Chang Joanne - Baking with less sugar : recipes for desserts using natural sweeteners and little-to-no white sugar

To Christopher, my everything.

Text copyright 2015 by Joanne Chang.
Photographs copyright 2015 by Joseph De Leo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-3960-9 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-3300-3 (hc)

Designed by Alice Chau

Food styling by Molly Shuster

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

CHAPTER ONE
REDUCING WHITE SUGAR

CHAPTER TWO
JUST CHOCOLATE

CHAPTER THREE
USING HONEY

CHAPTER FOUR
BAKING WITH MAPLE SYRUP AND MOLASSES

CHAPTER FIVE
FRUIT IS SWEET

Life is sweet. It is. Its not always easy. Its not without ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies. But LIFE IS SWEET. Why do I make this declaration? Because Ive taken these simple words, swallowed them whole, and used them as words to live by. For as long as I can remember, no matter what my mood or what Im feeling, it only takes a bite of something wonderful and sweet to make all seem right in the world. Baking is my life and I choose it every day as my path and my passion. On some level, my life is simply that simple.

Every morning, I walk into Flour and I stop for a moment to take in the full breadth of our morning bake-off. Its fourteen years and running, and it still makes me giddy at how gorgeous a full counter of beautifully prepared baked goods can be. It never gets old. I look around and I truly want to eat all of it. The counter is overrun with warm brioche neatly arranged on serving trays, sugary fruity muffins piled high in baskets, chewy oversized cookies lined up on platters, comforting quick breads stacked one on top of another. I look to the bakers and see the most lovely facesfocused, serious, committed, sometimes silly, sometimes exhaustedand I think Willy Wonka is alive and well at Flour Bakery. Im happy.

Maybe the complexities of life cant all be reduced to a cookie... but a well-made cookie can sure bring some music into it. For me, the connection between baking sweets and happiness runs long and strong and it is indelible. If youre holding this book, then that connectionsweetness and happinessmore than likely is a powerful one for you as well. Whether you start the day with coffee and a brioche, or reward yourself for making it through three-quarters of your work day with a cookie or half cupcake, or maybe you commemorate a friends new venture with a gussied-up and decadent midnight chocolate cakeeach of these situations shows how naturally we intertwine sweetness and happiness. Even in sorrow we might take refuge in a bowl (okay, pint) of Hagen-Dazs coffee. Sometimes the sweetness of that ice cream is exactly what it takes to wait out that agonizing soon-to-be exs %#^$ phone call.

I am and always have been so committed to the notion that bringing sweetness into the world simply makes life better that I have made it my lifes work. I had a morethan-stable and respectable job in business consulting. I traded it in to peddle pastry and desserts. NOT what you do when your parents immigrate to America, work their tails off to give you the best education on the planet, scrimp and save and sacrifice. No matter what I tried to focus on or what my parents subtlyor not so subtlysuggested (be a doctor, be a lawyer, what about medicine? what about law?), my dreams persistently ran to mounds of butter, mountains of flour, and ultimately, hills of sugar: the glorious trifecta of baked goods. Its such a part of my DNA to indulge in sweetness from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep that I made it my bakerys motto: Make Life Sweeter, Eat Dessert First!

A connection that runs just as deeply as that between sweetness and happiness is the relationship between sugar and sweetness. And, by the transitive property, then sugar must be the sine qua non of creating happiness, right? Well if youre a classically trained pastry chef, then yes. Absolutely. Of course. Or at least so I thought.

Over the last two decades as my experience as a pastry chef has grown, the one immutable lesson I am certain of is: The more I know the more I dont know. Every time I learn of a new ingredient or technique the boundaries of what I think makes an excellent pastry expand. Of course, molecular gastronomymaking mango foams and coffee air and caramel smoke and suchhas introduced us all to flavors and textures never before seen in desserts until recently. But even less dramatic than that is realizing that nothing is absolute, especially what defines delicious to me. A recipe for chocolate mousse that I made when I was first starting out in pastry now tastes awfully bland to me; an almond torte that I used to swoon over, I barely cast a second glance at; ricotta turnovers that I couldnt wait to remove from the first pastry menu I inherited, I now adore. My previously unexamined assumption that sugar is the most direct source to creating the sweetness that we love has been tested over and over again as Ive sampled and experimented with other far more interesting paths towards that same goal.

Ive realized that desserts benefit from spanning the sweetener spectrum to include honey, maple, fruit juice, and more. Ive surrounded myself with more and more ways of eating sweets all day long but in a more balanced fashion. I still crave something sweet as soon as I wake up... but it no longer needs to be covered in icing and showered in sugar. I have always believed that the best desserts highlight flavors other than just that of sweet, sweet, sweet. Nuts and fruits and cream and chocolate are all such enticing flavors, and they should be the stars of the show. My own personal favorite pastries are those that showcase the richness of creamy butter, the round warmth of vanilla bean, the balance of acid and sweetness in fresh fruit, the spiciness of grated nutmeg, in fact everything but the hit-over-your-head aspect of sugary sweet flavors that I used to crave.

The running joke in the Chang-Myers household is that, despite the fact that all I eat all day long is cake and cookies and muffins, we have nary a pastry in the house. It didnt start out that way. In fact, part of the wooing process Christopher went through when we were first dating was to visit me at the first Flour almost every single day to get his morning pastry and/or afternoon treat. His sweet tooth rivals mine (it is one of the many, many ways I knew immediately he was the one for me), and over a slice of carrot cake or a shared chocolate cupcake we would banter and joke and flirt. Was he here to see me or because he was addicted to our peanut butter cookies and lemon tarts? Or both? Now that we are married he teases me that I pulled the wool over his eyes. He thought he signed up for a lifetime supply of baked goods, but day in and day out I come home empty-handed. Were like the shoemakers children who never have shoes! he declares. We never have sweets in the house!

As life would have it, it turns out that Christopher is sensitive to sugar. It fills him up with giddy energy and then sends him crashing down into a daze. Ive witnessed the sugar rush and ensuing inevitable crash enough times to finally see the pattern. How ironic is it that sugarthe stalwart ingredient of my careeris the culprit? Over the years Ive searched for other ways to satisfy his sugar cravings, starting with simple fruit treats like frozen bananas dipped in bittersweet chocolate, and mango sorbets made creamy with a hit of coconut milk to more involved pastries like a sticky toffee pudding cake sweetened with just a touch of maple syrup, and granola bars full of dried fruit and bound together with a smidge of honey. I am fascinated by the exploration of finding other ways to add flavor and delight to a dessert without relying on white sugar. And I know you will be, too.