I've been playing with the combination of jello (jelly for those of us speaking english on the bottom half of the planet) and cream cheese quite a lot lately, it makes a really spectacular fridge cheesecake. The best part of this is, it is so versatile: you can use any flavour combinations you want, you can leave out the base, you can combine it with plain jello - creating a layered cheesecake effect in a glass. There are so many ways to use this basic recipe.

I'm a big fan of ginger and lime, as if you guys haven't noticed, but I've also done a chocolate orange version of this cake with a few easy tweaks. Strawberry and chocolate, pineapple cheesecake with orange jello, raspberry and cherry cheesecake, blackcurrant and chocolate with whipped cream, are just some examples of where you can take this.

The calories in this are a little heavy because of the combination of cream cheese and heavy cream, if you want to lower them - leave out the heavy cream.  The bulk of the carbs in this recipe are in the chocolate base, so if you are looking for a lower carb sweet treat - simply leave out the base.

Lets preface this with: I don't usually tell my life story before recipes, I don't believe you guys want to hear about why I decided to make this specific meal for whoever I made it for and how they all went nuts about it and why it's connected to my childhood in some way. You're here for the food. That's okay, so am I.

That being said, this recipe holds a very special significance for me. My grandmother taught me a lot about baking and cooking. She was one awesome lady. Everyone loved her, you couldn't help it. She would invite you for lunch, teach you how to do something creative, feed you a roast of some kind and then give you a slice of pie. Her pies were famous. If you had the chance to have a mulberry or rhubarb pie at Aunty Rose's house; you did not turn that down. Those things were amazing. When I started keto I had to reconcile that there were a few things in my life that I would never eat again. My grandmother's pies, fruit mince pies and Christmas pudding. I was okay with all of this. I focused on what I could eat: cheese. My mother is a little more stubborn than I am. She decided that there was no way she was going to let this go. 

A few months ago she asked me for help coming up with a pie crust recipe. So we looked at Rosie's original recipe and figured out how to convert the carbs to well, not carbs. We had to try it a few times but when we finally got it to work... I almost couldn't believe this thing was real. We had made a pie crust that rivalled the real thing.

I know that sounds almost too good to be true but this crust browns nicely, it's flakey, it keeps its shape, the coconut flavour isn't strong at all and the best part: you can use it in savoury pies as well (with a bit of adjustment). My next mission - using it to make mince pies!

I'm a bit obsessed with pork at the moment, cooking it at every opportunity. Pork belly, pork dumplings, pork chops and tonight I made pork meatballs. They were incredible. I served them on a bed of fried cabbage and boiled green beans with melted butter.

Meal ideas:

• Fried cabbage and meatballs
• Meatball casserole with sour cream, broccoli and grated cheese
• Meatballs and roast veg
• Zughetti and meatballs with a tomato based sauce
• Cauliflower egg fried rice and pork meatballs
• Meatballs and sauerkraut

If you like cheesecake, you're in the right place. If it wasn't for how much cream cheese these use, and the fact that I am still trying to lose weight, I would probably have them in my house all the time. Lime and ginger is one of my favourite flavour combinations. I use it regularly in sweet and savoury dishes.

At 2.5g carbs each, these cupcakes make a great dessert, or if you have the metabolism of my husband, a quick snack. They don't last long in our fridge.  You could make a large cheesecake out of this but the base would need to be doubled and it won't be as easily removable on a larger scale - the cupcakes are quite fragile.

I am obsessed with Thai flavours at the moment and this soup ticks all the right Thai food boxes. I got dried lemongrass leaves from my mom so I have been adding it to all my food lately. This soup is a variation of my traditional chicken soup, so, if you don't like Thai food, you can easily substitute the flavours with others flavours like more traditional herbs, basil, rosemary etc.

Ingredients:

• 6 chicken pieces (thighs/breasts) - remove the skin and set aside for other recipes
• chicken stock (1 bullion cube and boiling water is fine, but I often use frozen stock from other meals)
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 garlic cloves
• thyme
• chilli flakes
• lemongrass
• 3 slices of fresh ginger (or 1 tsp. of ginger powder)
• mushrooms (I used a mixture of white button mushrooms and shimeji)
• bok choy
• 2 eggs
• cilantro (optional)
• Thai spices (I use a premix called Thai 7 spice - sugar/starch filler free)
• salt & pepper

There are things you don't realise you miss until you suddenly can't have them anymore, even things you never even liked all that much to begin with (like donuts, my kingdom for a donut). Cookies, here in South Africa we call them biscuits as well, was one of these. A friend requested that I make ginger biscuits and since I am currently obsessed with ginger flavoured everything - why not? So this recipe was created, and it's definitely gone down as one of my favourites.