Sweet by Nature
Homemade cookies, cakes, warm muffins: Baked goods are temptingly sweet thanks tot heir high refined sugar content. Unfortunately sweetness comes at a cost. Evidence suggests that the more refined the sugar, the more energy and resources go into processing the cane. The less-refined and organic alternatives, however, require less processing and offer more-nuanced flavors.
For baking, the best substitutes for refined sugar are other granulated sweeteners: Maple sugar will give blueberry muffins a maple undertone; date sugar has an intensely sweet, rich flavor and is great in scones; and dehydrated fruit sugars add a light, clean tasting sweetness to most anything. There are also less refined and organic cane sugars that retain slightly more of the cane’s nutrients. These coarse grains include pure dehydrated cane juice (like Sucanat and Rapadura), which tends to be a bit dry in texture by works well in gingerbread cookies, and raw sugar, which gives goodies a delicious, rich taste to their texture. Liquid sweeteners include honey, maple syrup, brown-rice syrup, barley-malt syrup, agave nectar, and fruit juice concentrates, and can be used to sweeten cakes, muffins, and quick breads. You can substitute a three-quarter cup of liquid sweetener for every cup of white sugar, and then decrease the amount of other liquids in the recipe by about half the amount of liquid sweetener.
To sweeten and reduce fat, try using fruit purees in your baking. Mashed ripe bananas and even canned pumpkin can be used this way by substituting for the same amount of sugar that they recipe calls for by half. Just expect to see and possibly taste the difference right at first till you get the recipe tweaked enough to know exactly how much to add or take away from the recipe when you are substituting for white sugar.
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Earthly Eating Daily Recipe
Better Batter: An alternative to refined sugar make this banana bread sweet and healthful.
1 1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 or 3 should work just fine)
1/4 cup light vegetable oil
1/4 cup brown-rice malt syrup
2 tbs. maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. lemon zest
2/3 cup plain soy milk
1. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and walnuts.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk bananas, oil, syrups, vanilla, zest and a few tbs. of soy milk-enough to fully incorporate the ingredients into a batter. The softer the bananas, the less soy milk you will need to use.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients to form a thick batter. Add more soy milk as needed.
4. Bake at 350°F for 45 to 60 minutes in a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan lined on the bottom with parchments paper and oiled on the sides. Turn loaf out of the pan and onto a rack to cool. (Source: Yoga Journal 2008)
Happy Eating!
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