Hello beautiful people! It has been a while since I cooked or baked but that's due to some unfortunate and heartbreaking news that I received at the end of 2017. I lost an important person in my life, my grandmother and at the time I wasn't eager to cook or bake. I mainly ate any food that was presented to me. Everyone grieves in their own way, and when I find myself in any uncomfortable situation I mainly rely on food to forget about it. Although “stress eating” does have its flaws, I either get unhealthy skin (mainly Acne), my weight increases by tenfold or, better yet, I get the best of both worlds and get acne and even wider hips. It always happens to be the latter. At the time exercise wasn't even an idea in my head but then when I went shopping and went on to try some pants, I got a SHOCK!Normally I always wear between a UK size 14 or 16 for my pants, but this time the size 16 was a wee bit snugg. So then I tried on a size 18 and it was a perfect fit. Now when it comes to my weight it's strange but I never go on the scales. I find if I go on the scales I would be a bit disappointed with my size and I don't want that number on the scale to rain on my parade. So how I determine my weight is by the fit of my clothes and throughout the years it has worked really well for me. After that shopping experience I told myself, once I get back to my routine I will start to lose weight and reach a point where I feel comfortable in my skin. That being said, being comfortable means getting back to my weight when I was 22 as one of my closest friend’s is getting married later this year and I have to recycle some old wedding garments.
So now I am back at home, and starting my fitness/health regime. For now the fitness regime is a bit lacking (not gonna lie). I am a bit of a lazy bird when it comes to working out, but I’m hoping that if I give myself motivation to exercise it will happen. It's all in the mind!
In terms of my food intake I started doing the Ketogenic diet. What's that you say? Well it is a low carb diet, where the body produces ketones in the liver to be used as energy. With this diet your body should go through a state called ketosis where the body begins to understand how to survive on a low intake of food. If you’re keen to learn more about the diet click Ketogenic diet! The main initiative of the diet is to reduce your intake of carbs to around 50 g or so (from what I read). The diet mainly consists of MEAT, POULTRY, FISH, DIARY, VEGETABLES (certain ones though), FRUIT (again certain ones) and NUTS! So far I’ve been on this diet for about a week now and I can honestly say that I’m not suffering as much as I used to with other diets. There is still so much that I can still eat like cheese and dark chocolate! In my mind that ain't half bad but then day 4 came along and I got a craving for something sweet...mainly cake and biscuits. Now I am a sweet tooth and a baker and unfortunately all the things that I liked to eat and bake are sweet and in either a tart, cake or biscuit form! These past couple of days I have been trying to find recipes that are not only sweet but also relate to the keto diet, and man it is tough! There are loads of recipes for savoury dishes but not sweet. So after searching for far too long online, I decided to look through some cookbooks to find any recipes, and low and behold my favourite dessert book had just the recipe! A Mixed Berry Fool.
The Step by Step Desserts book has a variety of Fool recipes, but this one just hit the spot. This particular Fool has a mixture of mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries and raspberries) with double cream, greek yoghurt, vanilla extract and a wee bit of sugar. Being that there isn’t that much sugar in the recipe I thought that it wouldn’t hurt to make this dessert. Luckily with Valentines Day coming up it was a perfect excuse to make it! Instead of spending money at an expensive restaurant for VDAY this year my partner and I decided to make a nice meal together.
We decided to make Brunch and top of the menu was Shashouka [recipe on that coming soon] and then the Mixed Berry Fool. It was heavenly! In terms of presentation I tried to cut some heart-shaped strawberries (because it’s valentines and all) and placed it at the sides of the dishes. It's something, which I need to work on because out of the six bowls that I poured the mixture of the fool you were only able to see the heart shaped strawberries in two of them. I think the key when making heart shaped strawberries (or fruit of any kind) is to cut them really thin.
Anyway I definitely recommend this recipe as it only takes a maximum of 10 minutes to make!
Ingredients:
400 g (14 oz) mixed hulled strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries
30g (1 oz) caster sugar, plus 1 tbsp extra
200 ml (7 fl oz) double cream
150 g ( 5 1/2 oz) full- fat Greek Yoghurt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Method from Step by Step Desserts
1) Slice the strawberries so that they are a similar size as the other fruit. Combine all the fruit with 1 tablespoon of sugar in a large bowl. Then pulse two - thirds of the mixture in a food processor to form a purée.
2) Whisk the cream in a bowl until fluffy. Add the yoghurt, vanilla extract, and remaining sugar. Fold the mixture gently, so that you lose as little air as possible.
3) Gently fold the fruit purée into the cream mixture until no streaks remain.
4) Fold the reserved fruit into the mixture. Divide the mixture between the jars, cover, and chill for 2 hours, before serving. You can cover and store them in the fridge for up to 1 day.
Notes:
*This recipe is from Step by Step Desserts by Caroline Bretherton and Kristan Raines
*With the berries (strawberries, raspberries and blueberries) being a bit expensive, for half the mixture I used frozen berries. However using the frozen berries did make the fool a bit watery, which shouldn't happen.
*In the KETO diet you shouldn't technically have any refined sugar but since it was below 30 grams I thought it wouldn't hurt.
Even though I was able to make the FOOL as something sweet to eat, I am still on the hunt for finding KETO recipes or KETO friendly recipes so that I have my indulgence!
Do you have any KETO recipes that I should try? Or do you know any sweet recipes that don't involve gluten?
