Fancy Desserts in a Time of Pandemic

I've been hooked on watching the Great British Baking Show for a few years, now.  In Germany I had to see the episodes slightly illegally on Netflix (apparently if you live in Germany you don't have access to the show, but if you live in the States you do).  It's much easier here, and I love to watch it on my phone while I pump breastmilk at work.

Sometimes they have great low fat options.  Because of them, I am learning about fatless sponges (cakes) and ALL the different varieties of meringue.  And I have some time between shifts at work, with the Covid Quarantine, and my kids could definitely use a fancy dessert as a pick-me-up in this weird and stressful time!

I made my first meringue layer cake last week, after inspiration from the GBBS, using a powdered egg white that we had leftover from Christmas gingerbread house frosting/glue.  It got rave reviews!  I put raspberry jelly between the first two layers, fat free whipped topping and cherries between the second two layers, and a few stripes of chocolate syrup on top.  Oh! And I put drops of blue food coloring in with the meringue while I piped the layers out, to give it a pretty blue stripe.  The occasion was the Annunciation, so it needed some blue for Mary!



The first batch that I made, I cooked for too long and didn't add sugar to the meringue, so it tasted awful and curled up into an unusable mess.  Luckily, our chickens still liked it!

But the second attempt turned out well.  I used a silicon baking sheet to weight it down and prevent curling.  Monica said I put too much jelly on, but it was otherwise good.  Darn near impossible to cut cleanly - we ate it all in one night!

Previously I tried making Jaffa cakes from the GBBS, but I think the chocolate on top has a bit too much fat.  I also bought some Jaffa cakes off of Amazon from the UK, but we haven't tried them yet.  Apparently they have 1 g of fat per cookies which isn't terrible...  Since Snackwell's stopped selling our favorite chocolate cookies, we are in desperate need of another chocolate treat.



We discovered some greek yogurt ice cream bars that everyone LOVES - and just 2 g fat per bar!

My future baking plans include a rolled cake for Easter, with either meringue or a fatless Genoise sponge.  When they say fatless, they mean there's no butter, oil, or cream - there are still eggs as a source of fat, but it's better than many cakes!  I'll let you know how it goes.