Healthful Sweets
Great Experiments
To cut down on the amount of refined white sugar in her pie, Eklund started by examining the natural sweetness of the recipe’s star ingredient: pumpkin. Out of a can, pumpkin purée can have a slightly bitter taste, which is why many recipes call for a lot of sugar—to mask that slightly tinny flavor. So a few years ago, when she was preparing to make pies for a Thanksgiving dinner, Eklund made her own purée by baking fresh pumpkins at home. By itself, the puré:e was sweet and quite rich. Without the bitterness of the canned variety, the pumpkin needed only half the sugar the recipe called for. To make up the missing volume, Eklund added a little extra pumpkin purée to the mix. The rest of the original recipe’s ingredients followed: nutmeg, clove, vanilla, evaporated milk, and eggs. She then poured the filling into the crusts, baked the pies as usual, and presented them to her unsuspecting loved ones. And the results? “Oh my, did it taste better,” Eklund says. “The pies were devoured.”
One simple, and maybe obvious, change to an old family recipe is replacing refined white sugar with a liquid or granulated sweetener that’s more nutritious. Molasses is another natural sweetener that adds iron and calcium to your favorite goodie. A common ingredient in spiced treats like gingerbread, molasses can also take the place of refined sugar in muffins, cookies, and cakes. But swapping out white sugar isn’t the only way to boost the nutritional value of your holiday desserts. Using yogurt instead of cream cheese adds protein and calcium to frosting, says dietitian Anne VanBeber, chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Texas Christian University. Place one to two cups of plain low-fat yogurt in a cheesecloth-lined colander. With the colander over the sink or a pot, cover the yogurt with another cheesecloth, and let it drip for a few hours. Then, lightly press down to remove more liquid, and you’ll have a thick cream cheese alternative.
And then there’s the flour that makes up so much of baked goods. White flour has little nutritional value, as the refining process strips away most vitamins and minerals in whole grains. VanBeber suggests substituting all-purpose white flour with other options such as whole-wheat flour, which adds proteins and fiber. Just don’t substitute any more than one-half of the white flour for the same amount of whole wheat. “More than that will make your dessert heavy and dense.”
Or try soy flour, which is also high in protein and has a nutty flavor; brown rice flour, which is rich in fiber; or amaranth, a flour that is high in protein and contains more calcium, fiber, and magnesium than flour from most other grains.
Once your healthful dessert is out of the oven, you might top it off with a sprinkling of toasted pecans, almonds, or walnuts. A bit of toasted wheat germ adds vitamin E, folate, phosphorous, thiamin, zinc, and magnesium. To decorate a cake without icing, lay a doily on top of the cooled cake, and sprinkle some cinnamon over it. Gently lift off the doily to reveal a beautiful pattern.
“Don’t be afraid to experiment,” advises Wasserman. “Be patient, and just have some fun in the kitchen. It may take a couple of tries to find a recipe that is comparable to your grandma’s, but eventually you should be able to find a version that is just as yummy.”
Not-So-Secret Ingredients
Once you’ve found a substitution that gives you results that are close to the original recipe, you may be surprised at how quickly your treats disappear from their tins. “When I get it right, people don’t actually know that what they’re eating is healthy,” Wasserman says. “There aren’t even crumbs left over.”
You might use such a moment to surprise your family and friends by revealing the healthful nature of what they just ate. Or you could invite family members who taught you the original recipe to take part in the experimenting so that together they can come up with a more healthful take on tradition. Around Christmas, VanBeber simply wraps up her famous zucchini bread with a ribbon, a note, and the recipe, hoping to inspire her friends, neighbors, and family. Eklund, on the other hand, reveals her secrets shortly after the many thank-yous she receives.
“I want people to understand that what’s going in their bodies is full of useful nutrients,” Eklund says. “Knowing that my loved ones are being nurtured by what I’m feeding them is the best gift of all.”
The Replacements
Start your recipe makeover with one of these simple switches; they’re perfect for cookies, pies, cakes, muffins, and breads.
Eggs Replace each egg with one small potassium-rich banana or 2 tablespoons of heart-healthy ground flax seeds plus 2 tablespoons of water.
White Flour Whole-wheat flour is a great option because it adds protein without weighing down delicate treats when replacing half of the white flour. You can do the same with almond meal, which will allow you to cut back a bit on other fats and sugar, as almonds are naturally sweet and rich in monounsaturated fat that can reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol.
White sugar Barley malt adds richness to gingerbread cookies, spice cake, and pumpkin breads (1 cup sugar equals 1 1/3 cups barley malt). You need only 1/3 cup agave nectar to replace 1 cup sugar. The liquid sweetener has a low glycemic index and lets you cut back a bit on any liquid oils used to wet the batter.
Oil Many recipes call for fats and oils to bind dry ingredients together. Vitamin- and fiber-rich applesauce and fruit purées perform the same function. Plus, they’re naturally sweet. Use them to replace half the fat (and all the sugar if you’re feeling adventurous) your recipe calls for.
Leave a Reply