Showing posts with label lighten up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lighten up. Show all posts

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Lighter Lemon Pound Cake #BundtBakers

This lighter lemon pound cake has less butter the original version but with the sour cream and lemon, you won’t miss it at all. Made with Swerve, everyone can enjoy it! For a little extra innocent richness, serve it with a dollop of lightly sweetened low fat Greek yogurt and berries. 

Food Lust People Love: This lighter lemon pound cake has less butter the original version but with the sour cream and lemon, you won’t miss it at all. Made with Swerve, everyone can enjoy it! For a little extra innocent richness, serve it with a dollop of lightly sweetened low fat Greek yogurt and berries.

For this month’s Bundt Bakers, our host chose “angel or devil” as the theme.  I interpreted this as healthy cake (relatively speaking) vs. decadent cake so I put on my thinking cap and started to Google search lighter pound cake. 

I came across all sorts of “lighter” pound cakes! Apparently it’s a thing. Who knew? Many of them claimed to be lighter but had a whole cup of butter and an equal amount of sugar. Umm, no. That’s regular pound cake. 

Lighter Lemon Pound Cake

I used “brown sugar” Swerve to bake these cakes to make them more diabetic friendly and I baked the batter in a Nordic Ware Duet pan, which has a capacity of 5 cups. It’s perfect for making one cake to keep and one to share. Which is the best “lighten up” option! Sharing is caring. If you bake yours in a 6-cup Bundt pan, it might need just a little longer in the oven. This recipe was adapted from one on Just a Pinch

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup or 180g cake flour, plus extra for pan
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons butter, softened, plus extra for pan
3/4 cup, packed, or 75g Swerve or light brown sugar
1/2 cup or 120g sour cream
Zest 1 lemon 
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 egg, at room temperature
1 egg white, at room temperature
2 tablespoons milk

Recommended for serving: 
Greek yogurt lightly sweetened with Swerve or sugar
Fresh berries

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 5- or 6-cup Bundt pan by greasing it with butter and coating it with flour.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl and set aside.


In another bowl, beat the butter and Swerve/sugar until creamy and lighter in color.


Add sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice, egg,  egg white and milk to the butter mixture. 


Beat 2 minutes on high speed.

Add flour mixture. 


Beat on lowest speed, no more than 10 seconds, until just combined.


Spoon the cake batter into your prepared Bundt pans.


Place on one rack above middle in the oven. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.


Cool for about 7 minutes on a wire rack then use a wooden skewer to loosen the sides and middle then turn the cakes out of the pan. Cool completely. 

This cake is wonderful plain or if you want to fancy it up, with a dollop of Greek yogurt, sweetened with a little more Swerve or sugar, topped with fresh berries. 

Food Lust People Love: This lighter lemon pound cake has less butter the original version but with the sour cream and lemon, you won’t miss it at all. Made with Swerve, everyone can enjoy it! For a little extra innocent richness, serve it with a dollop of lightly sweetened low fat Greek yogurt and berries.

Enjoy! 

It’s the third Thursday of the month so welcome to Bundt Bakers! As mentioned above, our host chose angel or devil as our theme. Check out how our bakers interpreted that theme below. Many thanks to Rebekah of Making Miracles for hosting!

#BundtBakers badge

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

Pin this Lighter Lemon Pound Cake!

Food Lust People Love: This lighter lemon pound cake has less butter the original version but with the sour cream and lemon, you won’t miss it at all. Made with Swerve, everyone can enjoy it! For a little extra innocent richness, serve it with a dollop of lightly sweetened low fat Greek yogurt and berries.

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Sunday, January 4, 2015

Fish Steamed with Spicy Couscous

For this fish steamed with spice couscous, the fish fillets are steamed on top of the couscous so all the lovely cooking juices are soaked up, making the already spicy, herby couscous even tastier.
 

This is one of my favorite dishes to make when entertaining guests. See easy instructions to adapt for a dinner party at the end of the recipe.*

Parlez-vous français? Yeah, I really didn't either.
To say that three years of high school French prepared me poorly for living in Paris would be an understatement. As much as Madame Reat taught me about La Belle France, including our occasional field trips to a nearby French café where we were supposed to order in French to justify the educational status of said excursion, I learned more useful things by reading signs and labels in grocery stores and recipes on my own. 

I now know weird but handy phrases like laissez gonfler - leave to swell -  and saupoudrer de chapelure – sprinkle with breadcrumbs - and napper en sauce – coat with sauce - that hardly ever come up in normal conversation. 

Not a culinary word, but one I am very proud of learning is autocollant. It means self-adhesive. Not useful you say? Try ordering stamps and imagine miming, "the ones I don't need to lick," at the post office. 

