Becca Jane St Clair

Another big part of Christmas dinner is of course, the dessert. I had already made the Christmas Pudding full of sugar and booze, so I wanted to try to make something with less sugar. I really wanted to make a cheesecake, so I searched for several sugar free versions to create mine. Unfortunately, the topping is NOT sugar free as I could not find any sugar free pie filling, but I DO have a recipe for making your own sugar free cherry topping I will try out some other time. I can justify the sugar in the topping only because you really don’t eat that much topping anyway.

For the Crust —
2 Cups Ground Almonds (sometimes called almond flour or almond meal)
4 TBS Butter, melted
2 TBS Splenda for Baking

For the Filling —
600g Cream Cheese (3 packages) – room temperature
3 Eggs
1/2 TBS Vanilla
1/2 TBS lemon juice
1 Cup Splenda for Baking

For the Topping —
1 Can pie filling, any flavour. Sugar Free if you can find it

-Preheat the oven to 200C.
-Combine the ingredients for the crust and press into bottoms and side of your pie dish.
-Bake crust for 12-15 minutes until it is firm and golden.
-Remove from oven and set crust to one side.
-Cream together cream cheese and Splenda for baking.
-Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
-Add lemon juice and vanilla.
-Pour filling into cooked crust and place in the oven (still at 200C)
-As soon as you shut the oven door, immediately reduce temperature to 125C. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN WHILE BAKING THIS. Alternatively, you can use a water bath.
-Bake for 60-90 minutes. If your oven has a glass door, check by sight. The cheesecake should form a mound and look firm. You can open the door after an hour to check on the cake. A cake tester inserted should come out fairly clean, with bits of firm cheesecake clinging to it. If the cheesecake is still runny, leave it in the oven for additional time.
-Let the cheesecake cool completely before adding the topping.

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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.

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When my family bakes Christmas cookies, we always made more than one kind, so of course I wanted some variety. I am a big fan of the Scottish Shortbread you can get in the tins from Marks and Spencers, so I decided that would be my second type of cookie. I scoured the web, and I found a recipe posted by someone who calls themselves “mrsnorris”. Now, whether they intended to be a Harry Potter reference or their name really *is* Mrs Norris, the fact that it could be HP related instantly caught my attention to base my recipe off of.

You will need:
160g Butter, softened (I used Stork)
4 TBS Splenda for Baking (the original recipe calls for regular Splenda, but I find the Splenda for Baking doesn’t leave an after taste the way regular Splenda does, but feel free to use the sweetener of your choice)
100g White flour
100g Wholegrain flour (my wholegrain was also self-raising, but I don’t think this matters)
1/8 tsp Salt

-Preheat the oven to 180C and line your baking trays with parchment paper.
-Cream together butter and Splenda for Baking until fluffy.
-Slowly add flour and salt.
-Work dough into a ball.
-Flour your worktop and gently press (or roll) the dough out until it is about a half inch thick.
-Use a biscuit cutter (or shapes) to cut out the biscuits, re-rolling in between. You should be able to fit a dozen per cookie sheet. If you don’t have any cutters you could use a glass dipped in flour or just cut them into fingers with a knife. You will need to re-flour your worktop each time you re-roll the dough.
-Optional: you could brush the tops of each cookie with some egg and sprinkle a tiny bit of dyed* Splenda for Baking to imitate sprinkles, but they are just as good plain.
-Refrigerate each baking tray for 15 minutes before baking (I did this by putting the first sheet in and setting the timer. When the timer went off, they went into the oven and the next tray went into the fridge)
-Bake for 15 minutes or until golden. Keep an eye on them as if they overbake they get very crumbly (as we discovered!)

Once again, these were a big hit and no one could tell they were sugar free! Just makes sure you tell people ahead of time as some people are intolerant to artificial sweeteners.

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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.

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My first Christmas dealing with my diabetes, and I think I did okay. I had some mince pies ( but never more than one in a single day), I had a few glasses of wine (again, never more than one), Ate a few small pieces of chocolate (Tim bought me an advent calendar, but I only ate the chocolate on a few days), and I indulged in a small piece of the Christmas Pudding I had made (just to taste it as I had never even had it!). But I also only drank sugar free fizzy drinks or slim tonic water, ate low-carb, and avoided the starchy foods – no potatoes, parsnips, carrots, etc. So overall, I did pretty good.

Making Christmas Cookies are a HUGE deal to me as it’s been a family tradition since forever. Fortunately, my mom sent me some Splenda Blend for Baking and some Splenda Brown. Both these products I have been unable to locate in the UK, but you can order them through importers on eBay (though it will be pricey, it’s worth it!)

The first thing I needed to do was bake some chocolate chip cookies as those are my favourite cookie of all-time and Mom also got me some sugar free chocolate chips! However, don’t go crazy looking for them. I compared the bag of SF chips to a bag of Toll House, a container of dark chocolate chunks from Waitrose, and to some plain chocolate chips from Asda and they all contained around the same amount of sugar per 100g. After I added the bag of SF chips I decided it needed more chips anyway, so my cookies wound up with a combination of Hershey Sugar Free, Toll House Semi-Sweet, and Waitrose dark chocolate chunks. They were amazing and no one could tell they were sugar free!

