Showing all posts tagged baking

In Food

Have your (healthy) cake and eat it!

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on

Angela Shepherd is a wellness coach and freelance copywriter specialising in health issues. With a lifelong interest in health, nutrition and complementary therapies, she is also a qualified massage therapist and aromatherapist. Her interests include running, cycling and not eating ready meals… but she also enjoys the occasional cake, curry or glass of wine because ‘life’s too short not to’! You can find out more about Angela and what she does on her website.

 Is baking the new rock and roll? It certainly seems like it sometimes! The Great British Bake Off has recently become something of a national obsession, ex-supermodel Lorraine Pascale made baking suddenly cool with her Baking Made Easy TV series and even A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow are getting in on the act.

In our house we aim to be fairly healthy most of the time, but we do love a bit of cake. This being the case, I like to actually make the cake we eat whenever possible rather than buying it, as I then know exactly what’s gone into it and can try to keep the ingredients as healthy as possible. If you get the urge to bake during National Baking Week but don’t want to pile on the pounds in the process, why not have a go at one of my favourite ‘healthier’ cake recipes below? They use vegetable oil rather than butter, so that’s good fat rather than bad. Of course if you eat them with cream that’s a different story!

If you want to make your cakes even healthier (or suitable for diabetics) you can substitute the sugar in these recipes for Perfect Sweet, a natural xylitol-based sugar substitute available at health food shops. Most sugar substitutes (such as those you might add to coffee or tea) aren’t really suitable for baking as they don’t behave in the same way as sugar when heated, but you can use xylitol weight-for-weight and it works fine. The cakes are also suitable for those allergic to dairy (use soya milk in the chocolate cake).

Enjoy!!

Chocolate Express Cake

This recipe is completely idiot-proof – ideal for time-pressed Mums who have to whip up a cake at short notice!

You’ll need:

  • 175g plain flour
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tblsp good quality cocoa
  • 120g sugar
  • ¼ pint rapeseed or sunflower oil
  • ¼ pint milk (dairy or soya)
  • 2 eggs

Pre-heat oven to 170°C.

Grease two sandwich tins with oil spray and base line with greaseproof paper.

Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix together.

(To make a plain sponge just use 200g flour and leave out the cocoa.)

Measure the oil and milk in a jug, then add the eggs and beat in.

Add to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Divide the mixture between the two sandwich tins.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until the cakes are springy.

Cool on a wire rack.

Fill and top with whatever you like. I like to put low-sugar strawberry jam in mine, then melt dark chocolate over it!

 Low Fat Banana Bread

Being a cyclist, my husband is a proper cake fiend, so I often make this to put in his lunchbox (not a euphemism!). It’s a great way to use up bananas that are slightly past their best.

  •  220g plain flour
  • 1½ tsp baking powder
  • 150g sugar (I like Billingtons unrefined Demerara for this)
  • 1 tsp mixed spice
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 125ml rapeseed or sunflower oil
  • 2 medium bananas, mashed

Preheat oven to 160C/Gas 2½. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the eggs, oil and bananas. Mix well and pour into a greased loaf tin. Sprinkle the top with a bit more sugar and bake for around an hour (depends on your oven and tin size – test with a skewer to see when it’s done). Simples! I guess you could add some dried fruit to this if you like, but I think it’s sweet enough as it is, and also moist enough to eat without buttering it.

Blueberry and Orange Muffins

You might think it a bit odd to use olive oil in a cake recipe but trust me, these are lovely. You do need to use light olive oil though, not extra virgin. They’re great for elevenses, and very easy for kids to make too.

  •  80ml light olive oil
  • 180ml orange juice
  • Finely grated zest of one orange
  • 2 medium organic eggs
  • 275g plan flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 100g sugar
  • ½ tsp cinnamon or mixed spice
  • 150g blueberries

Preheat the oven to 190C/gas 5 and place 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin.

Whisk the oil, orange juice, zest and eggs together in a bowl.

Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar and spice in another bowl.

Tip the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stir lightly to combine – don’t go mad with the mixing.

Fold in the blueberries.

Divide evenly between the muffin cases.

Bake for around half an hour until risen and golden.

 

In General, Parenting

The cost of guilt for Britain’s working parents & Greens

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on 2 Comments

A strange combination at first sight, hardhitting survery results and a cake mix company; but what Greens are doing is ensuring that the time we do spend with our children is fun and well spent! Greens recently revamped their cake kits to include puzzles, games and stickers so each kit could stretch into hours of fun that we can do together. I review one of the new kits here.

To the survey, which Greens commissioned to explore how we spend time with our kids. I work from home full-time so can’t really identify with these findings, which is why I’m curious about what other people who do work outside the home think of the findings!

