Oranges, broken into segments (I used satsumas)
(optional 1 TBS sweetener)
Stir-fry vegetables of your choice
Dried Chinese noodles or rice (whichever you prefer. I prefer noodles)
Fry light

1. Spray a wok with fry light and pre-heat on the hob
2. Toss diced chicken with Chinese five spice to coat, then stir-fry chicken for 5-10 minutes.
3. Add squash, soy sauce, puree, and vinegar. Give it a stir and let it come to a boil.
4. Add vegetables and stir-fry an addtional 5-10 minutes or until vegetables are to your liking.
5. Cook noodles or rice according to package instructions.
6. Give your sauce a quick taste test. Too sweet? Add a splash more vinegar. Too sour? Add the sweetener. Not enough orange flavor? add another splash of squash. Not spicy enough? Add more five spice.
7. Divide noodles or rice between bowls and top with stir-fry. Garnish with fresh orange segments.

***

DISCLAIMER: I do not work for Slimming World, I am not affiliated with Slimming World beyond being a paying customer/member, I get no personal benefit from writing this post other than the joy of sharing.

Please note: Syn values are based on my exact ingredients using the online calculator. Your Syn value may vary based on your ingredients and the size of your baking containers and portions, so use this number as a guide only. Syn values also frequently change, but these values are correct at the time of publication.

The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, Networked Blogs, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this through an e-mail subscription, you might need to go directly to my blog to view videos and images.]

For full Copyright and Disclaimer, please read http://www.blog.beccajanestclair.com/copyright/

Recently, at my Slimming World Group, we had a taster night in honour of one of our member’s birthdays. It wound up being a double…no, triple celebration as my friend was celebrating her 40th birthday, reaching target, AND losing five stone! So proud of her! Anyway. Since it was her birthday, I really wanted to make some kind of low syn cake treat. The Internet is full of suggestions for low syn cakes. Most of them are flourless and use beaten egg whites to make the cake part, or use crushed Scan Bran or Weetabix or Ryvita. But I wanted proper cake. Enter, this Weight Watcher’s recipe! The original recipe states that you can use ANY diet soda with ANY box cake mix. But since Slimming World and Weight Watchers use different criteria for determining points and syns, I needed to use the online calculator to work out the exact syns for my cupcakes. So if you use the exact ingredients I’ve used and make 24 cupcakes, each cupcake will be 4 syns. Any other brand or type and you will need to use the syn calculator.

You will Need:

For the cake –
1 box Betty Crocker Red Velvet Cake Mix
1 330ml can (12 oz) Doctor Pepper Zero
24 cupcake papers

For the icing –
500g Quark
1 mug Truvia or other sweetener
(optional) food colouring

1. Preheat oven to 180C and put the liners in the cupcake tins
2. combine dry cake mix and Dr Pepper Zero. No other ingredients are needed.
3. Evenly divide between the cupcake papers. I discovered 2 Tablespoons per cup will evenly divide it.
4. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean
6. Pour Quark into a bowl and slowly mix in the sweetener. I used about a mugful, but you might need more or less depending on your sweet tooth. I also added some red food colouring (but I wasn’t satisfied with the result, so I added blue to make violet). If you don’t add colouring, your icing will be white.
7. Pipe or spoon the icing onto the cupcakes.

You will need to store these cupcakes in the fridge because of the Quark icing.

About a week later, I made a Carrot Cake mix with Fanta Zero, and I would be willing to try a yellow cake with Sprite Zero. I bet a chocolate cake made with Cherry Coke Zero or Cherry Pepsi Max would be good, too.

***

[DISCLAIMER: I do not work for Slimming World, I am not affiliated with Slimming World beyond being a paying customer/member, I get no personal benefit from writing this post other than the joy of sharing.]

[Please note: Syn values are based on my exact ingredients using the online calculator. Your Syn value may vary based on your ingredients and the size of your baking containers and portions, so use this number as a guide only. Syn values also frequently change, but these values are correct at the time of publication.]

The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, Networked Blogs, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this through an e-mail subscription, you might need to go directly to my blog to view videos and images.]

For full Copyright and Disclaimer, please read http://www.blog.beccajanestclair.com/copyright/