(This recipe was modified off the back of the Hershey Sugar Free Chocolate Chips, so is measured using US measurements)

You will Need:
1 Cup white flour
1 Cup wholegrain flour
1 tsp baking soda (or 2 tsp Bicarb of Soda if you don’t have access to American baking soda)
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup butter (Soft – I used stork out of a tub)
1/3 Cup Splenda for Baking
1/3 Cup packed Splenda Brown Sugar Blend
2 tsp Vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/2 Cups chocolate chips or chunks (sugar free, semi-sweet, dark, or plain. Using milk chocolate will add more sugar)

-Preheat the oven to 200C and line your baking trays with parchment paper.
-Mix together the flours, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.
-In a larger bowl, beat butter, the two Splendas, eggs, and vanilla.
-Slowly mix in the flour.
-using a wooden spoon, stir in the chocolate chips/chunks.
-Drop by teaspoons onto your baking sheets. You should be able to get 12 on a sheet.
-Bake each sheet for 9-12 minutes until cookies are golden.
-Cool on the sheet for a few minutes, then continue to cool on a baking tray.

Makes about 3 and a half dozen soft cookies, depending on how big you make them. I went through THREE batches of them this season because everyone loved them so much.

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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.

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This year, to make things easier on my mother-in-law, the family is doing Christmas pot luck style. On Tuesday, my Sister-in-law asked if we knew what the plans were and when we said no, she explained and then asked me if I could be assigned the desserts/pudding. I agreed, and so the brain started to churn…

When we got home, I asked Tim what he thought I should make and after a few suggestions got thrown out, Christmas Pudding was brought up. Now, it’s not really a “family favourite”, but it is Tim’s favourite. Most years we’ll pick up a few minis for Tim to have throughout the season and his mum will indulge him and get a pre-made one to go alongside whatever other dessert she’s made. Since the only thing I am responsible for this year is dessert, I have decided to make Christmas pud from scratch….with a little help from my friends.

I posted to Facebook, and my friend Vicky responded with some suggestions and answered all my questions. Some people make their puddings up to a YEAR before Christmas, and some only do theirs a few days in advance. I have decided to make mine this weekend, giving it plenty of time to ferment.

First, I needed a recipe. I have one from Jamie Oliver but no one I know has made it and I wanted a tried-and-true recipe. My friend Nicky linked me to recipes from the BBC and Delia, but she hadn’t tested those, either. Vicky came through for me again, and suggested a recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I’ve never heard of him, but Vicky’s used his recipes in the past, so I was off to Google.

The next day I had Tim drop me off at Waitrose, armed with my grocery list. The most puzzling thing to find? the Brandy and Ale. There are LOADS of options. Again, I heeded Vicky’s advice and grabbed a hobgoblin to use.

Once home, I began measuring out the fruit — all 900g of it. It wouldn’t fit in my bowl by itself, let alone once I mix in everythng else! A check of the recipe shows that it makes two puds, so I’m going to half the recipe (I will post it below) where appropriate. Oh, and I may have just dumped 200ml of Brandy on the fruit even though the 2 pud recipe calls for only HALF the brandy (100ml)….I hope it’s not swimming in extra brandy!

As it turns out, I didn’t have to worry about extra brandy. A family emergency meant that my fruit soaked for 36 hours and they soaked up nearly all the brandy in the bowl.

I dutifully halved the recipe (that leaves a LOT left in a pint bottle of ale!) and the resulting mix was hideous. I wrapped the top in clingfilm and am leaving it alone for overnight…

The next morning, I peeled back the cling film and the mixture looked decidedly dry, so I gave it a quick stir and topped it up with a glug from the ale bottle.

I packed it into my buttered basin and I was shocked to discover I have LOADS of pudding mix leftover. I might wind up with two after all, or maybe I can do a mini pud for a taste test.

I prepped the crock pot for steaming, and made a single size pupping to cook on the stovetop.

the mini pud was a FLOP. I only steamed it for about an hour/hour and a half because the instructions on one of the mini puddings from M&S say to steam for 1/2 hour, so I thought as those are pre-cooked and the instruction for re-heating a full-size pud are to steam it for half the time you originally steamed it for that I would do it for an hour. Probably more like an hour and a bit. Tim didn’t like it. He made faces when he tasted it….and I made a face when I tasted it as I could taste the raisins and suet. Ew. So my conclusion is that I didn’t steam it for long enough so as there is LOADS of mix leftover, I’m going to try another mini pudding tomorrow. But the big one is still in the crock pot (been cooking since 4PM, so now about 6 hours). The water level is fine and apparently you can’t oversteam, so I think I might leave it go overnight or at least until I wake up in the middle of the night to use the loo.

I set my alarm for 7, but I woke up around 5, and then again at 6, so I decided to get up and check it. The downstairs smells “like Christmas” as some of the other blogs suggest and peeking through the small gap of the foil I can see a dark colour – much darker than the mini pud I turned out yesterday. The water level has barely moved (though I did top it up last night a little higher than the original instructions say to), so I flipped the crock to high for the last hour, and got to work making another tester mini pud.

And after 15 hours of steaming….I declare it done. you know how you’re supposed to make a handle out of string? Yeah, my string got wet and HOT. Owwwww. The pudding is now cooling in it’s basin. I noticed some water has gotten in through the foil around the bottom, and the foil that was submerged in the water has gone black. Mini pudding is still steaming away.

You can find the original recipe I followed here and the original crock pot instructions here, but here’s my modified recipe (remember: I cut the original in half and still have enough filling for 2 puddings and 2 mini puddings. It’s possible I have a small basin, but it looks like a normal one….)

