Negar Sharafi
Staff Writer
Whether you‘re into baking or just want to make the occasional sweet treat for birthdays, celebrations, etc., the amount of refined sugar and white, processed flour you consume with just a couple of cookies or a piece of your favourite cake are…surprising to say the least.
So how do you make scrumptious treats that won‘t clog up your arteries and cause you to die young? One way would be to look for “healthy“ cake recipes; but why bother when you can easily adapt your favourite recipes to make healthier (let‘s face it, completely healthy baked goods just don‘t exist!), lower calorie, but not low-taste treats?
The easiest changes you can make are substituting the “bad” white stuff for unprocessed, “brown“ and most of the time tastier ingredients.
With that I mean simply use brown Demerara or even really dark muscovado sugar (though the latter affects the taste quite a bit, go ahead and use it if you like) and wholewheat flour instead of white flour.
When you substitute sugar, bear in mind that white sugar is a lot sweeter than brown sugar, so either use a little bit more brown sugar than the recipe calls for or add a tablespoon of honey (or simply make cakes and cookies that are less sweet).
Depending on how much more sugar you use, you could consider adding a small amount of liquid like a tablespoon of water or milk, though usually it should be fine without any added liquid. Same with wholewheat flour. Since it‘s unprocessed it soaks up more liquid, so add a little bit of water or milk when you adapt the recipe.
Another option would be to substitute honey for sugar. You can either substitute a part of the sugar your recipe asks for or all of it, but since honey is sweeter than sugar, make sure you use less of it. Honey also browns faster than sugar so make sure to bake at a lower heat.
While it is true that baking is a science, don‘t be afraid to alter recipes! With a bit of experimenting, you can come up with your own healthier versions of your favourite recipes.
Here‘s my recipe for a healthier version of banana bread that uses dark sugar, wholewheat flour as well as low-fat cream cheese instead of the ingredients included in the original recipe.
Cream Cheese Banana Bread:
330 g wholewheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
170 g butter
230 g low-fat cream cheese
400 g Demerara sugar (or 200 g Demerara sugar & 200 g muscovado sugar)
1 tablespoon honey
2 large eggs
3-4 mashed bananas (banana bread is a perfect use for any very ripe, almost black bananas you have lying around)
50-100 g chopped pecans or walnuts
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 180°C and grease a loaf pan.
Using an electric mixer (or a whisk if you don‘t have an electric mixer), beat together butter and cream cheese until the mixture is creamy. Slowly add sugar and keep mixing until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix until just blended. Now add flour, baking powder and salt, and beat at low speed until you have a relatively smooth mixture (a few lumps are ok).
Stir in mashed bananas, nuts and vanilla extract. Pour batter into the loaf pan, sprinkle ground cinnamon evenly over the batter and bake for about 1 hour, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Let the bread cool the pan for about 10 minutes before removing it from to cool completely (best on a wire rack).
