Seneviratne - The New Sugar and Spice

About ten years ago, my big brother lived in a sixth-floor walk-up in Little Italy. We were very close, but we didnt talk about how much we loved each other. I dont know many brothers and sisters who do. But I think he knew. And I think the desserts helped.

If I close my eyes, I can still picture him bounding down the stairs to meet me at the front door of his apartment building. Hed run down with a big smile, curly hair tousled, and still in his pajama bottoms after a day spent furiously working on one of his graphic design projects from home. I never felt like climbing his stairs, but I often had deliveries for him. This time, I had made a towering chocolate cream pie the night before and I knew he would want a slice. At least, I knew I wanted to bring him one.

That was our ritual. I would experiment with desserts and Mohan would eat themwhatever the results. When I lived in Brooklyn and he lived in Manhattan, we would make the handoff over dinner at a restaurant near one of our offices. After the tonkatsu or the lasagna had been cleared away, Mohan would sneak bites of my latest triumpha flaky plum galette, or maybe a custardy bread puddingsurreptitiously from under the table while we talked.

Sometimes, if we didnt have time for a meal, wed just pick a convenient street corner. We didnt even need to talk much. Meet at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street, a kiss on the cheek, a quick transfer of cookie-filled Tupperware, and wed be on our respective ways.

When I moved to the neighborhood next to his in Manhattan, I could just pop by his apartment anytime and meet him at the bottom of his stairs. My culinary school was just around the corner. On my way home from school, around 11:30 or midnight, I would call him up with a two-minute warning so he could run down to meet me to get something sweet.

After he died, I spent nights awake wondering if he knew how much he mattered to me. Im sure I hadnt said the words enough. But handing him a big slab of pie or a stack of cookies felt like saying I love you. I hope he heard me.

Homemade desserts have a big job: they carry important messages to important people. We bake them with the people we love. We share them with the people we love. We eat them with the people we love. But these days, we are told over and over again that one of the principal ingredients of dessert is deadly. The abundance of processed sugar in our diets is a serious health problem. Experts say that sugar is toxic. Some doctors claim that sugar should be grouped with cigarettes and alcohol as a harmful, addictive substance. Sugar has been linked to heart and liver damage, hypertension, and even cancer. Everyone knows that we eat too much of it. According to the American Heart Association, the average American consumes about twenty-two teaspoons of sugar a day. Thats about thirteen more teaspoons than their recommended limit. If thats true, then its no wonder so many of us are left wondering, Should I bake with my children? Should I give sweets as holiday gifts? What should I serve to the people I love? What should we do about dessert?

Whats even worse is that all this sugar has defeated its own purpose. Too much sugar is causing not only a health crisis but also a deliciousness crisis. Our desserts have become boring, uninspired sugar-bombs, sweetness drowning out everything else thats good. The flood of sugar has diluted real flavor, muffled complexity, and concealed true richness. Too often these days our sweets are merely sweet, and sweetness is the only standard a dessert must meet.

My goal in writing this book was to answer the questions that were troubling me: How can we make desserts better? More delicious? Healthier? Better for sharing? How should we bake for the people we love?