Stem ginger cake will make me thin

Yesterday, I came to a decision. I am going on a diet.

Today I celebrated that decision by baking a cake.

No, it's ok. Really. Because this is a low fat cake. In fact the original recipe (which, of course, I've tinkered with) came from a Weightwatchers cookbook. It's a bit obsolete now, because they've totally changed the Weightwatchers points system, but it's still a nice book with recipes that work and don't taste like cardboard, like most food aimed at dieters. It also has my favourite madeleine recipe, which is only low fat because they're quite tiny but is still made with proper butter, and I'll share that with you one of these days.

But for today, here's my recipe for stem ginger cake for people who would like to be thinner but still eat baked products.

Ingredients:

175g porridge oats
175g self raising flour (or use plain flour with 1 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp bicarb)
75g low fat margarine (Flora Light etc)
4 pieces of stem ginger, chopped finely
2 tbsp syrup from the ginger jar
1 tsp ground ginger
6 tbsp powdered artificial sweetener, eg Splenda
2 tbsp honey
1 egg, beaten lightly
150ml skimmed milk
zest and juice of 1 nice fat lemon

(If you're not on a diet, bake this cake anyway, but use butter instead of margarine, and caster sugar instead of the horrid artificial sweetener)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160º. Grease and flour an 8" round tin. I just use low fat cooking spray, which works fine, it's not a particularly sticky cake.

Put the flour and oats into a bowl and mix it together (plus baking powder and bicarb, if using). Rub the margarine into the dry mixture until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Put everything else into the bowl, give it a good mix until it's all combined, and pour it into the prepared cake tin. Bake for an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.



I thought this might have turned out quite dry, but it's really not at all. In fact it's a nice moist cake, perfect to go with your 3pm coffee, and you won't feel guilty afterwards.

(Unless, that is, you've scoffed the entire cake in one sitting. Which really isn't that diet-friendly at all.)