Here is some interesting information about substituting sugar when baking with a natural sweetener from Sparkpeople.com:
Honey, made by bees from the nectar of flowers, is a ready-made sweetener that contains traces of nutrients.
Cooking notes: To replace 1 cup sugar with honey in baked goods, use about 3/4 cup of honey and lower the oven temperature 25 degrees and reduce liquids by about 2 Tablespoons for each cup of honey.
Maple syrup comes from the sap of maple trees, which is collected, filtered, and boiled down to an extremely sweet syrup with a distinctive flavor. It contains fewer calories and a higher concentration of minerals (like manganese and zinc) than honey. Don’t be fooled by ”Maple-flavored syrups” which are imitations of real maple syrup and contain many artificial ingredients. To easily tell the difference, read the ingredients list on the nutrition label. True maple syrup contains nothing but “maple syrup.”
Cooking notes: To replace 1 cup sugar with maple syrup in baking, use about 3/4 cup of maple syrup and lower the oven temperature 25 degrees and reduce liquids by about 2 Tablespoons for each cup of maple syrup.
No, I don’t mean one of those great people from the Food channel who knows everything about food - rather a movie star who gives yummy recipes!
Gwyneth Paltrow’s new website, GOOP, will be online soon. If you visit now you can sign up for her newsletter. The first issue was released yesterday and contains 2 recipes.
Gwyneth says she tries to eat “seasonally, locally, oragnically” with no red meat, no processed foods, and low sugar and dairy. Her weakness is cheese. And mine (MessyMom) is chocolate, so if I ever have her over to tea we’ll have to try a chocolate cheesecake together.
The recipes are for Turkey Ragu and Banana-Nut Muffins. But I won’t reprint them here. You can join her mail list for the turkey ragu recipe, and stay tuned here for Messy Chef Alice to show you OUR banana muffin recipe.
The MessyChefs cook all the time, even when we aren’t being recorded. This weekend we made…
1. A chocolate orange cake - Grandma’s recipe uses lots of yummy orange juice for flavor.
2. Dirt pudding cups -We were invited out, and brought 6 for the 6 kids at friday night dinner to share. Organic chocolate cupcakes made from a mix - but we added some whole wheat flour and a bit of chocolate rice milk to stretch the batter. They were topped with delicious vegan chocolate pudding made from corn starch, vanilla, chocolate rice milk, sugar and cocoa.
3. Wheatberry and sprouted bean salad. Half served warm right when it was made, flavored with jalapenos, sherry and worsterstechestershchester sauce (HA!) The other half refrigerated and served chilled with some edamame and Caesar dressing tossed in.
4. Homemade energy bars. MessyDad runs about 40-50 miles/week and was spending lots of money on those bars that start with a ‘C’. Now he makes his own. This week he made a batch of peanut chocolate chip and a batch of mango.
5. Chicken parmasean. The kids don’t like it for dinner, but MessyMom and MessyDad do!
6. Twice baked sweet potatoes - made in the toaster oven so the whole kitchen didn’t have to get hot. With a pat of butter, and dashes of cinnamon and chili powder.
