Cookbook author Lisa Jobs offers practical tips on better ingredient choices, time saving tools and healthier alternatives when preparing homemade desserts this holiday season. These useful tips will help everyone enjoy desserts with less guilt, fewer calories, less sugar and no sacrifice in flavor.
Ten Holiday Baking Tips to Save Time, Cut Calories and Reduce Sugar Intake
Sensational Stevia Desserts author Lisa Jobs offers the following 10 tips for easier and healthier homemade desserts this holiday season:
- Use parchment paper on cookie sheets instead of greasing them with shortening or spray. This saves on cleanup and eliminates the extra calories and fat.
- Instead of using regular cream cheese, try Neufchatel, the low fat version of cream cheese. Neufchatel cream cheese has one-third the fat, uses whole milk, not cream and tastes almost the same.
- Use sea salt and unbleached flour instead of regular table salt and all-purpose bleached flour. The reason: simply the less refined nature and additional health benefits in each.
- Use unsweetened dried fruit instead of dried fruit sweetened with extra sugar. Doing this will save a lot of extra calories and sugar. Dried fruit has plenty of natural sugar already, so there’s no need to add more.
- If you forget to soften your butter or simply don’t have time to wait for it to soften at room temperature, remove a stick from the ‘fridge, cut it in small pieces and heat it in a microwave-safe dish for 15 seconds on power level 5 or medium power.
- Use stevia extract instead of sugar or artificial sweeteners for your holiday treats and greatly reduce your calories, carb intake and sugar intake. Stevia is derived from an herb and has no calories, carbs, fat, sugar or artificial sweeteners. It doesn’t affect glucose levels, so diabetics can use it. Stevia is sold in health food stores, natural food grocers and online.
- When choosing white chocolate chips or baking bars, be sure to buy a brand, like Ghirardelli, that contains only the cocoa butter as the “fat” ingredient and avoid those that only contain sugar, hard vegetable fat and have artificial chocolate flavoring. You see white chocolate really isn’t chocolate at all because it has only the fat from the cocoa bean and other non-chocolate ingredients.
- If you don’t have time to make or simply don’t know how to make homemade piecrust, be sure to use all-natural brands available at your local health food store or natural foods grocers. These healthier options include better ingredients like expeller pressed soybean oil and organic evaporated cane juice instead of undesirable ingredients like partially hydrogenated soybean oil or cottonseed oils and high fructose corn syrup commonly found in supermarket brands.
- Use all-natural peanut butter. Most commercialized brands add sugar, contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (can include cottonseed, soybean and/or rapeseed), monoglycerides, diglycerides, extra salt and molasses. Natural peanut butter is simply raw or roasted peanuts and usually offers salted or unsalted versions.
- Keep these points in mind to prevent your cheesecake from cracking: Don’t over beat the batter, especially after the eggs have been added. Make sure cake is firm around edges and center still “jingles” a little when pan is shaken. When baking is completed, turn oven off and leave oven door open slightly with a wooden spoon. The cake will set when cooled.(Excerpt from Sensational Stevia Desserts
(aff) by Lisa Jobs)
Stevia, derived from an herb that is up to 400 times sweeter than sugar, has been used as an all-natural alternative to sugar and artificial sweeteners in many parts of the world for decades, especially Japan, Brazil and China.
It has no calories, no carbohydrates and no fat. In addition, stevia does not cause tooth decay and, because it does not raise blood glucose levels, diabetics can use it. It is available in health food stores, natural grocers and online.
So put desserts on the holiday table — but make them healthier, easier, guiltless and with no sacrifice in flavor, by using these tips and recipes.
Look for these tips and 82 tempting, low-carb dessert recipes in Sensational Stevia Desserts by Lisa Jobs, and more information at www.steviadessert.com.
