Nom nom

I put on a lot of weight during my pregnancy, stuffed my face, did the grave mistake of 'eating for two' and gleefully proclaimed that "breastfeeding burns 600 calories a day". Hmm. Along came Jack and he was wonderful, but however, due to my recovery I was pretty much bed-bound for 3-4 months. Eek, More eating.

Finally when Jack was almost 1, I decided that it was no longer 'baby weight' I was carrying. Oops. I joined Slimming World with my mum and have been slowly but surely loosing weight which is fantastic, it's a great plan. (See http://www.slimmingworld.com/ for more info)

You are allowed 15 'syns' a day on Slimming World, for foods you like (or in my case - gin) so imagine my delight when I came across a recipe for Chocolate Brownies that are only 12.5 syns for the whole lot! In my case, after cutting them up, it works out around 0.9 syns per slice. Yum, I can't NOT share this with you. They are really really delicious. I altered the frosting slightly by using lemon quark instead of plain, and it works well with the chocolate taste.

The main thing is swapping the sugar for a sucralose-based sweetner, and using whisked egg whites as a light raising agent. 

Ingredients are:

- 6 egg (separated)

- 150g sweetner (eg splenda)

- 60g cocoa powder (not hot chocolate)

- 1tsp vanilla essence

- fry light (I used the butter flavour one)

Frosting ingredients (optional)

- 4tbsp quark (free on SW diet. I used lemon flavour quark)

- 2tbsp cocoa powder

- 2 tbsp sweetener

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

How to make and bake!

- preheat the oven to 180oC, spray a baking tin with fry light and line with greaseproof paper.

- whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks

- in a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks, sweetener, vanilla essence and cocoa powder. Using a good cocoa powder helps make up any lack of taste for lack of sugar.

- whisk until all combined well. if the mixture gets tough, keep adding bits of the egg whites until it becomes smoother and easier to whisk.

- gently fold in the rest of the egg whites, pour into the tin and bake for 25-30 mins.

- when this is done, and cooled, you can either cut and munch or pop the lovely frosting on top. It is virtually syn free, so in my opinion, why not!!

The total amount is 12.5 syns, so depends how you cut it up as to how much per slice, in my case I used a loaf tin so it made 14 slices. Very very delicious!

Just out the oven, pre frosting

With the frosting on top

All cut up and ready to demolish