low-calorie

The one thing that I have been madly craving during my pregnancy so far are tomatoes! I am telling you, our kid is going to hate tomatoes as I have had them twice daily (true, in different forms): soup and salad. I just love them! But not any type of tomatoes…No, those hard to find, sweet garden tomatoes! And they need to be a certain consistency for me to be happy… Therefore, one could argue that D had it quite difficult where my cravings are concerned so far, especially since tomato season is officially over, but I am still craving them like crazy!

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The bad thing about me craving tomatoes is the fact that you can’t actually order them online, no…In order for tomatoes to be perfect and satisfy my taste buds, they need to smell a certain way (yes, I am the weird person that smells tomatoes at the market), feel a certain way and look a certain way (I generally love the pink, non-perfect looking tomatoes). That being said, most of the time D found the precious, perfect tomatoes for me, except for two days ago, when he came home with these perfectly round and red tomatoes that obviously did not do much for my salad.

Which brings us to today’s post! I decided to venture in the kitchen to cook a cream tomato soup for the first time. While I do love to cook all sorts of other things, soups are simply not my cup of tea. Until this one. Besides the fact that I documented the whole thing on Instagram’s Stories, without having the slightest clue of how things will turn out (the pot could’ve exploded for all I know) – I now realise that could’ve meant social cooking suicidal – the damn thing turned out to be even better than either me or D expected, especially since I was too lazy to go out and buy anything and was left with using whatever I already had in the fridge/house – hence no fresh basil, but I did have a bit of fresh oregano leftover form the potatoes we cooked a few days ago (recipe here). I do admit that until now, I have been getting my tomato soup in a plastic container from the supermarket (fru-fru) which was great, but from now on, I will start experimenting with home made cream soups (make way for mushrooms, bell peppers etc).

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Let’s move along to the actual recipe for today… First of all, it will only take you about 30-40 minutes to get from ingredients to final product which means that there is absolutely no excuse to not try this recipe. Here’s what I had in the fridge for this one:

1300 gr tomatoes
180 gr red onion (two medium onions are fine)
1 small pot of plain yoghurt (you can use sour cream, but yoghurt is lighter)
10 gr of fresh oregano leaves
15 gr of garlic (a small garlic head)
3 tsp of vegetable cooking base
1 tsp (not fresh) basil – fresh is better, but I was lazy and hungry yesterday
1 tsp of pomace olive oil (you do not need more than that!)

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Steps to follow:

Roughly cut the tomatoes and the onions – do not stress about this step too much as it’s all going to go in the blender anyway.
Slice the garlic, and pick the oregano leaves, arrange everything and take a few photos.
Put the pomace olive oil in a pot and let it heat up for 30 seconds than add the onions.
After the onion gets semi-translucent, add the sliced garlic and half of the vegetable cooking base and let them fry stirring continuously for another minute or two.
Add half of the tomatoes and the basil and mix them all together until the tomatoes start peeling by themselves and then add the remaining tomatoes and let everything come to a boil (about 4-5 minutes).
Add the oregano leaves and what is left of the vegetable cooking base and let everything boil for another 5 minutes stirring from time to time.
Take the pot off the stove, let everything chill for 3-4 minutes and then blend everything really well – since we do not have an actual blender, I used the smoothie maker for this step, but everything turned out lovely.
Put the pot back on the stove and bring to boil.
Add the yoghurt, stir well and let it boil for another few minutes. You’re done!

This is one of those soups that you can make all year round using canned tomatoes or home-made tomato juice. It is nutritious, satisfying while also being low in calories and fats. This for me is the perfect lunch and I will start experimenting with soups as well because it was fun-fun-fun making this one. I added a bit of fresh ground pepper in the end, but if you do not like a spicy dish just skip that step. The nutritional info I’ve uploaded is for the entire quantity which provided four servings, so make sure you divide everything by four.

D was truly impressed by this soup and by the fact that I managed to cook, take pictures and live-stream everything on Instagram all by myself without actually blowing up the kitchen, so I’d say this is a recipe everyone can make without stressing too much.

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Since we haven’t cooked in a while, yesterday we decided to make something very heathy and low-calorie that is still sweet enough to call dessert. I have to mention that we haven’t attempted to bake a healthy dessert ever, so the result was a surprise for us as well. I’ve always loved a sweet treat but I hate the idea of stuffing my body with sugar, when I clearly know it does not need it, or at least not in the industrial amounts found in normal desserts.

For these chocolate cupcakes we haven’t used any sugar, nor did we use and white flour, choosing to use wholemeal flour instead. We also chose the darkest chocolate we could find (85%), and if you want to go overboard with the healthiness, you can easily use only a quarter of the butter we used (since this was our first attempt, we didn’t really know what we were doing) and discard the egg yolks (D really likes them, so I thought I’d just use them).

These cupcakes were really easy to make and it took us a total of 40 mins to make them, considering that they spent 20 mins in the oven. Here’s what you’ll need I order to duplicate the 12 cupcakes we made yesterday:

175 wholemeal flour
3 eggs
4 oranges
2 lemons
50 gr of butter (choose the one with the most fat in it, as it’s the best for cooking)
125 gr dark chocolate (at least 75% dark – we used 85%)
vanilla essence
mascarpone (this is optional and it will only be used as a topping)

Making these cupcakes is really easy and you only need to be following a few simple steps.

As usual, arrange all the ingredients in order to make this perfect photo.
Cut the oranges and the lemons in perfect halves, carefully squeeze all the juice and clean all the remaining contents until you are left with clean cupcake citrus-peel holders.
Put all the chocolate and the butter into a bowl and microwave it for 2 mins, then stir well until all of the content is creamy.
Put the eggs over the flower (you see 6 eggs in the photo because we had to make 24 cupcakes) and stir well until you get a batter -like composition.
Add the melted chocolate and carefully stir until fully incorporated.
Pour a glass of orange juice over the batter and stir well with and electrical mixer.
Fill the orange and lemon peels with the batter and put them in the oven for 20 minutes at 175 degrees.

For the topping, which is optional, you’ll need the mascarpone cream cheese, half of glass of lemon juice and a vial of vanilla essence. Mix everything together and that is it!
Once you get the cupcakes out of the oven, let them chill for 10 mins and decorate them with the mascarpone topping.

That’s it! It’s that simple to get a healthy, low-calorie dessert ready in just 40 minutes. Using the current recipe, each cupcake carries around 120 kcal, which is very good considering the fact that by using the wholemeal flour, they ended up being very satisfying and you are really full after only one eaten.

I have a hunch that if you only use a quarter of the butter and only the egg whites, the fat as well as the cholesterol will go down a lot, making these very very healthy. We probably will try to adjust the recipe a bit next time.

I hope you’ll enjoy this recipe and find it as delicious as we did!