These last few weeks I have been feeling incredibly lucky to realize how many fantastic and talented friends I have. Ever since I made Moxy a serious endeavour, everyone has been amazing at helping me out.
Last week, my neighbor and very good friend Jamie, who I must tell you is the absolute best baker I’ve ever had the pleasure to know personally, decided she was going to try and bake a no-sugar or low sugar dessert. She could give any pastry chef in a well known restaurant a run for their money with her incredibly cupcakes, cookies and cakes. I’m a healthy eater, but when Jamie bakes, all bets are off.
So, she did a lot of research and sent me a number of texts to understand what was ‘in’ and what had to be ‘out’. I think I scared her a little when I told her no white flour, no sugar of any kind and no sugar substitute. That doesn’t leave much in the camp of dessert friendly ingredients. But, she took the challenge on full force and created incredible desserts, that Derek declared indulgent and truly satisfying. Words he doesn’t often get to use honestly.
We started with what the substitutes might be – almond or quinoa flour for regular white flour. Splenda, apples and other fruits for ‘sweet’. Jamie collected 3 recipes for our first try – blueberry scones, chocolate walnut muffins and apple cinnamon bread. All sounded great and all were things that Derek had not consumed in years. If we could pull this off, we were winning!
As we worked through the recipes and the ingredients list, a few things became evident. While one of the recipes had been pulled from a ‘Diabetes friendly’ site, it was what I would classify as better for you, but not appropriate for anyone with insulin intolerance – it contained so much flour it would spike Derek’s insulin immediately if we keep it as is. Additionally, while it sounded like a good idea, it called for Coconut oil as a replacement for regular oil and in addition to being incredibly expensive, it also did not work when mixed with the dry ingredients – creating a sticky paste that we couldn’t recover. That batch had to go straight to the trash.
One of the most exciting things we concluded that first evening was that creating our own applesauce was not only superior from a sugar content perspective, but the extra sauce was gobbled up by our kids in large spoonfuls as we cooked – healthy and happy eaters all around! The applesauce was simple – you must try this and freeze them into cubes for your recipes and any little ones needing just a quick treat – these are incredible!
Homemade applesauce: Peel 8 braeburns apples, boil w 1 ½ cups water, makes 4 cups ½ the sugar if store bought.
One last thing I’ll share before moving to the actual recipe is that Jamie is a math teacher, currently teaching our school teachers to teach the new math standards. She was awarded numerous honors and I got to witness one of her true talents as my 9 year old was helping us develop and create these recipes, she was calmly and encouragingly asking him a variety of problems to solve to teach him fractions, division and creativity. He was helping us cook, but she was teaching him critical math skills in practical purpose – so amazing!
Recipes go here!