Hugh calls his recipe Grandma Jane’s, so here is Rebecca Jane’s

You will need:

450g dried vine fruits (Waitrose sells a bag labeled vine fruits, otherwise a combination of raisins and sultanas will do. I also tossed in a handful of mixed peel and some craisins)
200ml brandy
55g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
85g suet (I used 30% less fat veggie suet)
85g dark muscovado sugar (aka brown sugar)
20g flaked almonds
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbsp marmalade
110g fresh white breadcrumbs (This equaled about 4 white finger rolls. I blitzed them with my stick blender to get a fine crumb)
2 eggs, whisked
150ml ale or stout (I used Hobgoblins). (You mght need extra, so don’t go drinking the rest yet)
Butter

Other things you need:
Pudding basin
Parchment Paper
Aluminum to me, Aluminium to some foil
string
2 mixing bowls
crock pot
boiled water
heat-resistant cereal bowl or saucer

Step One: Put the fruit in a bowl and cover with 200ml of brandy. Cover with clingfilm and leave overnight. Mine wound up soaking for 36 hours due to a family emergency.

The Next Day

Step Two: Sift together the flour, baking powder, spices, and salt. It’s a good idea to tick off the ingredients as you add them so you don’t get confused as the list is long. Mix in the rest of the items in this order: suet, fruit (add any dregs of brandy not absorbed), almonds, lemon zest & juice, marmalade, breadcrumbs, beaten eggs, ale. cover with clingfilm and let the mixture rest overnight.

Day Three

Check your mix. Give it a stir. If it looks too dry, add a splash more of ale.

Step Three: Butter your pudding basin. Cut a round out of parchment paper that fits the bottom of the basin, put that on top of the butter and then butter the paper, too. Fill basin with mix (I filled mine as high as a half inch from the top).

Step Four: Now, here’s where it gets tricky. You have to prepare the pudding for it’s steam bath. Take some parchment paper and make a pleat in it (fold it like a Z). Put the pleated paper on top of your pudding basin, and use string to tie the paper down. Trim off the excess paper. Next, you will need to use your Aluminum foil and if you are cooking this in the crock pot, you will want to completely wrap your pudding basin (save for a very small gap at the top) in foil. To make it easier to lift, you can make a handle by tying string package-style around the basin and leaving a loop on the top to lift with.

Step Five: Boil the kettle. Place your cereal bowl or saucer upside down in the crock pot and put the pudding on top of it. Check to make sure the lid will fit securely and that the pudding is not touching the walls of the crock pot. Add boiling water to the crock pot until it reaches 3/4 of the way up the pudding basin. Cover and cook on HIGH heat for 4 hours, LOW heat for 10, and switch it back to HIGH for the last hour. you should check the water levels about halfway through, but as I steamed mine on low overnight I topped up the water before I went to bed and it was fine.

Step Six: Carefully lift the pudding out of the crock pot by the string and set to one side. Be careful as water may have accumulated between the foil and basin. Allow to cool, then carefully unwrap the pudding. Poke holes in the top with a fork and pour on a few more tablespoons of brandy or ale. Tightly wrap in clingfilm and store in a cool, dry place (NOT the fridge) until Christmas day. I wrapped mine in two layers of clingfilm, a layer of foil, and put the whole thing in a Zipper-topped bag.

If you want to follow tradition, you can place foil-wrapped coins into the pudding before re-heating.

To re-heat on Christmas day you can re-wrap your pudding in an additional layer of clingfilm and then foil and steam in the crockpot for two and a half hours on high or you can microwave it to warm it up.

To serve: heat a ladle of brandy over a gas stove top (or heat in a pan). Carefully light the brandy on fire and tip over the pudding once at the dinner table.

Christmas Pudding is best served with brandy butter or creame. I bought mine pre-made at Waitrose, so I don’t have a recipe to share.

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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.]

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Yesterday, my tesco picker forgot the difference between white bread and malt bread and where I had ordered “Seeded Malt Roll”, I was sent something made with white flour, which I refused and had sent back. I don’t understand how someone doesn’t know the difference, given that the ONLY search result on Tesco.com for “Seeded Malt Roll” is this:

A further search on Tesco.com by clicking on “view rest of shelf” on the Malt Rolls shows this item listed directly under the Malt Rolls:

This is called a “Seeded Spelt Roll” and appears to be what I had been sent. Now, in the picker’s defense, I could understand not knowing what Malt or Spelt meant. However, if I did not know, I would look it up or ask the people in the bakery department. It’s not a huge problem, I just refused the item and had it sent back. It did mea I was out some rolls for my Lunch, though.

But the biggest problem from yesterday was the driver forgetting an entire tray of chilled foods, including milk. The total amount missing was £14.62, which is a pretty decent chunk of our weekly groceries, considering this was all of our dairy products (milk, butter, yoghurt, cheese) and salad items (lettuce, tomato, spinach, mushrooms).

The driver couldn’t bring me the items but he was going to see if an afternoon van had space. Unfortunately, the afternoon and evening vans didn’t, and my only option was if his supervisor was *willing* to bring me my missing items in the afternoon. Like I said on Facebook, we live nearly an hour away from the grocery depot, so I couldn’t imagine the supervisor being willing to take over two hours out of his day to do this. When I received no call back, I rang up customer service and got a lovely woman named Tammy (wish I knew her last name!) who rang the store while I was on hold and unfortunately came back to tell me I wasn’t getting the items yesterday and was going to get a refund for those items. BUT, Tammy would put in an order for the missing items with a delivery for today, refund the delivery charge, and send me a voucher for the trouble it caused me. When I spoke with Tesco on Facebook, they also decided to give me a voucher as an apology for all the confusion this has caused.

You’d think that would be the end, right? Items would arrive, all would be well….you’d think wrong.

