Not to put too fine a point on it… baking sweet treats without sugar is hard!

Reducing sugar is easy. I find that most recipes, and all commercially produced foods have too much sugar in them, overpowering the very flavors the sweetness is meant to enhance. I can easily do without about 1/2 the sugar in my old favorite recipes, but removing refined sugar altogether? That is another story.

But I have learned that the refined sugar I grew up with is not doing me any favors health wise, so I buy it only for the hummingbirds these days. I still like a sweet treat now and again however and, over time, I’ve tried all sorts of alternatives including:

Sugar and some other sweeteners.

• Agave Nectar
• Honey
• Crystalized Fructose
• Stevia
• Fruit Juice
• Splenda
• Date Sugar
• Pulverized whole Dates
• and recently a new product called “Just Like Sugar” (not)
• Molasses

I’ve had varying success with all of these! Almost all of these are far more expensive than sugar, but a little restraint with the treats is a good idea anyway. Here are some of my thoughts on each…

Agave Nectar is fairly flavor neutral, and will actually carmelize, making it handy for a caramel flan. I run into trouble with it in recipes at times because of moisture content. Also, though it is supposed to be lower glycemic, my carb senstive partner has trouble with it.

Honey is supposed to be an anti-cancer food. I don’t know it that’s true (I hope it is) and I also have no idea whether the heat of cooking honey would remove any benefits. I use honey mostly for sweetening tea and cinnamon toast. In cooking, I usually choose Agave Nectar over Honey.

Crystalized Fructose is flavor neutral – a little sweeter than cane sugar. It works OK in recipes, adds weight and bulk much like sugar, but does not carmelize, and as a refined product does not bring any nutritional benefits to the table.

Stevia. I can’t really figure out how to use this well. It adds no bulk or weight to a recipe usually meaning I have to rethink all the ingredients. It also is almost too sweet, hard to regulate the right amount, and for me, it has a mild but unpleasant aftertaste. The best way I’ve seen stevia used was in a berry pie. It sweetened the berries and I could not detect the aftertaste, so as a fruit or beverage sweetener, it seems to work best for me.

Fruit Juice. I’ve had good success making tasty treats using fruit juice in the place of sugar and liquid (e.g. orange juice instead of sugar and milk). While it is a milder sweetness than the sugar, it tastes good and hits the same sweetness receptors.

Splenda. Not bad, I’ve used this successfully in quite a few recipes. It tastes OK, it’s a little too sweet for me, I have to back off on the 1 for 1 conversion they recommend. My main gripe with this is I don’t like to use anything that does not add to the dish nutritionally, and I shy away from anything made in a lab. The only reason I’ve tried it is my Mom uses it.

Date sugar and pulverized whole dates. I love the flavor dates give a dish! Rich and brown sugar butterscotch-ey. Dates add weight, and moistness to the finished product. Dates add fiber and some nutritional value also. They are however, heavy, dark in color and do not dissolve, making them an inappropriate choice for dishes like angel food cake.

Just Like Sugar. I was excited when I found this at the health food store. Made from chicory root fiber, calcium vitamin C, and orange peel extracts, it seems like a pretty decently healthy choice, extremely high in fiber. It is a lot like Splenda in weight and color. I tried making sugar cookies with it and was pretty happy with the look and texture. However, it hits different sweetness receptors than sugar. It didn’t taste sweet until it hit the middle and sides of my tongue, and then it was too sweet. It also had a lingering effect, like the sweetness would not go away, which I found cloying. Too bad. “Like sugar” it is not. It might work better in a recipe that does not depend so much on the sugar for taste as well as sweetness. I’m gonna give this stuff one more try.

Molasses. I love molasses’ flavor, but it tends to overpower other ingredients, so unless you are looking for this flavor, like in gingerbread and molasses cookies, it is too strong to be an all purpose sugar substitute.

I have also tried barley malt and brown rice syrup with limited success.

I’ve not really intensively evaluated the health benefits (or lack there of) of the sweeteners I’ve tried so far, nor do I know which are best from a blood sugar standpoint – I read varying reports and not all agree. My instinct is to use the least refined, most natural choice when baking sweet treats – one with fiber and nutrients intact – so my favorite sweetener right now is dates and date “sugar”.

Let me know what sweeteners you use, and how they work for you!

