Healthy Dessert Recipes
Published January 5, 2009 | 
Healthy dessert recipes that satisfy your sweet tooth: ’tis the season!
We Americans are hooked on desserts. When you’re standing in the checkout line, just take a look at the typical shopper’s grocery cart. You’ll see boxes of bakery donuts, cakes and packaged cookies. All of these items, while convenient, are quite unhealthy dessert choices. Just take a look at the food labels: plenty of sugar, saturated and trans fats. You might wonder if there is anything such as a healthy dessert recipe. The answer is a resounding yes! Let’s take a look at how you can provide delicious healthy dessert recipes for your family and save money at the same time.
Homemade desserts, made from scratch, are immediately healthier, by virtue of the lack of chemicals, preservatives and food dyes. Any library or used book store has one of the little pocket books that describe all of the additives currently permitted by the FDA for human consumption. A quick look through one of these books is a real eye opener, listing the known effects of each in turn. Have you ever seen a recipe that calls for a teaspoon of something you cannot even pronounce, much less purchase? Just by making your own desserts, you’ve got a jump on healthy dessert recipes.
Sugar and fats are major components of most dessert recipes. Using a product like Splenda(R) in place of sugar provides that same satisfying sweetness, while being safe for diabetics. Making a cheesecake? Look for recipes that call for sour cream, along with the cheese. Instead of regular cream cheese, choose the lower fat Neufchatel. When you make such substitutions, you often need to adjust the amounts the recipe calls for in order to achieve the correct texture you expect in a cheesecake. Google ‘recipe chart conversion ingredient substitute’ for a printable chart to keep on hand. There are also several magazines, filled with healthy dessert recipes, with the healthier substitutions listed in the correct proportions. More on Health and Safety.
When you bake cakes from scratch, use unbleached flour rather than the bleached. The bleaching process removes most of the healthiest portions of the wheat and contains undesirable and unhealthy additives to boot. More than a century ago, the whitest possible flour was considered to be a mark of affluence! The silly part of this concept is that the degree of whiteness between the two products is hardly discernible. If you’re making a chocolate cake, you certainly can’t see or taste any difference. Adding vanilla to bleached flour renders a slightly less white cake anyway. Unbelievably, there’s no difference in the price of each type. The moral here? Always use unbleached flour in all of your baked goods.
Speaking of cakes, carrot cakes are delicious and healthy dessert recipes. If you’ve never tried one, this is a keeper. The carrots make the cake nice and moist. Other types of cakes stay moist if you substitute apple sauce for part of the liquid.
Fruit desserts help you get your five recommended daily servings of fruits and veggies. One easy fruit dessert requires little more than a few different fruits, using what’s in season and a container of pina colada yogurt. Add a bit of shredded coconut and you’ve got the basic ambrosia everyone loves. If you like, add a dollop of non-dairy whipped topping when you’re ready to serve.
One of the easiest of healthy dessert recipes hardly requires a recipe. Combine one can of fruit cocktail sweetened with Splenda(R) instead of sugar (available right off the supermarket shelf) with a package of unsweetened Jello(R) in the flavor of your choice. Use the juice from the can, a couple of tablespoons of Splenda(R) and the remaining amount of water called for on the gelatin package instructions. Dress this dessert with non-dairy whipping cream and you’ve got another healthy dessert recipe.
‘Tis the season, so bake up some pumpkin pies! Substitute for the sugar. You’ve got a fine dessert, loaded with vitamin A and fiber. For other pies, use a graham cracker crust, as appropriate.
Perhaps one of the best advantages, besides the added nutritional value, is that no one will be able to tell the difference between the sugar and fat laden version and your healthy dessert recipes. Happy and healthy diners!