Tesco driver, Ashley, rang to tell me he was running late and would not be delivering my groceries until 10:30. I immediately contacted Tesco through facebook again to tell them, and I was offered another voucher for the problem.

When my order arrived…guess what? THEY SENT THE WRONG ROLLS AGAIN!! I was annoyed, but what puzzled me more was the grocery total. £25.32 when it should have been at the most £19.46. What happened? OH, apparently several of the items I had ordered were on a special offer that had expired yesterday. Fortunately, another phone call, this time speaking to a man named Alister, fixed the problem and got the delivery charge refunded.

In the end, Tesco sent me £30 in vouchers, plus refunded delivery charges. I think this is above and beyond anything I expected and I truly thank Tesco…because honestly? It’s the £30 in vouchers that is going to keep me a customer. Knowing that Tesco cares about their customers enough to go the extra mile is what will keep me coming back.

Thank you, Tesco. Thank you Jamie, Tammy, and Alister. But could you teach the pickers in Cleethorpes what Malt rolls look like?

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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.

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[Nuggets, shown with a big pile of Ranch dressing made from powdered ranch dressing mix and creame fraiche]

[please excuse the mobile phone quality and half empty plate!]

I’ve been whipping these up for the past few months, and I realized that I hadn’t shared the recipe, so I thought I would remedy that. This recipe works well with diced chicken (for nuggets), mini fillets (for fingers), and even with boneless chicken breasts if you want to make chicken Parmesan.

You will need:
-Boneless, skinless chicken (breasts can be used whole, diced into nuggets, or sliced into fingers)
-Equal parts ground almond and grated Parmesan cheese. Depending on how much chicken you have to coat, start with 50g of each and use more if you run out. (or do what I do, and just dump some in a bowl. LOL)
-100ml single cream or milk (if you run out, use more)
-1 egg
-1 tsp paprika
-1 tsp oregano
– a sprinkle of salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180C and line a baking tray with parchment paper or spray with cooking spray.
Pour cream or milk into a bowl and whisk together with the egg. Combine the ground almonds, Parmesan, seasonings, salt and pepper in another bowl.
Coat each piece of chicken by first placing it into the bowl with the egg/cream mixture and then into the “breading” mixture.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of your chicken (breasts will take longer, nuggets might only take 15 minutes). Topping should be golden in colour and if you poke a toothpick into the chicken the juices should run clear.

Serve with your choice of dip and a side salad. To serve this as Chicken Parmesan, you don’t need to pre-cook the chicken, just add it to a dish with some sauce and top with a little grated cheese, then bake!

Tim has decided these are better than the frozen ones from the grocery store. If you’re feeling ambitious, you could try frying them in a few centimetres of oil or in a deep fryer instead of baking them. I’m too chicken (hah!) to attempt to fry things in oil on the hob!

These are diabetic friendly as they do not contain any breadcrumbs or flour and are also suitable for a low-carb diet. Other recipes suggest using coconut flour, carbquik, ground flaxseed, and other non-flour options. Before using low-fat Parmesan cheese, read the label to make sure they are not full of sugar, as is the case with many low-fat cheeses.

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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.]

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One thing I really like having on a cold evening (like the ones we have been having!) is hot chocolate….which at first, seemed like it would be a huge no-no for me, but I’ve figured out TWO ways of making diabetic friendly hot chocolate….one that can be used as an “instant” with hot water, and one that requires milk. No photos for this entry….I think we all know what a mug of hot chocolate looks like!

Milky Hot Chocolate
3 TBS Cocoa (plain, unsweetened)
3 TBS Splenda or other sweetener (or sugar if you’re a non-diabetic)
Warm milk

Combine cocoa and Splenda together in a small bowl, then measure out a few teaspoons and add to a mug of warm milk…use as much or as little as you need to get it to the consistency you like. I tended to use about 3-4 teaspoons of the mixture for a large Cath Kidston mug. This mix can be made ahead of time and stored until you want it, just use equal amounts of both!

Instant Hot Chocolate
2 TBS Cocoa (plain, unsweetened)
2 TBS Splenda or other sweetener (or sugar if you’re a non-diabetic)
2 TBS Skim Milk Powder (Note this is NOT non-dairy coffee creamer/whitener)
Hot water

Combine all three ingredients in a small bowl, then measure out a few teaspoons to add to a mug of hot water. Use as much or as little as you’d like. Again, I used about 3-4 teaspoons for a large Cath Kidston mug. This mix also can be made ahead of time, again with equal parts of each item.

You also could easily make it a cappucino by adding in some instant coffee, or using instant coffee, cocoa, splenda, and coffee creamer (instead of powdered milk).

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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.]

WOWEE am I ever excited. We’re having a garden party steam-up on Sunday and we are serving food. Lunch of course, includes a few sweet treats and with my new diagnosis, I knew I’d be out of the running for eating cakes….and there’s nothing worse than making something you aren’t allowed to eat. So, I decided I was going to figure out a cake recipe I COULD eat, and then decided since I needed it to be taste-tested (by my husband and mom who’s visiting from the US and by my friend H who also has diabetes), I would do fairy cakes (cupcakes). This recipe is in US measurements. I wouldn’t try converting it down to grams due to Splenda being lighter than regular sugar weight-wise, but you can use a regular mug for measuring as long as you use the same one for everything. This recipe uses the low-carb baking mix, Carbquik, which can be purchased online from several retailers in the US and UK (I buy mine from AvidLite). You can use regular flour, but there will be more carbs (and sugar if you use white flour) in it. Carbquik has 2g of carbs per serving (one serving is 1/3 cup, which is approximately what is in one fairycake).

