Davidson - Desserts Two Ways: Favorite Dessert Recipes Made Two Ways: Classic and Healthier

Mix 23 tablespoons of chia seeds in a cup of water, and let them sit for 20 minutes. Use this to replace up to half the butter in a recipe, in equivalent measure. This works in cakes, muffins, and bread. Avocado . Replace the butter in your brownies or chocolate cookies with avocado, and get a dose of monounsaturated fats, fiber, and loads of potassium. Coconut oil may be high in saturated fats, but it gives you very good results and a lovely flavor in baking.

Some say its good for us, but overall, the jury is still out. Go with moderation, and dont use it over 350F. Substitutions for Sugar Honey. Replace one cup of sugar with three-quarters of a cup of honey. You also need to decrease the liquid in your recipe by one-fifth, and the oven temperature should be 25 degrees lower. While sugar has only empty calories, honey gives you potassium and vitamin C.

Maple Syrup. Replace one cup of sugar with three-quarters of a cup of maple syrup. As with honey, you need to decrease the liquid in your recipe by three tablespoons, and the oven temperature should be 25 degrees lower. Even so, your baked items will be darker in color than with sugar, but youll be getting calcium, manganese, iron, and zinc, as well as some omega-6 fatty acids. Pured Fruit . If you have used fruit in place of your oil, then you have already added a healthy, natural sweetener to your baking.

You can cut back the sugar, usually by half. Note: Agave nectar, raw cane sugar, and stevia are all common sweeteners, but their advantages over plain sugar are minimal. They are also more complicated and less reliable for baking. Substitutions for White Flour Whole wheat. Use whole wheat flour in place of white flour where you can, replacing at least half (and sometimes all) of the white flour in your recipe. You may find that things come out a little heavier, but the nutritional value is incomparable.

Not only does it digest more slowly and effectively, but you get a lot of vitamins and minerals that have been stripped away from the white flour. Note: There are many different flours you can buy and use in place of white flour, but they each have different physical and chemical properties. They need to be carefully combined and youll need to adapt your recipes accordingly, so even though these other flours are usually more nutritious, they dont make our list of easy substitutions. However, you can safely substitute a few tablespoons of a healthier flour in most of your recipes. Flax meal . Its usually safe to replace up to a fifth or a quarter of your white flour with flax meal, and it doesnt affect the flavor very much.

However, just two tablespoons of flax meal will give you 3 grams of dietary fiber and 3 grams of protein. It also contains calcium, iron, potassium, and healthy omega-3 fatty acids! While youre on your journey toward better health, remember that sometimes plain fruit with yogurt makes a lovely sweet dish, but it does lack the satisfying quality of a good, traditional dessert. We hope you find all your favorites in the pages of this book!