With the festive season upon us it is easy to over indulge. However, with this raspberry cheesecake and thanks to SPLENDA®, you can enjoy the season of treats without the compromise.
Many people decide to wait until the New Year, to worry about reducing their sugar limit, but you don't need to avoid your favourite treats at Christmas. I adapted their chocolate swirl cheesecake recipe as I am rather partial to raspberries and I was really pleased with the results. There are a whole host of recipes you can use for inspiration.
Consulatant Dietician Helen Bond warns how you can easily pile on the pounds over the festive season with all the fat laden party food. Infact the average person gains between .5-2.5kg over the Christmas period. Luckily she has some top tips to help us all enjoy Christmas in a healthier way.
Helen Bond’s top 10 tips for negotiating festive feasting; from daily treats to New Year’s toast.
Top Tips:
Always start the day with a healthy breakfast. It’s easy to miss this important meal, or give in and indulge in fatty croissants to ease that Christmas party hangover. But eating a good breakfast will help kick-start your metabolism and keep you feeling full, making it easier to ignore the inevitable chocolates lying around.
Get creative with your advent calendar. Even big kids love opening those little advent calendar doors – but, enjoying 25 days of chocolaty goodness will do your waistline no favours! A little chocolate Xmas character provides around 26 kcals, 1.5g fat, 2.8g sugar - even more if they are truffle or alcoholic filled – that’s an extra 650 kcals, 37.5g fat and 70g sugar over 25 days. Why not get creative with your countdown to Christmas, so you’ve got a daily treat, without the daily guilt.
Love seasonal fruit and veg.With the abundance of festive food, it can be easy to forget the basics of eating healthily and achieving the (at least) 5-a-day recommendation. I like to pile the veg on my plate first, rather than last.
Make time for exercise. However well you plan, life is going to get hectic over the festive period, so schedule your 2.5 hours of moderate intensity exercise into your week now. Exercise is also a fabulous stress buster, as it releases endorphins, making you feel happier and calmer.
Don’t skip meals. If you’re going to the office party straight after work, or you’ve got a dinner date with friends, don’t ditch lunch for fear of overdoing your daily calorie intake. You’ll be famished and hungry people tend to make bad food decisions.
Try not to burn the candle at both ends. Burning the festive candle at both ends, with parties during the week and weekend hosting duties, can also affect your waistline. Too little sleep can reduce the level of the appetite-controlling hormone leptin and increase the hormone ghrelin, telling the brain you need to eat – and not always the right healthy food choices.
Rethink your tea breaks. Cut cutting down on the ‘white stuff’is a tall order, especially around Christmas. It appears in so many of the traditional festive favourites, that it’s near impossible to keep track of how much you’re eating. An easy win is to rethink your tea breaks; instead of adding sugar to your tea, swap to a low-calorie sweetener, like SPLENDA®. If you drink four cups of tea a day with two teaspoons (8g) of sugar in each cup - that adds up to 128 kcals. Your sweet tea also tots up to nearly one 1kg bag of sugar over the 25 days of December and 3,200 kcals! You, and your Xmas shopping could be a whole lot lighter for a simple sweet swap!
Treat sweets as treats. The constant supply of treats from guests and salty savoury snacks at work can be too tempting to avoid. Keep healthier seasonal snacks, like clementines, to hand; a medium clementine has just 25 kcals and will provide you 31% of your daily needs for immune boosting vitamin C and 1g of gut healthy fibre.
Wise-up to the buffet. Faced with a buffet, resist the temptation to start filling your plate at one end of the table and continuing to add to it until you reach the other. Before you pick up the plate (and always take the smallest one!), pause for a moment and then prioritise healthy choices; smoked salmon, slices of lean ham and vegetable crudités. Now, step away.
Keep in mind portion size. Most of us are over-generous with serving sizes at Christmas and it’s a fact that the bigger your tableware, the more you’ll fill it. Research shows that simply downsizing from a 12 to 10-inch plate could help you eat roughly 22% fewer calories, and you’ll not feel like you are missing out.
Raspberry Cheesecake With Raspberry And Mint Coulis
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For The Cheesecake
- 1/2 teaspoon of sunflower oil
- 175g reduced fat disgestive biscuits
- 3tbsp runny honey
- 250g ricotta cheese
- 200g low fat cream cheese
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 4 level tbsp SPLENDA®
- Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
- 150g raspberries
- 375g raspberries
- 6 mint leaves finely chopped
- 2tbsp water
- 4 tbsp SPLENDA® granulated
For The Raspberry And Mint Coulis
- Pre heat the oven to 170℃
- Line the bottom of an 8 inch spring-form pan with baking parchment and brush the sides with oil.
- Crush the digestive biscuits using a thick plastic bag and rolling pin.
- Combine the crushed biscuits with the honey and press into the bottom of the spring-form pan. Place in the fridge whilst you prepare the cheesecake mixture.
- Beat the ricotta, cream cheese and eggs togther.
- Stir in the grated lemon and 4tbsp of granulated SPLENDA®.
- Pour 3/4 of the mixture over the biscuit base.
- With the remaining mixture, crush the raspberries and mix together.
- Pour this into the middle of the cheesecake and use a knife to make swirls.
- Bake for around 45 minutes.
- Allow to cool.
- To make the coulis, heat the raspberries with the water and SPLENDA® until they break down.
- Finely chop the mint leaves and stir this through. You could sieve the mixture if you wish but I quite like the seeds.
- Decorate the top of your cheesecake with a few fresh raspberries and mint. Serve with the coulis.
Now you can enjoy sweet life without the compromise this Christmas. Frozen raspberries would also work well for this recipe.
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Good recipe! I'm going to try this out after the New Year. I've used granulated Splenda in other recipes (oatmeal cookies!) and have been incredibly surprised how well it has turned out.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit it was the first time I had used it and was impressed. Will try out some more recipes in the new year.
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