You Will Need:

2 Cups Carbquik
2 tsp Baking powder
1 1/3 Cup Splenda (regular Splenda, not the baking blend sold in the US)
1/2 Cup butter (or margarine/Stork/suitable substitute for baking)
1 Cup Milk (skim or semi-skim is best)
2 tsp Vanilla
2 medium-sized eggs

-Preheat oven to 175C (350F).
-Sift Carbquik, baking powder, and Splenda together.
-Add butter and beat until fluffy.
-Add eggs one at a time and beat after each addition.
-Slowly pour in the milk while mixing and add vanilla.
-Fill cupcake cases 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
-Should make 18 regular-sized cupcakes.

Cool on a wire rack.

For the Chocolate Buttercream:

1/2 Cup Butter
3 Cups Powdered Splenda (recipe to follow)
1/3 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa
1/3 Cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla

-Sift together powdered Splenda and cocoa and set aside.
-Beat butter until fluffy.
-Add milk.
-Slowly add Splenda/Cocoa mixture and beat well. Add vanilla.

Your icing should be nice and creamy. If it’s too runny, add more powdered Splenda or cocoa. If it’s too thick, add more milk a teaspoonful at a time.

To make Splenda Powdered Sugar:

Combine 3/4 Cup Splenda and 2TBS corn flour (cornstarch) in a blender and mix until it is a fine powder. You can use this in any recipe that calls for powdered sugar/X-10/confectioners/icing sugar.

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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.

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Yesterday was my Father-in-Law’s birthday. Each year since I’ve been part of this family, I’ve made my FIL a rum cake for his birthday, so even though I’m not allowed to have it, it doesn’t mean I stopped baking.

My aunt makes a fantastic rum cake called the “Bacardi Rum Cake” that uses a cake mix and a packet of Jell-o pudding, neither of which is available in the UK, so I had to create this recipe on my own several years ago. It’s withstood plenty of testing, so I’m ready to share it with you all!

You will need:

For the cake:
2 cups (250g) plus 2 teaspoon self-rising flour
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c (113g) room-temperature butter
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/3 c. (80ml) rum (I used dark/navy rum)

Preheat oven to 175C. Grease/spray a bundt pan or an 8″ square.

-combine flour, salt, and baking powder in one bowl and set aside.
-cream together butter and sugar. add eggs one at a time. Slowly add in flour mixture.
-add vanilla and rum. Spread mixture into preferred cake pan and bake 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. Optional – Top with crushed pecans before putting in the oven.

While the cake is baking, make the following glaze:
1/4 cup (60g) butter
1/2 cup (100g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (120ml) rum
2 teaspoon vanilla

-Melt butter and sugar in a thick pan on the stove. Add rum and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

When the cake is done, cool on a wire rack in the pan for about 10 minutes, then gently flip over onto a serving plate. Using a skewer, poke holes in the top of the still-warm cake and pour on the glaze. This cake doesn’t need any icing, but if you want you can sift some icing sugar over the top.

This is always a hit with everyone I make it for, though I will caution that it is in fact possible to get tipsy off of a few slices of this!

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1/2 c rum

One of my favourite foods has always been Lasagne, but our family recipe uses three types of cheese, meat, and of course, white noodles. I’ve re-created the dish using foods that are a little more waist-friendly.

You Will Need:

Packet of wholewheat lasagne noodles
500g pack of Quorn mince (or other vegetarian mince or turkey mince)
300-500g cottage cheese (can use more or less, depending on size of dish and how cheesy you want it)
1 carton tomato passata (sauce.)
Herbs – basil, oregano, thyme
Cinnamon
Pepper
Parmesean cheese (optional)
Weight Watcher’s grated cheese (optional)

1 – preheat oven to 200C
2 – cook noodles according to package (optional if you are using the “no cook” style of noodle, but I like to pre-cook those too*). Before I cooked the noodles, I layered them out in the bottom of my dish to figure out how many I would need.
3 – Place Quorn in a microwave safe container and cook for 5 minutes or until no longer frozen. Add passata,herbs (to taste – about a tablespoon of each), cinnamon (just a sprinkle), and pepper (a few turns of a grinder) and combine well. Microwave for a further 5 minutes (you can cook this on the stove too). Adjust your herb and spice level to your individual taste. For a spicier lasagne, you might consider adding chilli powder or red pepper flakes.
4 – Spray your lasagne dish with cooking spray and arrange a layer of noodles. Top noodles with spoonfuls of Quorn, and in between spoonfuls of Quorn add spoonfuls of cottage cheese. Lightly sprinkle the entire layer with parmesean and add another layer of noodles. This time, try to put the cottage cheese where you had the Quorn in the previous layer and the Quorn where you had the cottage cheese. Add another layer of noodles (or make some whole wheat penne if you’ve run out of noodles like I did!) and cover the noodles with alternating spoonfuls of sauce and cottage cheese. If there is any noodle still showing, you can toss on some WW grated cheese. If you leave any of the noodle uncovered, they will get crispy.
5 – bake for 25-30 minutes until bubbly. The cheese should be melted and the no cook noodles should be soft.

Serve with a side salad and veg. This makes enough to feed 4-6 people, or just two people with plenty to freeze for another 2 meals! The nice thing about this recipe is you can adjust the measurements to fit your crowd and sized container. If I was having more people over, I would have used my large 9×13″ pan for this, but since it was just for Tim and I, I used a smaller casserole dish that is only about 4×10″. Since I used a smaller dish, I had some of the “meat” mixture leftover and I just froze it to have over pasta at some point in the future. I’m allergic to onions and garlic, so none of my recipes contain either, but as this is an Italian recipe, it probably wouldn’t hurt it if you added some of either or both!

