Laura Fuentes - Clean Treats for Everyone Healthy Desserts and Snacks Made with Simple, Real Food Ingredients

Laura proves that you can stick to your health goals without feeling deprived! Lauras recipes have always been foolproof and Im so glad I can eat and share treats that are not only healthy but also delicious! Amy Roskelley, owner of Health Beet Clean Treats for Everyone is a must-have for anyone who loves desserts but doesnt love highly processed ingredients. Laura will teach you how to stock your pantry and swap ingredients to make delicious treats without all the junk. Finally, a cookbook full of clean treat recipes that pacifies my sweet tooth and I can feel good about making for my kids! Kelley Epstein, from MountainMamaCooks.com LAURA FUENTES for Everyone Healthy Desserts and Snacks Made with Simple, Real Food Ingredients If you eat your veggies you can have a treat are words spoken by many parents, mid-meal, trying to get their kids to eat their food. But its good for you! is often another plea we all have made to our children. I know this scenario well because Ive lived it with all three of my kids. And while veggies are not my kids favorite thing to eat, treats certainly are.

I dont want to eat a cookie, said no child ever. Right? Ive been developing whole-food, real-ingredient, and clean-eating recipes for MOMables.com, LauraFuentes.com, and all of my cookbooks since 2010, and my family has been the unpaid test group for most of my work before I consider publishing it. With the exception of my second cookbook, The Best Homemade Kids Snacks on the Planet, most of my recipes have focused on the main meal, providing solutions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as an entire cookbook dedicated to tacos! And while all of the recipes have been tremendously well received by my community, one thing Im often asked is Do you have any recipes for clean treats I can feel good about eating? Of course, I have them. I just rarely share them. No, they arent a secret for me to keep; on the contrary, I publish my best stuff for everyone to make. The truth is that the thought of publishing treats never occurred to me, even though I test and modify recipes I come across the internet almost weekly to fit our dietary needs.

In 2018, I launched the Family KickStart Program at MOMables.com, where parents can eliminate processed foods and added sugars from their familys diet and reset the way they eat as a family. And while the thirty-day program has been very successful for thousands of families, one piece of feedback I received from parents was to include more occasional treats for their family to enjoy. You could say that I finally heard the universe telling me to create, write, and share simple clean treat recipes families can enjoy and not feel guilty about eating! The recipes you see in this book are just that: crave-worthy treats you can make with simple ingredients you already have in your pantry.

Make the right choices, no matter how you eat was my friend Kellys advice to me when I asked her what eating clean meant. Kelly is a registered dietitian who focuses on whole-food family nutrition and often asks me for tips and shortcuts when it comes to real-food cooking. For many years, shes shared my cookbooks and online recipes with her clients, since my approach has always been to use real-food ingredients in simple everyday recipes.

For the purposes of this book, the treat recipes avoid ingredients that are highly processed; meaning, that they are so far from nature that they lack any nutrition. This includes ready-made mixes and items with preservative-filled, mystery ingredients.

When it comes to using a sweetener for the treats in this cookbook, Ive chosen to test and create recipes with honey, maple syrup, and coconut palm sugar. Coconut sugar also contains zinc and calcium, plus antioxidants and probiotics. So, for these reasons, along with the fact that its unrefined, Ive chosen it as the replacement for granulated (white and brown) sugar in this cookbook; its my favorite clean sweetener to use. This is not a sugar-free cookbook, however.

Its a desserts cookbook that includes recipes made with clean ingredients. Of course, ingredients will always vary by brand, such as the case with chocolate chips. So make sure to check the label whenever possible. When it comes to clean meals, its easy to follow a recipe and stick with a plan. The key word: plan. But when the craving for something sweet sets in, its tempting to grab a candy bar while waiting at the check-out line or to throw a box of cookies in the grocery cart.

I hope the recipes in this cookbook help you avoid purchasing convenient, processed desserts while letting you enjoy a sweet treat from time to time with your family and friends.