Dieting

My partner and I decided to go on a diet for a month (this was decided before I began this blog) because we were feeling rather unhealthy, having a few too many take-aways and such. Ironically my partner, who didn't really want to go on the diet, was the one who kept me on it! I was ready to give up within the first few days, ha! Did I mention I have a massive sweet tooth, which is what I missed the most on our diet, all things sweet!

The diet I put us on was more about eating heathily then about losing weight but as most girls will admit losing weight is nice too. Of course being on a diet isn't really conducive with cupcake making, afterall most cupcakes aren't considered healthy. Happily though my book of 500 Cupcakes has a low-fat section, so that is where I have begun! ^_^

Over the past week or so I have tried two different low fat muffins from the book (no that's not a typo, they are both muffin recipes but they are in the cupcake book):

Citrus Yoghurt Muffins

Batter all mixed and ready to go into the cases. These cupcakes used the zest from a lemon, lime and orange. The cupcakes contained 115ml of sunflower oil and an egg so there was some fat content in these.

Cooked and out of the oven! Yummy!!!

 I also made the suggested citrus glaze to top half of them. The glaze contained caster sugar and the juice of each of the citrus fruits that were zested for the muffin batter.

These muffins were divine! They were so, so moist and the citrus taste was delicious and easily identifiable without being tart. If I didn't know better, I'd have never thought that these muffins were low in fat. I'll definitely make these again the next time I want a treat that doesn't make me feel quite so guilty. ^_^

Raspberry and Cottage Cheese Muffins

Batter in the cases ready for the oven (I only made a half batch of these). Also I substituted fresh raspberries for tin raspberries because the tin was only about 50p. 

Baked and ready to eat!

These cupcakes were also quite moist much like the citrus muffins above, however they contain far less fat as there is only 4 tablespoons of sunflower oil and 2 eggs. The recipe also calls for a cup of skim milk and 115g of low-fat cottage cheese.

Unlike the citrus muffins, I found that these ones lacked flavour, which could be because I used tin raspberries. I'll have to try this recipe again but use fresh raspberries instead. The book also suggests using blueberries, cherries or apricots as substitutes for the raspberries so I'll have to try them too. 

There are still quite a few more low-fat cupcake/muffin recipes in the book but my partner and I are now finished our month long 'healthy-eating diet', so I probably wont be trying out any more low-fat recipes just yet. Although, the fact that the Citrus Yoghurt Muffins tasted so good does pique my interest about the other low-fat recipes. . .

My next blog is going to be about the cupcakes I made for my partner's 8 year old cousins' First Holy Communion.

Happy baking. . .