"Don't Put Off Until Tomorrow..What You Can Put Off Indefinitely."

So my motivational post didn't work, I have not yet made it to the gym! I have a 'Keep Calm and Carry On' style flip chart and some of the anecdotes are quite funny and inspirational. The topic of this post tonight is based on today's motto "Don't Put Off Until Tomorrow..What You Can Put Off Indefinitely." I keep telling myself to get to the gym, my brain wants to do it but my body still seems to be in Christmas slacking mode! The end of the week is going to be awful, I have 2 birthday celebrations including meals out and a Nando's catch up with the girlfriends. Instead of beating myself up about it I am going to watch what I'm eating at the other times throughout the weekend and go strict strict strict from Monday. I have devised an eating plan so I am going to timetable this and plan my exercise for the month! I need to get into a routine ready for starting back to Uni towards the middle of the month. I know that once I'm back at the gym and back into a routine I'll be dying to go, it's just making that step!

Completing the 5k Race for Life in the summer was the most amazing feeling ever so I am going to sign up for two more runs this year. Knowing people were sponsoring me and it was all booked really helped me get to the gym and push myself for the miles last year. I'm planning to do a 10k in a few months time (April/May time) and then do a Bupa Great Run about September/October time. Hopefully the challenge of these distances will really push me to clock up the miles (or the kms) and get me fit too! My running trainers will soon be out and well used! 

I recently made an amazing Chocolate Swiss Roll / Chocolate log and thought I'd share the recipe I used. I got it off the Cadbury website and it made a lovely cake! (Not very healthy but it wasn't for me!)

Ingredients:

Cake

3 medium eggs

75g caster sugar
75g plain flour
25g Bournville Cocoa Powder
Caster sugar, for dusting
Butter Icing:
100g butter, softened
100g icing sugar
75g Cadbury Dairy Milk, melted

How to make it:

1. Preheat the oven to 200⁰C, gas mark 6.  Grease and line the Swiss roll tin with baking parchment.

2.  Using an electric hand mixer, whisk the eggs and sugar together in a large bowl until thick and creamy and leaves a trail.  Sieve the flour and cocoa together and fold into the mixture carefully with 1 tbsp hot water, trying not to knock out too much air.

3.  Place into the prepared tin and tilt the tin to level the mixture, making sure it goes right into the corners.  Bake for 10-12 minutes until springy to the touch.

4.  Dust a large piece of baking parchment with caster sugar and turn the sponge out onto it.  Trim off the hard edges and make a dent along the width, 1cm in.  From this end, roll it up with the paper in the middle.  Cool on a wire rack.

5.  Beat the butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy and then beat in the melted chocolate.  Unroll the sponge, spread over the butter icing and up roll again.  Serve in slices.

The cake in this Swiss roll has not butter so the fat content would be quite low if no butter cream was used. Diabetic or No Added Sugar Jam could be used instead of the butter cream and I'm sure it would help to add a sweet and moist flavour to the middle of the cake. I covered this in Cake Covering chocolate melted in order to decorate but it definitely does not need this! I think it looks much nicer without the covering as a moist Swiss Roll. You could even miss out the coco power and have a plain and jam Swiss roll served with fresh strawberries which would create a lovely and hopefully not too fattening dessert!

Let me know what you think of this
Love x