This meal is appropriate for ovo-lacto vegetarians as well as diabetics and those on a low-carb or low GI diet, though please make sure to check the individual nutritional information on the ingredients you purchase first if you have specific dietary needs. The specific products I used not previously mentioned:

Tesco Organic Wholewheat Lasagne sheets** (Not available on website)
Tesco Light Choices Natural Cottage Cheese
Tesco Organic Passata*** (not available on website. This comes in a glass jar and I used half the jar)
Napolina Grated Parmesean (not available on website)

*I dislike the no-cook noodles because I feel they are very chewy, even when pre-cooked, but sometimes it’s the only option available! You also could substitute in any wholegrain pasta and make this into a pasta bake.
**100g contains 63.2g of carbs, of which sugars 2.1. So a bit on the high side for carbs, however, one noodle weighs in at 20g and a single serving would only contain 1 – 1 1/2 noodles.
**There will be sugar in this, however it is all naturally occurring sugar from the tomatoes.

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I posted a teaser pic on facebook a week ago, and have since been asked for the recipe, so here we go…

I first discovered the idea on one of the food blogs I regularly read. It was either Serious Eats or The Kitchn and was called “Italian wedding soup”. I’ve previously also seen recipes for “meatball soup”. As my recipe wound up being completely different from either recipe previously posted, I decided to call mine Italian Meatball Soup.

You will need:
-a pack of ground turkey (usually sold as 500g or sometimes 630g)
-3 teaspoons fresh or dried thyme
-1 egg
-50g breadcrumbs
-50g parmesean cheese

-2 TBS olive oil
-3 carrots, chopped/diced
-3 stalks of celery, chopped
-1L chicken broth/stock
-200g fresh or frozen peas
-200g fresh or frozen corn
-100g baby spinach
-100g small pasta
-a handful of fresh thyme, or a few TBS dried
-1 TBS dried basil
-juice of half a lemon
-bunch of fresh parsley, chopped

To make meatballs:
-combine turkey mince, egg, thyme, breadcrumbs, and parmesean cheese and form into small meatballs. Flatten the meatballs slightly (they should be about the size of a 50p). Place the meatballs in the bottom of a frying pan or griddle pan and brown meat on both sides. It doesn’t matter if they are cooked through, as they will finish cooking in the soup. This is just to keep them together. You also don’t need to flatten them first, I just found it easier to work with in the pan this way! Another option would be to start with frozen meatballs or even leftover meatballs as that would cut down the amount of time this takes to make.

To make soup:
-heat olive oil in the bottom of your soup pot and add carrots and celery. Cook until vegetables are soft, about 10-15 minutes. (this is an optional step. You can start by bringing chicken broth to a boil and adding both fresh and frozen veg at the same time, but by cooking the carrots and celery first, they get very tender.)
-add chicken broth/stock, thyme, peas, and carrots. Bring to the boil, add basil, then simmer about 10 minutes.
-add meatballs, cook for 10 additional minutes.
-add spinach and small pasta, bringing soup back to the boil and cook just until pasta is tender (the pack of pasta I used said 5-7 minutes). Squeeze in half a lemon (optional).
-test a meatball to make sure it’s cooked through before serving. Sprinkle with parsley just before serving.

Tim loved it, and he’s not a big fan of soup as a main meal, but this soup was hearty enough to satisfy him. It made enough for us to have this as our Dinner plus enough leftovers for Tim to take the following day. I had to add some more chicken broth to the leftovers.

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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.

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By far, the easiest bread in the world to make. It goes great with soups and stews!

I first made Beer Bread in 2009 out of a box mix that cost over $5.00. We loved the bread, and I knew there had to be an easy way of making this without buying a pre-made mix, so off to the search engines I went. There are loads of recipes out there for beer bread and some of them can get quite involved. This recipe is so simple, anyone can make it. You can even mix the dry ingredients together ahead of time, pop it into a jar and give to a friend with a bottle of beer for an instant gift.

Beer Bread

You Will Need:
375g self-rising flour
3 tbs caster sugar
330ml beer (lagers work best – I used Stella)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Butter the sides and bottom of a loaf tin.
2. Mix together dry ingredients. Slowly add beer (it will foam) and use a wooden spoon to mix until sticky.
3. Pour into loaf tin and bake 50-60 minutes or until the top is crunchy. Cool tin on it’s side on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes before removing bread.

This doesn’t even need any butter, it’s tasty without it!

I might be posting a lot of recipes in the next few days as I seem to have a lot of recipes I haven’t yet posted!

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[It was so good, there wasn’t any left!]

To make a long story short, I offered to bake my friend Brian a cake and gave it to him when we saw him on Sunday. Brian decided to donate his cake to the group we were with, so everyone got to have a taste and everyone who had some complimented me on it! So, here you go. How to use 500g of butter in one go….

