How to Eat Cake Without Getting Fat(ter)

Let’s get this straight: I am not the kind of girl who goes on diets. I would go as far as to say that I am The Anti Diet. Chocolate is one of my main food groups and cheese is my life blood. Have you ever noticed how everything tastes better with a bit of melted cheese on top? Mmmm, molten lard – that’s my bag, baby.

I do, however, have to face facts occasionally, and those facts are that a) the medication that I take for post natal craziness may stop me from shaking in a corner and dribbling, but it also makes me put on weight and b) I am learning to drive at the moment and as soon as I stop having to walk everywhere I’m going to be dealing with some serious pound gainage. With this in mind, I have started a post Christmas diet for the first time in my life. It mainly involves a lot of fruit, vegetables and cottage cheese and going for a run every other morning (or, to be more accurate, shuffling at speed down the road, arms flailing, chest heaving.) It’s OK at the moment, but it would be wouldn’t it? I’m only a week or two in.

My main issue though is that I want cake. God, I love cake. Cake cake cake cake cake. And I don’t want some piddling little diet portion – I want an enormous wedge as big as my head. You’re with me, right? You all want cake too, yes? Well, you can have it because I am about to share with you my Diet Cake recipe. “Ooooooh,” I hear you say.

Lets start with some disclaimers:

1. This recipe uses a lot of artificial sweetener. It would be hypocritical of me to care about this as I’ve been considering investing in a hip flask so that I can carry some of my beloved Pepsi Max around with me at all times, but it’s supposedly bad stuff, so check out the info in this link first. If your reaction is along the lines of “meh”, you may continue. If not, this is NOT FOR YOU.

2. It’s cake, but it’s still going to taste a bit like arse. Come on – it’s diet cake. What do you expect?
And here we go with the recipe:

Here’s what you will need:

So, that’s artificial sweetener of choice, 4 eggs, baking powder, fruit of choice, vanilla extract, oil spray or baking parchment and a 250g tub of Quark. I don’t know if you lot in the US can get Quark, but I’m sure you must have some form of fat free soft cheese out there (this is what Quark is over here anyway.) WARNING: Do not attempt to eat Quark on crackers in the MISTAKEN BELIEF that it will be a nice, tasty cream cheese substitute. It tastes exactly like something that’s been scraped off of a skin infection. Oh, and ignore that bottle of Baileys in the background. It’s left over from Christmas and one of the things that got me into this mess in the first place.

1.  Separate the eggs.

2.  Put the yolks, 1 tsp of baking powder, 4 tbsp(ish) of sweetener, half the tub of Quark and a splash of vanilla essence in a bowl and whisk until combined.

3.  Dump the egg whites into another bowl and whisk up until stiff.

4. Now fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture slowly.

5.  Divide the mixture between 2 cake tins (which you will have sprayed with your oil spray or lined with baking parchment) and put in the oven (which I forgot to mention you will have preheated to 180 degrees) for 15-20 minutes.

6.  Remove from oven and ooooh and aaahhh at how lovely it looks:

7. Leave to cool, come back and make this noise when you see how flat it’s gone: WAH WAH WAH WAAAAAH
It’s OK though – it’s supposed to look like that.

8. Meanwhile, put the rest of the Quark, another 4 tbsp of sweetener and some vanilla extract in a bowl and stir it all together until it’s combined and tastes edible. NB: What constitutes as ‘edible’ when on a diet may differ to the usual definition.

9.  Prise cakes from tins, spread Quark mixture all over the top of one half, add chopped fruit (strawberries are best, raspberries are nice too) and stick the other layer of cake on top.

10.  Eat, whilst trying your absolute hardest not to remember what real cake tastes like. OK, it’s nowhere near as good but this one contains – oh, I don’t know – probably about 3 calories* so you can eat a LOT. Hurrah! Cake it up, ladies.

* It doesn’t. The whole thing contains about 470 calories. My conscience made me work it out. That’s not bad though – you could eat a quarter of it and that’s only about 120 calories. Even the whole thing won’t do a ridiculous amount of damage, especially if followed by a guilt ridden flail down the road in your trainers. Or if you eat it standing up. Or if nobody’s looking.

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