Did you survive Thanksgiving without going overboard on the food? Did you also maintain your activity level to maintain weight and reduce stress? If not, what can you learn from your best intentions gone awry? If things didn’t work out to plan on Turkey Day, you have many other opportunities to put lessons learned into play during December.
If your family is anything like mine, now that Thanksgiving has passed, the holiday baking will be in full swing. My mother always makes tons of cookies every year. Naturally, I do the same. Those of you that know me personally know that I share these wonderful goodies as gifts. In the spirit of moderation, I believe that there is a place for lovely baked goodies and treats in our nutrition plan. We should have a healthy relationship with our food. Making baked goods “evil” isn’t healthy. Everything fits.
Most of the time, I don’t make a lot of substitutions in my baked goods. Baking is a science. Messing too much with the science can yield an inferior end-result. Depending on the recipe I’m making, I may or may not make substitutions to make things a wee bit healthier or just lighter tasting overall. There are some recipes that *really* are just so ridiculous in their level of decadence, I really do make an effort to lighten them up. Here are a few tried and true ideas to make the baked goods a little less sinful:
- Make smaller cookies. There isn’t a rule anywhere that says that you have to make cookies the size of sandwich plates. Use a small cookie scoop or a regular spoon from your flatware set. I have a scoop that is one tablespoon. All my cookies are made “fully loaded” per the recipes with no scrimping or substituting. I get away with this because I just make the cookies smaller.
- Cut smaller pieces of cake, pie and brownies. Again, I make most everything per the original recipes, but reduce the portions. Just because restaurants serve huge pieces of dessert doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing at home.
- Use less sugar. Most baked goods turn out just fine if you reduce the sugar by 1/3 to ½. Trust me, it really works.
- Substitute whole wheat flour for bleached, white flour, or at least use ½ wheat and ½ white. If you can, get whole wheat pastry flour as it is a little lighter in texture. It adds the fiber while not making your baked goods too dense. (If you’ve got someone picky, use white whole wheat flour. Yes, it’s legit. It’s made from albino wheat instead of the traditional red wheat.)
- You can cut the fat by using ½ oil and ½ applesauce. So, if the recipe calls for 1 cup of oil, you could do ½ cup oil and ½ cup applesauce (unsweetened, natural). Don’t substitute more than this . . . I found that out the hard way one year at Thanksgiving with a pumpkin bread that never did bake in the middle. Oh, and I don’t recommend this substitution for cookies. They don’t set quite the same with oil and applesauce as they do with butter.
- Alternately, you can use ¾ cup of prunes pureed with ¼ cup of water in place of 1 cup of butter. If you are short on time, you can even buy prune baby food (with no additives) as a one to one replacement for the fat.
- Use real cream for your whipped cream. What? Look, whipped topping from the freezer is not cream. It’s oil, stabilizers and sugar. Get a can of whipped cream, like ReddiWip, or make your own in a whipped cream canister with CO2. It’s so much better and you don’t need to use as much. Again, trust me.
- Evaporated skim milk makes a great substitution for heavy cream. The substitution is equal parts. This works great in cakes, scones and biscuits.
- Equal parts of cacao nibs for equal parts of chocolate chips. This works great in cookies, cakes and breads. Think more antioxidants and less sugar! If you are a dark chocolate fan, you’ll like this substitution.
- I never actually use full fat cream cheese in baking or cooking. You can substitute Neufchatel cheese or the 1/3 less fat cream cheese in equal amounts. Do not even bother with the fat free cream cheese. It’s just plain not good and does not work well in baking.
Happy baking!
Did you know that The Fare Maven partnered with Nutrition in Motion to write a great recipe e-booklet for athletes and those aspiring athletes? It’s “Real Food for Athletes”. We’ve even got some tasty dessert recipes in the book you could try out for the holidays. You can learn more here.
If you are interested in more ideas about how to cook awesome, balanced breakfasts, we’ve got that covered. Check it out! We’re giving away a free gift of 16 Power Breakfast ideas.