Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Further into the going sugar-free journey

In March I wrote about going sugar-free here.  I didn't last very long at the time - maybe only one or two days.  Going cold turkey felt too impossible.  But slowly, slowly, I have been extending the reaches of my sugar-free-domain.  It helped that I decided that rather than being sugar-free, I would be 'refined white sugar-free'.  As other sweeteners are expensive, I am sure to think twice about baking and I end up baking a lot less than I used to.  Although I am not sugar-free by any means, I consume much fewer sugary foods and the ones I bake don't have white sugar in them any more.  

My main difficulty is trying to get the sugar substitute in good proportion.  I start off with a normal recipe and make substitutions as I see fit.  One biscuit* I baked ended up being more of a chewy scone because I guessed an amount of dates to put in and also added 1/4 cup of raw sugar.  So next time I used molasses as well as good quality dark chocolate chips and it was really really sweet (and really really yummy, like a fudgy chocolaty brownie bikkie*.  I got the thumbs up from Jbird).  Also either the molasses or the dates burn quicker than white sugar so I needed to watch them very carefully.  The date ones smoked nearly as soon as I put them in the oven, setting off the fire alarm.  I'm also careful to make sure there are lots of savoury snacks available as between meals is my weakest sweet-tooth time.

*cookie

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