Oat Pancakes

These pancakes are super easy to make and syn free if you’re using the oats as part of your healthy extra B choice. If you’re using your healthy extra for something else, you will need to syn these at 7 syns. This mixture makes 8 fluffy pancakes. The key to this is to use baking powder, but you don’t need a lot of it. Using too much baking powder can affect the taste of the pancakes and you’ll need to syn it at 0.5 syn per 1 tsp if you choose to use more than stated in the recipe! If you like your pancakes quite sweet, then you may need to increase the amount of sweetener used. But remember that if you’re using more than 1tbsp of sweetener, you’ll have to count it as 0.5 syn per tablespoon!

Stick to the recipe below and it will be syn free.

If you’d like to enjoy these on a SP day, you can replace the yogurt with plain natural quark. 2 or 3 tablespoons of quark should be enough.

Oat Pancakes

Oat Pancakes

 

Serves: 1

Syns: FREE (using oats as healthy extra B choice)

Time Taken: 45 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • 40g porridge oats
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 pot of Activia 0% vanilla yogurt (or similar)
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • 1tsp sweetner
  • 1/4tsp baking powder

Method

Blitz all ingredients together with a hand blender and let it rest for at least 30 minutes (very important to let it rest so that the mixture can thicken up).

Spray a frying pan with syn free cooking spray of your choice and add a dollop of the mixture to the pan. If you want, you can use a metal ring to make all your pancakes the same size but I don’t bother with that. As long as you’re adding roughly the same amount of mixture to the pan each time, you’ll get similar sized pancakes!

Cook the pancakes for a couple of minutes on one side before turning them and cooking them for another couple of minutes on the other side.

You can serve them with fresh chopped fruit and yogurt.

Snacks & Nibbles

I absolutely love this feature on the SW website, which I’ve included below, that is all about snacks & nibbles! This is perfect whether you’re in need of a tasty lifesaver to keep you going, a mid-morning munch or simply a healthier alternative to a high-Syn snack, for when a ‘nibbly’ moment comes. Some need no cooking at all and some are simple to cook in advance and keep in the fridge ready for those times. Please do share using the comments box below what your favourite snacks & nibbles are.

Speed Free Food snacks
Snack on these for the BEST weight loss results. The more Speed you choose the more weight you’ll lose!

Savoury

  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Veg crudités – carrot, peppers, celery, sugar snap peas, and dips like homemade houmous
  • Sweet baby cucumbers
  • Roasted butternut squash chips (cooked in low calorie cooking spray)
  • Pickled beetroot, gherkins, cabbage and onions
  • Slimming World quiche muffins packed with your favourite Speed Free Foods

Sweet

  • Fruit bowl favourites – apples, satsumas, pears, peaches
  • Melon chunks – pop in the freezer for a cool nibble
  • Fat free Greek-style yogurt mixed with 1 tsp sweetener and top with strawberries and raspberries
  • Apple wedges dunked in your favourite syn free yogurt
Other Free nibbles include:

Savoury

  • Boil or bake a fresh corn on the cob, season well – I like to add chilli powder to it too
  • Hardboiled eggs

    Boiled Eggs, Clementines & Activia 0%

    Boiled Eggs, Clementines & Activia 0%

  • Seafood sticks dipped in soy sauce
  • Lean turkey, chicken,  chicken drumsticks (skin removed)
  • Sweet potato chips
  • Drain a can of tuna in spring water and blend with lemon juice and quark to make a pâté. Mix in chopped chives and spring onions, and serve with veg sticks
  • Asda Chosen by You Vegetable Chilli, from a 400g can, topped with a dollop of fat-free natural yogurt
  • Whizz roasted red peppers in brine from a jar with fat-free natural fromage frais and paprika, then use as a dip for cooked and peeled prawns.
  • Mugshots – my favourite one has to be the Cajun pasta flavour. Be aware that if you buy this flavour in a sachet it is 0.5 syn! The pot is FREE.

    Cajun Pasta Mugshot

    Cajun Pasta Mugshot

Sweet

  • Fat-free yogurt. Not all fat-free yogurts are Free eg. Onken Fat Free Yogurt Vanilla is 5 Syns per 450g pot  (double check your favourite flavour in Syns Online to protect your weight loss)
  • Freeze an Activia 0% strawberry yogurt in an ice-cube tray and enjoy like frozen sweets
  • Ice cream: Chop a handful of cherries and stir into two pots of Activia 0% (or similar) cherry yogurts and a large tub of fat free fromage frais. Pop it in the freezer for a couple of hours, stirring occasionally
  • Fresh pineapple chunks
Healthy Extra bites – If you’ve got your Healthy Extras left, tuck into one of these super snacks!
Hifi Light Bars

Hifi Light Bars

  • Cereal bars – 2 Hi-fi Light or Alpen Light bars (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice)
  • 4 Ryvita Original/Dark Rye (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice) topped with 4 Laughing Cow Light Triangles (Healthy Extra ‘a’ choice) and mixed pickles like gherkins and onions
  • 60g of any wholemeal bread, toasted (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice), topped with 40g reduced fat Cheddar (Healthy Extra ‘a’ choice) and halved cherry tomatoes
  • 30g bag Ryvita Minis, all varieties (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice)
  • 500g cooked rhubarb (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice) topped with fat free Greek-style yogurt mixed with 1 tsp sweetener
  • 35 pistachio nuts (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice)

Aldi Yogurt

I have to admit when it comes to yogurts I am extremely fussy! I absolutely love the Alpro ones so when my members raved about this Aldi yogurt, I was a little dubious. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised that it tasted quite nice!

I love coffee and it is so difficult to find syn free yogurts that are suitable for vegetarians as well. I wasn’t expecting it to be as thick as it was for some reason.

Although it was nice, I don’t think I would be rushing out to stock up on them. I do have so many Alpro yogurts in my fridge that will last me for another couple of weeks.

These were at a bargain price of only 30p!!

Brooklea Light Skinny Latte Yogurt

Brooklea Light Skinny Latte Yogurt

Do you have any favourite yogurts? Please comment below with your favourites so that I can try something new.

Overnight Oats

This is a very popular breakfast option with members in group. I love it too as it is very easy to prepare and it is ready and waiting for you when you wake up! You can add any fruit to it, frozen fruit works really well as it is perfectly defrosted by morning.

Serves: 1

Syns: FREE if using porridge oats as Healthy Extra B choice

Time Taken: 2 minutes plus overnight chilling

Difficulty: Easy

Overnight Oats with Fruit

Overnight Oats with Fruit

 

Ingredients

  • 40g porridge oats
  • 200g fat free natural yogurt or a flavoured variety (check if syns)
  • Mixed blueberries, strawberries and raspberries

Method

Layer the porridge, yogurt and fruit in a jar or bowl. Cover and put in the refrigerator overnight so the porridge absorbs all the yogurt.

In the morning stir so all the layers are mixed together and top with more fruit.