New research out today reveals that working parents are spending as much as £2,000 on gifts and treats for their children each year to compensate for a lack of quality family time.  One in two British parents (50 per cent) guilt buy presents for their children, while nearly a third (31 per cent) worry they spend less time with their children than their parents did with them. According to the study by leading cake mix specialist Green’s, the average working parent spends two hours a day with their children.  However a worrying 38 per cent of the parents polled spend less than seven hours a week with their brood – the equivalent to 15 days a year.

Proving that Brits are willing to dig deep when it comes to making up for lost family hours; the research found the average parent forks out £1,278 on gifts and treats for their little ones every year.  This means that each minute a parent spends with their child effectively costs £2.46 when measured against the amount spent on treats and presents.

That’s a hard-hitting comparison really, £2.46 a day? I’m not sure we can put a price tag on the time we get to spend with our children but I’m interested, do you think as a nation we buy more for kids out of guilt etc or would we spent this amount of toys, games and activities anyway? (Pretty sure I don’t spent £1k+ a year myself!).

The research revealed that it is men who are more likely to splash the cash with fathers spending an average of £1,371.45 on gifts, treats and days out for their children, while mothers spend £1,156.82. Parents with young children are amongst the biggest spenders with adults under the age of 35 lavishing a whopping £922.24 on gifts including sweets, magazines and toys in an average year, compared to parents aged 35 to 44 who spend on average £518.09.

Well when you consider the price of a magazine for kids now with a cheap plastic toy, and half an hour max in entertainment you can see why people might spend more!! (Sorry magazines are my bugbear. When Kieran was ill recently I bought two magazines for him, not something I usually do, and I asked the girl on the till to check the price as I was sure nearly £9 wasn’t right. Gah!) Fellas – do you think you splash the cash more? I think Roy would probably spend more than me but then I sort our budget / do all our finance etc so I know the proportion of cash we can use for such things.

Half (50 per cent) of the parents polled admitted that they do not spend enough one-on-one time together with their offspring, while 43 per cent said they do not get to spend quality time with their children until the weekend. Nearly a third (30 per cent) cited time pressures as the biggest barrier to spending quality time with their children, with a quarter of parents (25 per cent) blaming longer working hours.

It’s a competitive world out there, long hours seem to be the norm in some professions. I believe weekends are so important, not just for people who work outside the home but who do work from home. Kieran is at school for 8.50am, we get home at 4pm, he gets out of his uniform, crashes on the sofa or with his toys, eats tea, gets sorted and goes to bed for 6.30/7pm. He’s shattered and takes himself off if we don’t. The only quality one-to-one time I get with him is when we are curled up on his bed reading, so I can certainly appreciated those findings!

Despite this, the study found that over half (55 percent) working parents believe fathers are spending more time with their children now than ten years ago.  One in two (51 per cent) of the parents polled think mothers are spending less time with their children than ever before. The findings support wider research into family life showing how flexible working hours now mean parents are blurring ‘work  and ‘family’ time, with mothers spending more time in the workplace than ever before.

Roles have changed. It is no longer given that Daddy will go out and work, and Mummy will stay at home full-time to care for the children. Thank goodness the dark ages are over and we have the opportunity to go out and work as we did before children. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that things have evened off, with Mums & Dads spending more equal time with the kids, do you?

Some eye-opening numbers but what it boils down to, I think, is that we are a hard-working nation. These findings aren’t about whether both parents being out of the home working is “better” or “worse” than having a parent at home. It’s about exploring how the time people do spend with their kids is spent and how people feel about this time.

Child psychologist, Donna Dawson comments, ““Most parents today are under considerable pressure to balance their working lives against their parental responsibilities, and often the easiest thing for parents to forgo is ‘quality time’ with their children. To make up for this, guilty parents will spend more money on their children to ensure that their children feel ‘loved’. However, children, especially young ones, have no concept of the value of material things – what makes them feel ‘loved’ is any time spent with their parents. Shared activities such as making a den, doing a jigsaw puzzle, looking for wildlife in the garden or baking a cake together cost little or nothing, and go towards creating the happy childhood memories that will be most treasured when your children are older.”

Brand Manager at Green’s Emma Calder comments, “With the average Brit working more than 40 hours a week it is no wonder that parents struggle to find time to relax and have fun with their children.  However it is important to remember that spending quality time together does not have to involve taking huge chunks out of your day – or cost the earth. At Green’s, we have worked hard to create a range of cake mixes that give kids the feel-good factor of home-baking but without the hard work or mess for parents.  And with baking, you have the added bonus of enjoying a tea time treat together too!”

Visit www.greenscakes.co.uk for more baking fun, hints and tips and much more!


 

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