Butterscotch Cake

For the cake:
225g Butter (softened. I used real butter not Stork like I usually do)
125g Muscavado sugar (brown sugar)
100g Caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

For the syrup:
50g Butter
75g Muscavado sugar (brown)
50g Caster sugar
1 tsp vanillia

For the icing:
200g Caster sugar (or icing sugar if you have it!)
25g Cornflour (cornstarch)
225g Butter cut into cubes
6 Egg yolks
Butterscotch syrup (from above recipe)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line your cake tins with some parchment paper.
2. You’ll be making the sauce first so it has time to cool. Melt the butter and two sugars together over low heat for 15-20 minutes until sugars are dissolved. If it doesn’t look like syrup, add a tablespoon of butter (I used olive spread) to make it a little runnier. Remove from heat and add vanilla.
3. While that’s cooling, start on the cake. Use a wooden spoon and beat the softened butter. Add the two sugars and continue to use a wooden spoon to mix it together until it becomes fluffy and golden in colour.
4. You can switch to an electric hand beater for the rest. Add in each egg, one at a time, with a Tablespoon of the flour each time and beat thoroughly before adding the next egg.
5. Beat in the vanilla, and add the remaining flour. The mixture should be thick enough to reluctantly drop off a spoon. If it’s too thick, add a tablespoon of milk.
6. Divide between your two pans and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn into a wire rack to finish cooling.
7. Time to make the buttercream icing. You will want to clean off your electric beaters for this. Beat together the cornflour, sugar, and eggs until blended and bright yellow in colour.
8. Add butter one cube at a time, mixing constantly.
9. Pour in the butterscotch sauce and mix together.
10. To put the cake together, just sandwich the two layers with a small bit of the icing, and ice as usual.

Yum!!

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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, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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I think I re-did the menu about five times, and have edited the Tesco order at least 10. Good thing I can edit the order until 4AM!

Schedule-wise, Tim’s on the early shift all week until Friday when he rolls into a long weekend off, so I didn’t have to find fast meals to cook. We’re aiming to eat healthier, but I’m not sure how well Tim will cope with a week that has 3 vegetarian meals (four if you count the tacos on Sunday), 3 fish meals, and only one meat-y meal, but…we’ll see. hopefully he’ll tell me if he’s not happy with the meals.

Monday – Quorn Quesadillias with the leftover Quorn taco filling from tonight
Tuesday – Home made/home baked fish and chips with mushy peas and salad
Wednesday – veggie stir-fry
Thursday – Egg fried rice (Wednesday’s leftovers, just add an egg.)
Friday – Grilled salmon, green beans, and pesto packets with a salad
Saturday – Fish pie – This is still my go-to recipe.
Sunday – Hawaiian Chicken in the crock pot, brown rice, salad, broccoli

Tim’s lunches this week will be either Chocolate Cream Cheese spread (his request!) or the rest of the Chicken Tikka sandwich filler from last week (he also takes a banana, an apple, and an actimel).
My lunches will either be a bagel with cream cheese & smoked salmon or a small jacket spud with cottage cheese on top (and grapes, oranges, and an actimel)

Tesco order total for this week: £43, including delivery and a few household items. MUCH better than the previous weeks where we were spending upwards of £50, but this week also doesn’t have much meat in it and several meals are coming straight from the freezer.

Hoping the weather holds out so we can get out with the nordic poles this week!

Off to bed for me. 1:30AM and I have to get up when Tim does at 5 to make his Lunch since I’m too tired to trust myself with a knife right now!

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This past Christmas, I was sent a copy of the Hairy Biker’s Perfect Pies by my Secret Santa from an Ex-pat group. I’m not a pie person, and as you know, I’m quite loyal to Jamie Oliver, but I paged through the book and marked a bunch of the pies that looked like Tim and I would like them. Last week when I was meal planning, I read out the pies to Tim, and he picked this one. I had planned to serve it with poached eggs, but I forgot to poach the eggs in the end! Oops. As always, my recipe has been slightly modified due to my own dietary restrictions, and based on what I thought would work better.

You will need:
750g Maris Piper potatoes
3 TBS cooking oil
8 sausages (I used Tesco half-fat)
2 x 415g tins of baked beans

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Quarter the potatoes and put in a pan of boiling water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until soft.
2. Meanwhile, fry the sausages in 1 TBS oil until browned. (or grill them)
3. Put the sausage in the bottom of a shallow casserole dish and cover with beans. Set aside.
4. Drain and roughly cut the potatoes into chunks. Don’t worry about the skins. Some of the skins will fall off after boiling, some won’t.
5 – Fry the potato chunks in the remaining oil for 2-3 minutes. Pour potatoes on top of sausage and beans
6 – Bake at 200C 15-20 minutes until potatoes are crisp on top and the beans are hot.

I think this would have been tasty with a poached egg on top, but Tim thought it was okay on it’s own!

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I created an Excel spreadsheet to track our grocery store spending throughout the year, and my first month is complete. We have spent £173.18 this month on groceries ONLY. I filter out of the total delivery charges (£17.50 for the month), toiletries (nothing, bought everything at Boots or Wilkos), household goods (laundry soap, etc. £15.21 this month), pet supplies (£2.29 this month as all Prudence needed was a box of wet food), alcohol (£0), and misc (like if we pick up a DVD at the grocery store. £0 this month)

I’m debating about adding onto the sheet all times we go shopping for toiletries (boots/wilkos/etc), as I am interested in knowing what we spend on those things. I might still have my receipts from this month, or I can price things out individually and work out the total. It was less than £25, but more than usual because we ran out of everything this month including Tim’s aftershave.

Still, £173 isn’t bad. We’ve always aimed to spend less than £200. And yesterday was the most expensive delivery because we defrosted the freezer and needed to restock it.

