Low GI & Omega 3 Rich Recipes

Cheesecake … low GI? Low fat? Ok for a diabetic diet? You wouldn’t think so, but in small serves, and by altering the ingredients a little, you can make a very tasty dessert. Cheesecake is normally made with cream cheese, cream, eggs, sweet biscuits and butter with variations.

I’ve changed the cream cheese to ricotta, the cream for biodynamic greek yoghurt, and in the base, instead of butter, used an additional egg and some lemon juice with a small amount of olive oil. Eggs are no longer considered a problem for a cholesterol lowering diet, in fact, are very high in Omega 3 fatty acids which have been shown to improve your cholesterol profile. See “How much Fat“.

This recipe has 13.7g, of fat per serving, made up of 6.8g saturated fat (if you divide it up into 8 portions). This is pretty low compared to the standard home baked cheesecake which has 27.1 and 13.8g per 100g serve. Given our serving sizes are about 150g, this is about 1/3 of the fat content per serving, and less than the daily recommended amount of saturated fat per serve.

Enjoy the lemony tang with a warm drink as you put your feet up at the end of the day! Personally, I can think of nothing better than this and an episode of Spooks!

Preparation time: 20 mins Cooking time: approx 40 mins

Prepare the day before – it must be set overnight in the fridge after baking

Serves: 8 portion

Ingredients:

(for the cake mix)

• 250g ricotta cheese
• 4 eggs
• 500g Jalna biodynamic wholemilk yoghurt
• 1 – 3 tablespoons of Hermesetas artificial sweetener (taste it before you pour into the base to make sure it’s sweet enough for your likings. It will taste pretty similar cooked.)
• 2 tablespoons of your favourite liqueur (we used Liqueur Tokay)
• half a lemon, squeezed

(For the base)

• 1 packet arnott’s shredded wheatmeal biscuits (ground in your food processor – or if you have some aggression to work out of you the old way use a rolling pin. Wrap the biscuits in several layers of plastic bags and smash them up and vent out all that steam!!) The GI of these is around 62, and the GI 11, so they are medium GI biscuits. Mixing with the oats and cracked whole wheat will help, and as a proportion of the dish, the GI will still be low.
• Two tablespoons of oats (to help lower the GI of the base)
• One tablespoon of cracked whole wheat (wheat germ will do too) (to help lower the GI of the base)
• One tablespoon olive oil or grape seed oil (In place of butter – much, much lower in saturated fats)
• Half a lemon, squeezed

Method:

• Pre-heat oven to 150 °C.

Cake mix

• Beat the eggs, yoghurt, cheese, sweetener and liqueur together with a food processor or beater till smooth and well combined

Base

• Grind the biscuits in a food processor
• Squeeze half the lemon into the biscuit mix while blending
• Add an egg, the olive oil, the oats and cracked whole wheat and continue blending in the food processor.
• The mixture should clump together but still be crumbly. If it does not press together in your fingers to form a dough like mix, add a small amount of extra lemon juice.
• Press into the bottom of your springform pan. Use the bottom of a flat-based cup to make it flat and smooth.
• Bake in oven at 150 °C for 40 minutes. When ready, it will have browned slightly, and will move slightly on wobbling, but have the consistency of firmly set custard. (try not to wobble it so much that it cracks!)
• Remove from the oven and sit on a benchtop for 20 mins – covered in a sheet of greaseproof paper, where the cooking process will continue.
• Wrap in greaseproof paper and then several tea-towels and place in the fridge overnight.
• Don’t cut it while it is warm as it won’t be set
• Keep the springform pan on until ready to serve and fully set and cold. At the last minute, slide a knife around the edges of the springform pan and unclip the pan.
• Top with a few slices of mandarin or some fresh strawberries and some fresh passionfruit