Easy Sweet and Sour Sauce

This is great for dipping things like spring rolls or prawn crackers in, or having alongside battered chicken or prawns etc.

Plus, when you make it yourself, you know it's not got artificial colouring in, and if you're gluten free, you can choose to use tamari sauce or gluten free soy sauce.

Added bonus - there's no chopping anything, you just need to plonk a pan on your scales, and weigh everything into it with a squidge of tomato puree!

Smoked mackerel pâté

A delicious pâté which is also great to use as a dip for crudités.

This has to be one of the tastiest fish pâtés! It's great for entertaining as a simple, prepare-ahead starter served with some home-made melba toast (see tips), or for dipping sticks of cucumber, peppers, carrot etc. as a healthy, low-carb snack - see bottom of tips for suggestions with calories: you can have a lovely selection of vegetables for one for less than 60 calories! 

If you want to lower the fat content, you can use lighter cream cheese and substitute the creme fraiche for Greek yoghurt.

This amount will serve four people as a light starter, or two gannets! (It will basically over-fill two decent sized ramekins - and one is perfect to share!)

Calories per portion: for a quarter portion this is 206 calories for the full fat version, or 138 calories if you're using lightest cream cheese (e.g. Philadelphia lightest) and 0% Greek yoghurt.

Christmas Spiced Honey Roast Almonds (includes Thermomix instructions)

A delicious treat, perfect for serving up to guests with festive drinks, or packing up for Christmas gifts in pretty jars.

Beware, these are incredibly more-ish! And pretty easy to make too, so don't say I didn't warn you!

They do last a few weeks, but I don't think you'll be needing to worry about that - more about not eating them all in one sitting!

You can substitute your favourite nuts if you'd rather not use almonds, just keep an eye on them in the oven. Skin on almonds work particularly well, as the glaze adhers to the crinkly skin of the almond nicely.

Skinny Spring Rolls

Crispy and delicious vegetable spring rolls for a fraction of the calories they'd be if you bought them, and simple to make too...

Easily doubled for a crowd, and not at all difficult to make - my children helped me rolling these up! Feel free to play around with the fillings and flavours - I've put some suggestions at the bottom of this post - whether you add cooked prawns or chicken with sweet and sour, or maybe some duck and hoisin sauce, there are all kinds of different flavours you could add!

          

And if you want something to dip them in, you can make my five simple Chinese dips in under five minutes! The recipes are here. If you want to make my gluten free version (which are even skinnier at only 35 calories each), the recipe is here.

Makes 20 spring rolls, 43.5 calories per roll, 218 calories for 5 rolls.

Crispy Vegetable Spring Rolls - Gluten Free

Not only is this recipe gluten free, it's also a healthier version of crispy spring rolls, which doesn't involve deep-frying (and it's easy to make, too!) - what's not to love?

Spring rolls are often a guilty pleasure for many of us - or worse still, a greasy disappointment, heavy on the stodge, seeping out oil with every bite, and low on flavour - worse still if you buy the supermarket efforts. And if you're eating gluten free, even worse - you probably can't get hold of any!

        

However, salvation is here - a fresh and crispy tasty vegetable filling (and you can use this as a spring board, and add cooked prawns, shredded chicken or duck, char siu pork [watch out for gluten - my recipe to make your own is here] or whatever else you fancy to it - see the Notes for further suggestions!), with rice wrappers, quickly baked with a mere brushing of oil and egg, until crispy on the outside and hot and juicy on the inside! With a whole variety of very simple dips to serve them with (see here for five very simple Chinese dips you can whip up in under 5 minutes, as in the photo, that compliment them beautifully!), you can't go wrong, and they're very easy to make - no pre-cooking necessary for the filling!

Easily doubled for a crowd, and not at all difficult to make (the photo above is of rolls made by my children, aged 9 and 11 at the time - as in the photo on the left!) - tasty, crispy, gluten free spring rolls at a fraction of the calories you’d get in those from a restaurant or shop!

Makes 20 small spring rolls, 35 calories per roll, 172 calories for 5 rolls. I don't recommend making fewer, larger rolls, as you're more likely to get 'soggy bottoms' or splits in the rolls. You can shallow or deep fry the rolls if you prefer, instead of oven cooking - but obviously they will be considerably more calorific! If you don't need to go gluten free, you can make my Skinny Spring Rolls with filo pastry instead, another low calorie healthy option.

Simple Chinese Dip Selection

Put this selection of Chinese dips together in literally just a few minutes! Great for spring rolls, dim sum, satay skewers, wontons and more...

There's no need to faff about with these, a minute's chopping, and a couple of minutes mixing together, and you're there!

          

A selection of quick and easy dips which will serve eight people (we had more than twice as much as we needed for four people eating spring rolls!) and can be put together in under 5 minutes! 167 calories in total for all of the dips, if you're counting, so about 21 calories per serving if you share nicely. Everyone loves the peanut dip, so you might want to make more! If you're a fan of sweet chilli sauce and want to add that into the mix too, my recipe is here.