Low sugar dessert recipes

[Tengu]

Actualy I have cut out quite a lot of puddings.

And a few full sugar wont hurt.

However its always nice to cook...and Im cooking a lot of late, as Im jaded on food.

My treat at the moment is chocolate crispie crunch. (rice crispies coated in melted chocolate and put in a fairy cake tin.) I use about 2 squares of chocolate a cake.

(I put 50/50 milk/dark chocolate as I dont like full on dark, but milk has more sugar)

This is a good treat and stores well...but makes loads of crumbs

What do you like?

 

[KenThis]

you can't go wrong with a banana with a few chocolate buttons inserted and then wrapped in foil and oven/bonfire cooked.
pancakes with banana and honey.
banana or pineapple fritters. (lots of kitchen towel.)
fresh fruit salad.
yoghurt and honey.
homemade fruit bread.
homemade flapjacks (use a low sugar recipe)
Though I'm a sucker for plain chocolate digestives.

 

[TeeDee]

Avocado , Apple and Walnuts. Easy and healthy.


I've also made Chocolate Avocado Mousse by adding a little honey and coca powder to Avocado. Really very tasty and creamy.

 

[Toddy]

If you use plain yoghurt in your baking then you can often reduce the sugar quite considerably. It works well for sponges and cakes….and if you add a couple of spoonsful of lucuma powder (it's a south american dried fruit) it adds a lot of sweet flavouring without actually adding any more sugar than is in the fruit.

Jellies can be made entirely sugar free, and very successfully too. If you make them really firm, and then dip in diabetic chocolate you have 'Turkish Delight'.

Good crisp French pastry is often made without much sugar (if any) and it makes a really good base for a fruit tart. If you use fresh fruits, just lightly poached in very little water (use the microwave and a small pyrex casserole with a lid, and basically steam them) then make up a jelly with the liquid and a little bit of the stevia type sweetner stuff and set the whole thing into a tart.
A bun tin (like the ones for mince pies) or one of the ones that make four Yorkshire puddings, makes really good tart bases from the pastry. Keep it fine and it'll be crisp even with the jellied fruit in it.

I know the fruit itself is sugar rich, but with care you can account for it in your diet.

Wartime cake recipes might be interesting Tengu ?

atb,
M

 

[Tengu]

Yes, those might be handy.

I want recipes that are either storable or only one or two desserts...

 

[Robson Valley]

I like to make jelly from my own grape crop. McBride sunshine. 1/4 of the sugar recommended in the recipe.
To get it to gel very successfully, every time, I use an American citrus pectin product (2-part) called
Pomona's Universal Pectin.

The bigger discovery has been that with the reduced sugar, I can actually taste the fruit.
Have to read the labels in Canada.
By Law, any product labelled as "jam" must be at least 40% sugar.
So, any product labelled as a fruit "spread" has less sugar.

Xylitol is a sugar substitute, derived naturally from wood.
Creeping into various foods.
OK for humans but with kidney failure, will kill your dogs.

 

[Janne]

I wonder if you could use Stevia in deserts?

The benefit with high sugar content in jams and similar is twofold.
Cheap and a good preservative.
When I make mango jam, i use about 1/3 sugar than the receipes says, but have to store the sterilised jars in my wine room.

I like yoghurt, crushed Weetabix and jam to round off meals.

 

[Robson Valley]

I think that the sugar content is also a structural part of the preserve, as it is also in candy.
Hence my need to use some other gelling agent such as Pomona's.

Stevia will work as a sweetener. I don't like the long-lingering aftertaste.
There's a dozen others, xylitol for example.

It's been some years now and I really enjoy the revealed fruit tastes.
On a road trip, had some store-bought raspberry jam. Disgustingly sweet.

 

[santaman2000]

Often the trouble with "sugar free" or "low sugar" recipes is that they trade sugar for carbs instead; so no real net gain from a diabetic's standpoint

 

[Janne]

They like to add lots of pectine. Cheap filler.

The consumer (us) demands set jams and marmelades. Because that is what we have been trained by the food industry to think of as the norm.

For example, real strawberry jam is runny. Should contain strawberries, sucrose and possibly Ascorbic Acid ( Vit C) as an extra preservative.
Nothing else.