Paying for delivery annoys me sometimes, but I can justify it, easily. If Tim isn’t available to drive me to the shop, I’d have to take a bus at £4.80 Return. Delivery fees hover between £3.50 and £4.50, depending on how fast I book it. Petrol would be negligible, since we live fairly close to most of the shops (though I bet Asda would be more in petrol than the delivery fee), but when you think about how much time you spend in the grocery stores…..the delivery fee is well worth it!

Here’s hoping I can do better in February, though. Ideally, I’d rather groceries be down in the £125-150 range for the month, especially since we will have houseguests in April and May that will add extras! (Dear houseguests: No, I am not asking you to buy groceries while you are here! Stop thinking that!!). We also are going on holiday in June, so groceries become a little iffy then, too. Even with camping, we still wind up doing a daily shop and it can add up since you never have a stocked pantry to work with.

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I had to half-ass our meal plan at around midnight last night because I had the Tesco order coming today and there was NOTHING on it!

So, here’s our sad plan.

Monday – Breakfast for Lunch
Tuesday – Steamed salmon with veggies and rice
Wednesday – Tuna steaks with salad
Thursday – something with the frozen leftover turkey, probably pot pie or Tetrazinni
Friday – Swedish Meatballs
Saturday – Cranberry burgers
Sunday – Roast Chicken

Total cost of groceries for the week? £30. In the freezer (or over at Tim’s parents in their extra freezer) we have the salmon, tuna, turkey, meatballs, and a whole chicken.

Total so far for the month? £50. Though I have a feeling after we eat the freezer down it might get a little more expensive.

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LJ Idol’s week 6 prompt was “food memory”. My entry didn’t score very high, but scored high enough to keep me in the competition.
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I stopped eating peanut butter when I was six. I went from absolutely loving peanut butter and eating peanut butter and jelly (UK: jam) sandwiches nearly every day to refusing to have them at all. No matter if my mom tempted me with my favourite flavour of jelly (strawberry preserve so it had the bits in it), cut the bread into a cute shape, put the peanut butter on a stick of celery for ants on a log…. nothing. I refused to eat it.

This can create a problem when you’re a kid, especially growing up in the US, where PB&J is the quintessential lunch food for a child. Everyone eats it (unless you’re allergic to peanuts), and most parents don’t mind having their child’s friends over because they know all they need to give them for lunch is a good old peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Grape jelly, of course, was the usual, with strawberry being a treat. Some people put bananas on their sandwiches, or a thick, gooey, sugary substance called marshmallow fluff…but not me. I absolutely HATED peanut butter.

When I was little, I had a best friend. She was the same age as me and our parents met through their friends who did not have any children of their own. Their friends introduced our parents because they knew each couple had a little girl around the same age. I was exactly 2 months older than the other girl, almost to the day. She and I did everything together. We took swimming lessons together, our parents took the other one with them when they went to McDonald’s, and we even went away with each other’s families for overnight trips. At the young age of 3 or 4, we were inseparable.

Every day I played over at my friend’s house, her mom would serve us each half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

In the early 80s, wholesale bulk shops like SAM’s club and Costco were becoming famous for opening their doors to the public after previously being restaurant-only shops. People flocked to the wholesale clubs and had no idea what to do because the items were so large. My dad one time purchased a box of 1,000 paper-wrapped straws that my mom and I still find remnants of in the back of the cutlery drawer at her house. People purchased food in bulk – huge bottles of vegetable oil, herbs and spices by the pound, tea bags in boxes bigger than your head…and giant aluminium tins of Skippy peanut butter.

The massive tin was about as wide as a dinner plate, and probably a foot or more in height. I couldn’t begin to tell you how much peanut butter was in the tin, but I am sure it would have been put to good use in a school cafeteria, and not in someone’s house.

My mom was more sensible and continued to buy her peanut butter (Peter Pan brand) in regular sized jars. My friend’s mom…. not so much. She and her husband fully embraced the bulk buying, and their purchase included a giant tin of peanut butter, because well, she knew her daughter and her daughter’s friends liked peanut butter, so why not?

It was around this time that I started refusing peanut butter. I told my mom I didn’t like it, and she just couldn’t figure out why until she was standing in her friend’s (my friend’s mom) kitchen one day and her friend was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for her daughter and me. My mom watched as she peeled back a thin layer of plastic wrap (UK: cling film) and was repulsed by the stale stench of peanut butter that greeted her nose.

After that, my mom stopped offering me peanut butter sandwiches.

I didn’t start eating peanut butter again until I was in my 20s and had gone vegetarian and needed a source of protein. I’m still not a huge fan of it, and the fact that the US brands aren’t available here in the UK doesn’t bother me one bit.

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Who doesn’t love a fast food breakfast? A toasted (English) muffin, an egg, some bacon, a bit of cheese, and of course, a hash brown. Tim has dubbed these sandwiches “McBecca”s because they are an exact copy of a McDonald’s McMuffin, but without the grease.

You will need:

One muffin per person
2 slices of bacon per person
1 large egg per person (or 2 smaller eggs)
1 slice of cheese per person
bag of frozen hash browns
milk

Follow the directions on the bag of hash browns for oven baking and bake 1-2 hash browns per person.
Split each muffin and toast it, butter optional.
Cook the bacon using your preferred method. I like to grill ours and then pull off the fat rind before eating.
Wisk together the eggs and a splash of milk, adding pepper or any other additional flavourings you want.
Cook your eggs the same way you would scrambled eggs, but try to keep the egg mixture in larger pieces (makes it easier!)
Now all you do is assemble your sandwich in whatever order you prefer. I like putting the bacon on the bottom, topped with the egg, and then putting the slice of cheeese on top so the warm egg melts the cheese a little bit.

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