Slimming World Secrets

The cheeseboard with FIVE cheeses – and ZERO Syns

If your Slimming World group is anything like mine, it will be full of members who LOVE cheese. Forget chocolate, forget cake, cheese is where it’s at. So I created a Syn-free cheeseboard.

Every time Slimming World introduces a new Hi-fi Bar, our members ask if it’s cheese-flavoured. Get the picture?

Shortly before last Christmas, one of our members, the lovely Lisa, asked the following question on our group’s Facebook page: “Help! I absolutely love cheese. ? Please can you tell me what you have as a ‘cheese plate’ and how many Syns they contain?”

This got me thinking. As seasoned Slimming World members will know, unlike cake and chocolate, cheese is one of the “naughty” foods that we’re actually encouraged to eat.

Some cheeses, such as a stinky Stilton or a gooey Camembert, have to be Synned on Slimming World – but there are quite a few that qualify as Healthy Extra A choices.

Seeing as we can have now have TWO Healthy Extra As daily, this means I eat cheese every single day, saving my other HEA for milk in tea and coffee. I generally go for Cheddar, Feta, Danish Blue or Halloumi in scrambled eggs, burgers or salads.

Damn fine coffee – but skip the doughnuts!

So, what if I were to drink black coffee one day (just call me Agent Cooper) and save both Healthy Extra A choices for cheese? If I also saved my Healthy Extra B choice for crackers, I could create something that most Slimming World members would crave.

Ladies, gentlemen and everyone else, I had a mission, and nobody was going to stop me. I was going to create the world’s first (well, probably!) Syn-Free Cheeseboard!

As I said on Instagram when I first made it, “Don’t tell Mags, but I think I’ve just beaten the system!”

After consulting my Be in Love with Food Optimising book – so popular right now in these days of layered learning – I had a plan in place. It would be easy to create a two-cheese cheeseboard, but I wanted FIVE!

More on the cheese later. The tricky part involved which crackers to use. Every good cracker I knew of until that point had to be Synned. Crispbreads, such as Ryvita, could be used, but I didn’t think they’d be suitable for a cheeseboard.

I looked at making my own “cracker” from one HEB of wholemeal bread (60g, or two small slices) and baking them to create a melba toast affair. That would have worked OK, but I wondered if there were any good, crisp crackers on the market that qualify as a Healthy Extra B.

You’d be crackers not to like these

As luck would have it, I found some on Amazon. A firm in Helsinki, Finland, called Finn Crisp, makes three versions that qualify. I read some reviews on Amazon and decided to buy a packet of each. I could then use three kinds of crackers, all adding up to exactly a third of one HEB.

Here’s what I used:

• One Rye Round Crispbread
• Two Original Sourdough Rye Thins
• Two Multigrain Thin Crispbread Thins

The round crispbreads are larger, so I could only use one, but it still meant I got five crackers of three different flavours. Happy days! I shall definitely be buying them again, too. They are fantastic crackers – not just for cheeseboards but for a lunch with light cream cheese, smoked salmon and cucumber, for instance.

You can buy all three kinds of Finn Crisp crackers on Amazon here.

Class A cheeses for your Syn-free cheeseboard

That was the Healthy Extra B sorted. Now on to the Healthy Extra A – and the star of the show, the cheese. Even using two Healthy Extra As, you’re not going to get a massive amount of cheese, but for saying the whole affair is Syn-free and padded out with crackers and speedy snacks, it’s still a pretty big cheeseboard for one person.

I decided to split each Healthy Extra A into two, and I used my book to work out how to get the best bang for my buck in terms of grammes. I wanted as much cheese as possible while still being Syn-free.

So, after making lots of calculations on a spreadsheet which I won’t bore you with here, this is what I chose:

Healthy Extra A1:

• One Babybel Light
• 23g Danish Blue

Healthy Extra A2:

• 15g half-fat Cheddar
• 27g Paneer

I tried to mix up the styles – but just go for whichever cheeses you like. Others I was tempted by include Manchego, Gouda and hard goat’s cheese. Just make sure your cheeses qualify as Healthy Extras by checking your book, or the website or app.

For my fifth entry, I chose a good dollop of fat-free cottage cheese. It still just about qualifies as a “cheese” and it’s Syn-free, so this seemed a no-brainer for a Syn-free cheeseboard. The Longley Farm brand is tangy and delicious. I’ve never found a supermarket brand that comes close in terms of flavour or texture.

As you can see, with all three Healthy Extras, I’ve mixed things up, using three crackers or two cheeses for each one. This is allowed on Slimming World. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

One tiny tweak to make it SP-friendly

I added a few grapes as another Syn-free treat, along with gherkins, red and yellow cherry plum tomatoes, celery and apples for some Speed. If you removed the grapes, this would even qualify for an SP Day (the cottage cheese would count as a P-food).

So, there you have it, Lisa, the Syn-Free Cheeseboard, just for you! I ate this with a massive smile on my face because it was delicious and healthy but felt so “naughty”. I’ve never once felt deprived while doing Slimming World and, if we’re allowed to eat something like this for zero Syns, is it any wonder?