 

[Robson Valley]

If the sugar is traded for a carbohydrate which humans don't have the biochemistry to digest, then why should I care?
Personally, I have both the understanding and confidence to start with fruit and make my own jams and jellies.
It is not rocket science. The direct result is that I know exactly what's in my condiments.

Actually, coffee, toast and my jam made from McBride sunshine is a fine compliment
to all the snow-covered mountain peaks which surround my house.

 

[Toddy]

*Huge* cultural divide here folks.

Jelly here is what the N.Americans call jello.

Jelly jam is another thing entirely

We sometimes refer to the pudding/desert one as table jelly.

Tengu, so long as you keep the proportions correct, it's quite possible to make just enough pastry for one or two small tarts.
I often do since only HWMBLT eats wheat flour in the household.
The same is true with biscuits, though that's often easier just to make a 'base' dough and and divide and add different flavours, or things like fruit or nuts, to the divided doughs.
M

 

[TeeDee]

Only thing I would add Tengu is the more Sugar you tend to have in a diet the less you notice its sweetness. So the more you have on a basis the less of a 'kick' you get off of it.

Give up sugar for a couple of weeks and then eat a carrot - you'll taste the Sweetness to a N'th degree.

Also It could be said Treats are for Dogs and Small Children.

 

[Tengu]

I have heard middle eastern jams are more runny than set.

(I am not a jam eater; except the odd cream tea.)

(But I no doubt would enjoy something more fruity than sweet)

Toddy, can I have your biscuit recipe? Nothing like home made biscuits and you can freeze the dough

 

[Robson Valley]

Here's what I call jelly:
Simmer 3 liters of grape juice down to 1.5 liters. Sterilize 3 x 500ml canning jars.
Add 1/4 of the recipe sugar. Add the required Pomona pectin. Jar, process & cool.

Jell-O is a name brand product based upon a thin,flavored, gelatin protein gel.

 

[Toddy]

So what do you call the fruit flavoured cubes that we dissolve in hot water and sugar (or fruit syrup) and let set into a firm desert jelly ?

We use it for trifles or over fruit (or if you're HWMBLT just chewed as it comes out of the packet ) or whisked up with evaporated milk or cream or custard to make mousse.

I mostly use veggie gel these days (usually agar) but it's not quite the same texture as that from gelatine, and quick-jel for little tarts.

Tengu, I'll write out the biscuit recipe for you. I generally use it for gingernuts or an abernethy biscuit, but it works for coffee, vanilla, chocolate, garibaldi or hazelnut too.

M

 

[Janne]

Robson, we do not have the grape stuff you have in N. America. The Brits can buy it, but not in any European country.
Personally I can not put it in my mouth, tastes like monomer plastic for me....
Here in Cayman ( approx 100 miles south of Cuba) we can buy it but only Canucks and US people buy it.

Toddy, what is the name of that product?
Do you mean real Turkish Delight? ( not the Cadbury)

 

[Robson Valley]

Your "fruit-flavored cubes." No such thing that I've ever seen over here. Jell-O comes as a granular powder in little boxes (packet inside) as well as a couple of competing brands. Add boiling water, stir, allow to cool.

If/when I make what we call "jam," I see it as stewed fruit with sugar added. Makes a sloppy, runny mess to smear on waffles, pancakes and toast. I cloned a black currant bush which actually loses acidity and sweetens up when nearly over-ripe. I'll take that as "jam" over any other fruit.

 

[Robson Valley]

Janne: why don't you stick a couple of grape vines in the ground? Shades the house and fruit for anything.
Everybody should have a couple of grapes to fool with.

In fact, my two big old (2001) grape vines were a gift from my brother who lives on Grand Bahama.
Have established rows of clones since then.

Here I live at 53N. The sun set behind the mountains on the last winter solstice at 1:52PM.
Best yield grape harvest was 65lbs per vine.

 

[Janne]

Yes, that is real, oldfashioned jam.
Have you tried to gently boil fruit (no sugar added) until most of the water evaporates?
That is the original, pre-sugar way to preserve fruit.
If you take it to the extreme you get what I think is called Fruit Leather.

One spreadable preserve is the Central European Plum preserve most call Povidla or similar.

The Germans add sugar and pectine, so their Pflaumenmus is second grade...

My mother, 84 years old this month, had European food history as a hobby.
I am brought up on some weird stuff. You would be surprised what the European diet was before Columbus opened up South America...