We’ve always heard the phrase, “If it aint broke don’t fix it,” that is unless it means making a dessert or sweet healthier. The best part about any sweet or dessert is the taste, but of course unfortunately we know that all good things need to be done in moderation. Wouldn’t that be nice if we could just eat all the chocolate or sugar we wanted without any repercussions? Well, since that is not going to happen I do have the next best thing to healthy dessert options- delicious low fat dessert options. I have invited special guest Marion Kummerow, creator and owner of website dedicated to low fat recipes to help me today. She is here to provide some tips on low fat baking for desserts. Some of the questions I believe many people surfing the internet for answers would like to know are what are some of the lesser known ingredients that contain fat in desserts, how to keep desserts tasty while cutting down on the fat content, substitutes for sugar and low fat dessert ideas. Let’s get started. Here are some of the things Marion and I talked about.
Less Known Fatty Ingredients: One of the first things I asked her was regarding other less known fatty ingredients in desserts. Afterall I would say most people know that sugar and butter contain fat, but what other ingredients do too? To my surprise I learned from Marion that there indeed are many “hidden fats” in dessert recipes, like cheese (cream cheese or ricotta cheese), nuts (you wouldn’t believe the amount of fats that nuts have), cream and even milk.
Retaining Flavor: So obviously that led to another concern, “how do you keep the flavor in desserts while still maintaining a low level of fat?” To my dismay she explained that this still currently is a big challenge in low fat baking. Fat cannot be left out entirely or the dessert or sweet will taste bland. The recipes she likes to prepare call for other ingredients that add flavor to the recipe while lowering fat in other ingredients, such as fruits and spices, cinnamon for example. And since she doesn’t recommend totally cutting out fat she recommends to replace one fatty ingredient for another with less fat like skim milk for full fat milk or yogurt instead of cream. Of course these are just a few ideas because there are many other substitutes.
Sugar Substitutes: I found that interesting, add other ingredients with flavor to compensate for the loss of flavor and use lower fat substitutes. Hmm, well now I just needed to know the answer to another touchy subject, “how to replace sugar.” In Marion’s opinion she does not like to use sugar substitutes. She believes they change the flavor of the recipe too much and furthermore bring on other problems to the recipe like consistency of dough. She offered the example of making a low fat muffin and how using a tablespoon of Spenda instead of 1/2 cup of sugar would not help taste and would hurt the consistency of the dough. Instead she would rather use brown sugar instead of white sugar and use a smaller amount of it than what the recipe asks for.
So far this is good information, but I wanted some real examples, some actual desserts that we could make and test ourselves. And while she explained that she didn’t wish to offer any recipes for this article she did oblige with two ideas, some of her favorites in fact. It looks like she likes ginger and bananas. One of her favorite desserts is a low fat gingerbread muffin and one of her absolute favorite fruits are bananas. In fact, she shared with me that bananas offer a lot of natural sweetness; therefore, you do not need to add much sugar to any low fat banana recipe and she goes crazy for a good low fat banana ginger brulee.
It was awefully nice of Marion to stop by share her knowledge on the subject of low fat desserts and now by curiosity is officially piqued so now I feel it necessary to research further into this topic. The times call for it. Everyone is looking for ways to eat healthy AND tasty at the same time. I mean who really just wants to eat healthy nasty tasting food? No one, so we need to all collaborate together to find new ways to make the low fat food to taste good too in order to entice enough us to eat it. So off I go in search of those new ideas. Chao!
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