Typically I have always dreaded the annual Christmas/New Year period. I feel like everyone has the same fear - that they will put on weight, they will lose fitness and that the combination of these things will leave you feeling thinking 'what's the point anyway?' It's somewhat inevitable courtesy of the alcohol, the mindset that you should be enjoying yourself and the behaviour of humans placing celebratory value on food that will lead to the numbers on the scales going up.
This year I decided to do things differently. For 6 months I have worked incredibly hard and I have been incredibly determined in losing weight and I'll be damned if I was going to let a period of a week or so ruin everything that I had worked so hard to achieve. It was a difficult task this year to not gain weight for me given I went on a 10 night holiday to Vietnam, Hong Kong and Macau in mid December and then straight afterwards had the period of Christmas feasting, immediately followed by a holiday to Queensland, and New Year. Pretty much, it was an uphill battle. However I have just done the dreaded early January weigh in and throughout that whole period of holidaying and celebrating (which pretty much is exclusively eating), I have only gained 1 kilogram, which quite frankly, makes me sooooooooo happy given every year through this period I generally gain 5-10 kilograms.
This year I decided that I wasn't going to miss out on anything because I still wanted to enjoy myself. I celebrated Christmas at home so I had the joy of being in charge of the Christmas menu which was brilliant because it enabled me to cook foods in a way that was healthier (with less oil, salt and fat) and to serves foods that were nutritionally better for you. Most hilariously to me, nobody seemed to notice which I think says a lot about the power the mind has in letting you think you won't like things just because they aren't 'typical'. But still I had the dilemma of Christmas pudding. Being in Australia, it's currently very, very warm, so as soon as I saw an ice cream pudding I was down for that. But the recipe I found was full of full-fat diary, sugar and pretty much was just plain unhealthy. Not to be deterred, I decided to cut the sugar out and use soy based ice cream, so unbeknown to them, my entire family gleefully gorged themselves on a 100% vegan, 100% refined sugar free and 100% delicious tropical ice cream pudding.
This Christmas I found that the easiest way to be healthy was to not single myself out with healthy food that was just for me, but rather to incorporate healthy into the mainstream table - a theory that has apparently worked wonders!
Ingredients;
4L vanilla soy ice cream (I used So Good Vanilla)
3 mangos
4 passionfruit
1/2 cup finely desiccated coconut
1 bunch mint (be generous, so several handfuls)
3 limes
2 tbsp water
1. Take 1.5L of the soy ice cream out of the freezer and sit for approximately 10 minutes to soften. Line a 12 cup (large) pudding bowl with two layers of plastic film (glad wrap) making sure that there is plenty of overhang on the sides (you will use this later to pull the frozen pudding from the bowl - very important!!). Place the empty bowl in the freezer to chill.
2. Take the mangos and slice the 'cheeks' off either side of the seed. Use a spoon to scoop the flesh from all three mangoes out into a blender. Make sure not to waste the flesh from the seed either.
3.. Take a sieve and place over a small bowl. Cut the 4 passionfruit in half and scoop the flesh into the sieve. Using a spoon, push the flesh through the sieve. You are trying to separate the sweet yellow flesh from the black seeds. This may take some determination but with effort, the yellow flesh will drain through the sieve. Place the yellow, seed-free flesh with the mango in the blender and mix on medium speed until well combined.
4. In a large bowl, mix the softened 1.5L of ice cream with the mango/passionfruit mixture. If the ice cream is too hard, leave it for a few more minutes to further soften but be careful as you want the ice cream to be able to hold its shape so you don't want it to be liquid.
5. Take the lined pudding bowl from the freezer and spread the passionfruit/mango ice cream mixture over the bottom and up the sides. Using a spatula helps to spread the sides. If the ice-cream will not hold onto the sides of the bowl, place the ice cream back in the freezer in bursts of 30 minutes to allow it to hard up again. I had to repeat re-freezing and spreading 3/4 times before I could get it to stick to the sides, so be determined. Freeze for 1 hour.
6. In a bowl, mix 1L of softened soy ice cream with the desiccated coconut and mix well. After the first layer has been freezing for 1 hour, remove from the freezer and spread the coconut layer over the bottom and sides. Again, this may take determination. You should be left with a fairly large well in the middle of the pudding bowl. Freeze for 1 hour.
7. Grate the rind from 2 limes into a blender. Squeeze the two de-rinded limes as well as the third lime and add the juice to the blender. Put the entire bunch of mint (minus stalks) into the blender and add the water over the top. Blend on high speed until the mint leaves have broken down.
8. Place a sieve over a large bowl and drain the mint/lime mixture through to remove the mint leave pulp. There will be a lot of liquid stuck in the mint leave pulp, so after draining through the dive as well as possible, grab the leaf pulp in a fist and squeeze well. Add the remaining softened ice cream (1.5L) to the bowl and mix the mint/lime mixture through well.
9. Remove the pudding bowl from the freezer and fill in the hole in the middle with the mint/lime ice cream mixture. Make sure that the top is smoothed over as it will form the bottom of the cake when you tip it out to serve, so it needs to be flat. Freeze overnight.
10. The next day, serve with fresh mango slices, passionfruit and mint leaves.
(N.B. this will be voraciously consumed in large amounts if there are leftovers. So far today I have eaten 1/8 of the entire cake and it's only 11am.)
Adapted from recipe in Woolworths Fresh Food People magazine, December 2014.
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