• A warm socca, rich with olive oil, with a hint of rosemary and a sprinkle of fresh ground pepper…
• A meltingly soft chocolate chip cookie, like Mom used to make, but with twice the fiber…
• A rich chocolate cake so full of antioxidants that you can call it health food…

These are just a few of the reasons that the average American might want to consider including gluten free flours and foods in their diet.

Gluten free and wheat free diets are not about deprivation anymore. A person choosing a gluten free lifestyle, or even simply replacing some of the wheat flour in their diets with alternative flours will find an almost bewildering number of choices.* This makes coming up with great tasting meals at home that contain less wheat, or no wheat, quite easy, and many of these flours are not only tasty, many would rank high in a list of healthy foods.

For instance, millet is a light golden colored, delicately sweet tasting grain that, ground into flour, offers high fiber and protein content superior to wheat, corn or rice. It contains the minerals phosphorus and magnesium and several B vitamins and is considered a low allergy grain. (1)

Garbanzo Flour (aka Chick Pea Flour) offers a rich, intense, almost nutty flavor that makes the Socca, a specialty snack bread of Southern France, satisfying and delicious. Garbanzo Beans offer numerous health benefits such as high fiber, high protein, and valuable minerals and nutrients such as Folic Acid, Manganese, Iron, Copper and Zinc.(2)

There are many, many more fine choices out there, all with their own unique flavors, textures, and nutritional profiles.**

People in the United States who follow a gluten free diet often do so for medical reasons. Celiac Disease, gluten intolerance and wheat allergies being three common ones. Yet most alternative flours have been used and enjoyed in many different countries for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Not because wheat made them sick, but because these alternatives are delicious, healthy food.

It is a shame that we, as a nation, have learned to prefer one grain – often with most of the nutrients and fiber stripped out – to a varied and health enhancing diet that includes many choices. Substituting alternative flours for some, or even all, of the wheat flour (especially white wheat flour) in the American diet would be a new taste experience for most of us, and might even go a long way toward helping us back to being a healthy population.

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(1, 2) The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods, 2005, Michael Murray N.D.

*Care should be exercised when introducing new foods into the diet. If you have any health issues or concerns, allergies, or questions, you should consult a qualified health care practitioner before trying an unfamiliar food.

**Not all products used in gluten free baking are necessarily “healthy”. Some, mainly those meant to replace the thickening capability of white flour while mimicking its lightness and fairly neutral flavor, have no fiber to speak of and very little nutritional value. A sharp eye on the label will help the consumer identify these products, and use them in moderation, if at all.

I have. Just over 2 inches high and barely resembling the loaf of bread I’d hoped it would become.

I can’t say converting to wheat free cooking, especially baking, has been without its trials. I take full credit for the brick. My partner was on a wheat free, yeast free, egg free, dairy free, sugar free (really almost everything-free) allergy elimination diet. It was rather challenging to try to make a light and delicious bread without much but gluten free flour, baking soda and water.

I did eventually come up with a (barely) acceptable bread substitute. At the time we would have sold our souls for A. Regular. Sandwich.

The good news? I love to experiment in the kitchen.

The bad? When I started out going gluten free I spent a bit more energy on creativity than on research.

Oh, and I might as well confess my secret weakness here and now. I am almost incapable of following a recipe as written. I can’t help tinkering.

Gluten-free baking however, was a whole new ball game. Often every single ingredient – and every instruction – had a vital role to play in the end result, both flavor and texture. Wandering off the beaten path caused unpredictable results.

So those off-the-cuff substitutions were not always successful for me.

Simply substituting GF flour in a wheat bread recipe produced more than one brick. I found that I had to start learning to bake all over. Understanding what needs to be done to duplicate gluten’s actions went a long way toward improving my baked goods, and allowed me to return to my sometimes cavalier ingredient substitutions in the kitchen.

I find that I am not the only one with misses on my yum-o-meter. I have tried plenty of GF recipes – in cookbooks no less – that left a lot of room for improvement. I’m not naming any names, but I sometimes wonder if anyone tried these recipes before they stuck them in the cookbook. I mean the author is raving about what a fabulous pizza crust this is and I’m thinking, “Huh? How long has it been since you’ve had a real pizza lady?” I actually felt kinda sorry for her…

I’m hoping we can do better here. I am also hoping that I get lots of help from all the other folks out there who are never satisfied with following a recipe word for word and who don’t think “good enough” is good enough. So take a recipe you like and improve it, and, if you’re feeling generous, send it on over!

Oh, and for the record? No bricks please.