Saturday, July 26, 2008

Healthy Sugar Substitutes


I use organic applesauce, apple butter, plum butter, mashed bananas and stevia powder for sweetening.The sweeter spices (vanilla, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, anise, cloves). Orange squash and sweet baby carrots sometimes.I use almond flour instead of wheat for most baking. Dried currants pack a lot of flavor and their acidity makes apples taste sweeter without sugar. Stevia doesn't work with everything - sweetens acidic fruits, goes well with pumpkin (Thanksgiving pies, yum) but doesn't seem to help egg-heavy or chocolate things.I tried making a cheesecake with it once, bad idea, but it makes the most amazing lemonade you ever tasted. Try lemon-merengue pie sweetened with stevia, with a ground nut crust instead of wheat?Vegetable glycerine is supposed to be a low-glycemic sugar substitute, makes baked desserts nice and moist too.Many summer fruits are sweet enough not to need anything added. Slice an assortment with blueberries in a bowl. Cinnamon and a drizzle of unpasteurized honey in one dish, clotted fresh cream in another, a bunch of cocktail forks.. watch them disappear.From a macrobiotic point of view, cooking fruit makes it less yin as water is removed and the flavor is more concentrated. So cooked fruit tastes sweeter without adding sugar.Brown rice, pinch of salt, spices and stevia make a nice pudding.Barley and rice syrups tend to have mold toxins unfortunately so they are not a good choice

No comments: