Last weekend I did a lot of cooking, a lot of eating and and no excercise so wasn't feeling too perky sitting at my desk on Monday morning. But what the hell! Sometimes you just need a weekend off right?
I love weekends like that and Sunday is usually my day for pottering about in the kitchen and experimenting. I posted on Facebook a week or so ago that I'd had a brainwave for a low fat tiramisu recipe. Its always been one of my favourite puds but the idea to try and healthify it came from one of Andy's work colleagues. He's been taking my cakes in to work. Partly to be nice (everyone likes the guy who brought cake!) but mainly so that the two of us don't it all ourselves. For me though its always nice to get feedback especially from people who don't know you. (Although they do work with my very nice but very grumpy boyfriend so they could just be being polite!)
Anyway last week, one of Andy's colleagues who left some particulary positive comments on my blog, asked him if I'd ever made a low fat tiramisu. I hadn't every really thought about it if I'm honest. I tend to think that desserts like tiramisu are there to be indulgent and so if your going to worry about calories you probably shouldn't be eating them. My philospohy isn't usually to cut down on calories, as much as it is to get something positive for your body from everything you eat and cut back on the negatives without compromising on the overall enjoyment of what your eating.
However I like a challenge so I scoured the internet for low fat tiramisu recipes to see what was already about. As I suspected they all used things like, low fat soft cheese, creme fraiche, and greek yogurt in some cases! Surely that would just taste sour, like a low-fat- not-as-good-as-a-real-dessert version of a tiramisu! Whats the point! If your going to have something that tastes like a 'healthy dessert' why not just have some fresh fruit and greek yogurt?
You can go on the 10 mile run if you want to though and you will be a better runner than me at the moment if you do!
So here it is:
LOW FAT TIRAMISU
Ingredients:
250g tub Tesco lighter mascarpone cheese
250g tub quark
2 individual pots of Alpro Soya creamy vanilla dessert
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
24 sponge finger biscuits
300mls freshly brewed espresso
25-50mls brandy (to taste)
1 tablespoon dark agave nectar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder.
Directions:
Whip the mascarpone, quark, soya desserts and vanilla extract until you get a smooth thick consistancy. Leave in the fridge.
Mix the espresso, brandy and agave in a shllow dish. take half of the sponge fingers and soak each biscuit in the coffee mixture for a few seconds then place them into the bottom of a medium sized serving dish to cover the bottom of the dish.
Take the mascarpone mixture and carefully spread half of the mixture in a layer on top of the soaked biscuits.
This recipe makes 6 generous servings but you could easily get 8 out of it. It weighs in at 282 calories per 1/6th of the recipe and 6.5g saturated fat. Compare this with a Pizza express serving which has 539 calories/ slice. (These calorie calculations came from myfitnesspal.)
I think its a winner and I swear you couldn't tell it was low fat. The mascarpone made it super creamy and luxurious while the quark and soya desserts bulked out the mascarpone without adding excess saturated fat. The soya dessert did contain sugar but that was the only sugar added. It gave the mixture a lovely vanilla sweetness which cut through the quark stopping it from tasting to cheesy. It also cut down on the amount of dairy in the recipe which is great as I sometimes find really creamy dairy desserts can be difficult to digest.
All in all I was so pleased with it I took it outside and posed for a loving portait with it.... before we got stuck in and it didn't look so pretty.
Really proud of this one and can't wait to make it again! Perfect with a glass of red wine! Enjoy!
xxx
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