Low calorie crunchy potato salad [recipe]

With my diet I've been eating a lot of salads and boiled potatoes. I wanted to make it a little more exciting so decided to make a low calorie potato salad, just to add a little more flavour and to mix it up a bit. 

It was so simple and for the whole thing was only 313 calories, I'd say 4 portions could come from this batch and would be 78.3 calories. The thing I love about this too is that you can add anything to it to add more flavour. Chives, herbs and allsorts. 

Red onions 20g (8 calories)

Baby potatoes- boiled 332g (226 calories)

Philidelphia Lightest 60g (52 calories)

Heinz Seriously Good Light Mayonnaise 10g (27 calories)

Salt and pepper to season

Sweet and Sour Meatballs [recipe]

Back in January I made the decision to change my eating habits with the aim of losing weight and being healthier. 

I don't like the whole anti-diet culture at the moment to be honest and feel a little like I should be ashamed to actually have wanted to lose weight and to actually have needed to lose weight. 

I've so far lost 2 stone and 8 lbs and feel so much better about myself.

I've played around with different recipes and foods and I think that's part of what I really enjoy about being on a diet. Yeah there are hard days but I think now I am thinking more about the food I eat and what I'm putting together I definitely enjoy it more and feel like it's quite fun sometimes playing around with different ingredients and flavours. 

I found a recipe for sweet and sour meatballs which at first didn't sound too appealing to me but I tried them anyway and they've now become a favourite meal for me and for my children. Playing around with the ingredients has meant I've now managed to find the perfect balance to create the sauce as it is just 2 ingredients. It's super simple and super yummy. 

You can either serve this as I have in the photo below or can feed the meatballs onto skewers and brush/spoon the sauce onto the meatballs and vegetables.

Ingredients

Meatballs (I prefer pork but you can use any)

Apricot jam (Just a cheap supermarket brand one is fine)

BBQ sauce (I use HP BBQ Classic Smokehouse)

Peppers (any but I mix green, red and orange)

Red onions

Carrots (optional, but it's the only vegetables Harry will eat)

I line a roasting tray with greaseproof paper and then around the edge place all of the meatballs. In the centre I place the sliced peppers, onions and carrots. Cook these in the oven for 15 minutes.

Then make the sauce which is really simple. Simply use 100g of apricot jam and 50g of bbq sauce. The ratio is that simple...the bbq just needs to be half of the amount of apricot jam. I've also made 200g and 100g but found that it went quite runny so do tend to stick to 100g and 50g and will then make more if necessary. 

Heat this up in a small pan and once the 15 minutes is up either mix in with the vegetables and meatballs or if using skewers, spoon over the meatballs. 

Then place back in the oven for 10 minutes or until the meatballs are completely cooked through.

I usually serve this with rice but also gave mine and my boyfriends children this with chips recently. In fact I made a serving of the vegetables mixed with the sauce and placed their meatballs on a skewer. This also meant they could dip their chips in the vegetable and sauce mixture (yay for not needing ketchup!)

Super simple. Super easy. Super yum.

If you are on a calorie counting diet this can come in at anything from 350-500 calories depending on what rice or meatballs you use. 

Egg, Dairy, Soya Free Birthday Cakes

It was my boyfriends birthday recently and we had a little celebration with his children. I wanted to have a cake to celebrate properly but due to allergy restrictions couldn't just go to the stop to buy a good ol' Colin the Caterpillar classic.

I found a recipe online and adapted a little to suit what I wanted and this was the result! 

Rustic and stacked!

Ingredients

195g plain flour

130g sugar

1tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp white wine vinegar

5 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

140ml water

Large marshmallows

Sprinkles

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

In a bowl, add the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder and mix. Then add the oil, vinegar, vanilla extract and water and mix well. 

Once fully combined add this mixture either to a lined cake tin or to cupcake cases. As the mixture is quite thing I first poured this into a jug to make it easier to pour into the cases. We didn\"t have a cupcake tray so, as expected, the cases didn\"t stay upright and we ended up with "rustic" looking cupcakes...I wasn\"t too disappointed and thought they looked cute. 

Bake for 20 minutes, check that these are baked and then leave to cool.

I wanted to top with marshmallows rather than icing so placed a marshmallow on top of each "cupcake" and then placed under the grill until it started to toast. 

I then used the back of a spoon to spread the melted marshmallow over the top of the cupcake...slightly messy and they seem to cool quite quickly so you need to be quick with not only the spreading but also then placing the sprinkles on top.

I then stacked these on top of one other but as they are quite light I did use a small cocktail stick to keep them all upright. 

I was quite surprised at how nice they tasted and I think I preferred these to a usual cupcake which may have tasted quite heavy.

I\"ll defintely make these again either as a tray bake, as proper cupcakes or as a rustic cupcake.

Edited to add:

We remade these 2 months later, in cake cases and a cake tin and it worked out really well again! This time I made "accidental S'mores" cakes using marshmallows and dairy free chocolate melted on top.