One of the problems I’ve had on both my Challenges has been eating. Unusually for me, I can’t do enough of it and starting the day with something appealing and satisfying has proved difficult. Well, I may have happened across a solution.
I bake. And recently I tried a new recipe for Apple and Date Slice. It has apples and dates in it, along with oats, light brown Muscavado sugar, flour, bicarbonate of soda and a ton of butter. It went down a storm. After I’d tried it a couple of times, I decided I could experiment with the recipe. I thought the apples were probably necessary for the slightly soft texture and the dates make it slightly chewy, so my first experiment I just added a bit of mincemeat I happened to have stashed in the cupboard. Yep, that worked.
Apple, raisin and chocolate
So next, I replaced the dates with raisins and added chopped dark chocolate. Oh yes, that worked! Today, I’ve replaced the apple with pear, kept the dates, added some stem ginger and chopped chocolate. Lush.
Looks better in real life, pear, date, ginger and chocolate
Now obviously, I can cut this to any size or shape required and during testing I’m being quite restrained and making 16 squares, but for the Challenge I’ll probably make nine, at around 118 g each and roughly 437.83 kCals. Now that should give me a better start to the day!
You're determined to make me drool today, aren't you ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm quite thrilled to have some sense of taste back!
ReplyDeleteNow - I think you're going to need some help with these (especially the pear, ginger and chocolate variety) so if you bring a few with you on Tuesday I'll give them a try......
ReplyDeleteAlready planned ;-)
ReplyDeleteWhat a good idea.
ReplyDeleteI shall have a bash at pear & crushed chocolate, I think...
:-)
Good Food Magazine for the recipe, if anyone's interested. Couldn't possibly claim to be that clever really.
ReplyDeleteI bake too! Usually on the beach in Greece. Does that count?
ReplyDeleteHow do the Kcals stack up. Have you worked that out yet.
I think I did mention the approximate calories in the last paragraph but now I'm a little more my normal perky self, I will get my calculator out and do it more precisely :-D
ReplyDeleteYou did mention calories Louise but not Kcal's. Don't worry i was just hitting below the belt. A bit like the cake.Ha
ReplyDeleteMmm! I like the idea of the raisin and dark chocolate variety. 400 calories is a lot more than I eat for a TGOC breakfast; in fact, I think I'd need to go back to bed to sleep it off!
ReplyDeleteYummy it was. Didn't last long. My problem with breakfast is having something to hand that is appealing. Can't be arsed with anything hot of a morning, beyond some variety of caffeine hit, and cereal bars aren't doing it, muesli er, no. Not without lashings of fresh milk. So I have a problem. This is lovely and tasty and slightly squishy (not too hard or dry to chew on first thing) so I'm going to give it a try. Fingers crossed it'll keep me going for a while, especially on those days when you don't get the chance for a proper break. You know the ones, lashing rain, gale force winds, freezing temperatures.
ReplyDelete(Just read that back to myself. It doesn't read well in places...)