Probably more importantly, I learned that Ah, bon, despite containing the word for good, can be used to acknowledge good or bad things, a confirmation akin to “I hear you”  - or a question, depending on inflection: “Really?”

Répétez après moi: Le couscous est simple à préparer.
I am always on the lookout for new and different starches to add variety to our plates, outside the usual triumvirate rice/potatoes/pasta so I was delighted to come across couscous for the first time in France. It’s a staple there, I am guessing thanks to the North African influence from the former French colonies. 

It has since become essential in my cupboard as well and the instructions on that first box of couscous, graine moyenne or medium coarse, is the source for my pet phrase laissez gonfler, which I have managed to work into more conversations that you would imagine. 

This spicy dish is adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe from a series called Oliver’s Twist. I’ve been making it regularly since 2003 when the episode Flash in the Pan first aired. It’s perfect for this week’s Sunday Supper theme of Lighten Up for the New Year, with lots of flavor from the spices and cilantro and very healthy steamed fish on top. Make sure to scroll down to see all the other lovely lightened up recipes the group has made for you today!

Ingredients
For the spice mix:
1 1/2 teaspoons flakey sea salt (I use Maldon.)
1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seeds
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 (2-inch or 2.5cm) piece cinnamon stick

For the dish:
2 cups or 370g wheat couscous – medium grain
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic
2 red chilies (Remove the seeds for less heat.)
1 large bunch cilantro or fresh coriander, leaves picked, stalks finely sliced
Four portion size filets of a relatively thin white fish like sole or flounder. Cod will do if it is not too thick.
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper for seasoning fish
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Couple of handfuls cherry tomatoes (more or less to your taste)
1 large lemon, cut in half at the equator
Optional: another lemon cut in wedges for serving.

Method
Put the couscous in a bowl with enough hot - but not quite boiling - water to cover it. Seal the top of the bowl with cling film and then drape a towel over the top and set aside for at least 10 minutes. Laissez gonfler!

 The couscous will soften and double in size. When it's done, fluff it with a fork and keep covered till needed.



Make your spice mix by pounding the salt, fennel and cumin seeds, coriander seeds and cinnamon together in your mortar.  (If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you can use already ground spices.)


Mince your onion and one chili pepper. Slice the garlic and the other chili.



Cut the very tough bottom parts of your cilantro stems off and discard. Finely chop the rest of the stems up to the leafy part and then roughly chop the leaves. Some leaves are going to get in your stems and, of course, your leaf pile will have the most tender stems, and that’s okay.

Mostly leaves in front. Most stems in back.


Lay your fish out on a plate and season both sides with salt and pepper.



Heat a large saucepan on a low heat, and sauté the onion, garlic, cilantro stems and chopped chili in a good drizzle of olive oil.



Add the spice mix to the pan with another drizzle of olive oil.

Cook for a few minutes and then add the butter. Let it melt then add the couscous.



Mix thoroughly with the spices and sautéed seasonings. Stir in most of the cilantro leaves, reserving some for garnish when serving.


 Turn the stove down to a very low heat, and lay the fish fillets on top of the couscous. Drizzle with olive oil and tuck the lemon halves, cut side up, and the whole cherry tomatoes in the couscous.



Cover with some foil or a tight fitting lid, and cook for 15 minutes or until the fish is white through and flaky. You may need to add just a little bit of water so that the couscous doesn’t burn on the bottom, so do check it about halfway through. A very heavy pan or a diffuser will help with this problem.

Adding a few tablespoons of water about halfway through.


To serve, sprinkle with the remaining cilantro and sliced chili, squeeze the cooked lemon halves over everything and drizzle on some more olive oil. Divide the couscous between four plates and top each with a steamed fish fillet. Serve with additional wedges of lemon, if desired.



*Dinner party instructions
If you are having a dinner party for eight or 12, double or treble the ingredients and prepare as instructed up to the point where the couscous is ready. Allow it to cool then transfer to a greased baking pan (Make sure it is one that can go straight from refrigerator to oven) before adding the fish, the halved lemons cut side up, cherry tomatoes and drizzle with olive oil. If you want to get fancy, throw in some raw shrimp or prawns as well. Cover with foil and refrigerate if it’s going to be more that a half an hour till it’s cooked or if your kitchen is warm. Once the guests have arrived, bake your fish on couscous- still covered in the foil - in an oven preheated to 350°F or 180°C, allowing extra time for cooking the fish if the dish is chilled. Follow the same serving instructions above.

Enjoy!

If your New Year’s resolutions include eating more sensibly, I’ve got a great list of “lightened up” recipes for you this week. Many thanks to our great host T.R. from Gluten Free Crumbley!

Bright Beverages
Blissful Breakfast Items
Appetizing Starters
Savory Soups and Sides
Marvelous Mains
Delightful Desserts