Princess Lesson: Healthy Baking

During this day and age it is difficult to avoid sweets. In fact, the recipes of old with all their sugar and fats were appropriate for their times, but not so for today- where they are available all year round to everyone and anyone. No longer are things like cakes and candies luxury items that only monied individuals can afford. And this presents a problem for the modern princess: it is as if temptation to eat only sweets on indulge far too much is at every possible corner.

I do enjoy my sweets , I will not deny this, but I have always thought that one must try to live healthy. And this includes limiting fat and sugar intake, as well as limiting consumption of fried foods. I have always been the girl who, when given the choice, would choose a healthy apple or fruit salad over the double-fudge chocolate cake. Or the person who would rather eat the cake prepared with whole grain flour instead of bleached all-purpose.

So, to me, the next logical step is to think on how to make sweets and cakes healthier.

Some of you may cry, "Impossible!" Because we all remember that most cake recipes include eggs, flour, sugar, butter, and possibly milk or cream. And, most of the time, these recipes work best will full-fat ingredients and white, processed flours and sugars. But! Fear not my fellow cake-lovers, a healthier treat is at hand.

There are simple things that you can do to make baking and treat-making better for you:

• Use more whole-grain or low-gluten flours
  
• Substitute all eggs or some eggs in a recipe
  
• Substitute oil when it appears
  
• Use unbleached sugars
  
• Use more natural butters, or substitute all or some of the butter
  
• Use lower fat or non-dairy milk or cream
  

Flours
When push comes to shove you can always used unbleached white flour in place of your common bleached all-purpose flour- if you recipe relies heavily on the lightness of white flour. But if there is a way to substitute more whole-grain flours, or at least do half whole grain and half white, I would recommend doing it. There are even whole wheat pastry flours available for the times when you desire a healthier flour for a flaky, light item. Also, aside from whole wheat flours, there are a variety of others available to us: rye, soy, brown and regular rice.

I have also been one to worry about not getting enough protein in my diet. And I thought some of you may also have worried about this at one time or another. So I have recent discovered some reassuring news: you never have to worry about protein. Protein is in everything. Even small amounts of it can be found in fruit. And... one good source or protein aside from meat is grains. Yes, that's right, the bread, pasta and cakes we're eating are giving us our protein. So we all need less meat, dairy or legume-based protein than we think. (In fact, most people consume way more protein than needed.)

So, if you would like to reduce the amount of excess protein you are consuming daily, you can start with your baked items by using flours labeled "low-gluten".

Eggs
There are obviously some recipes that you will not be able to do some kind of full substitution with such as souffles and genoise- for those I would recommend using an egg-product like egg-beaters where real eggs are still involved but lack some of the fat and other bad things. For other baked items you can make these easy substitutions for eggs (all listed below equal 1 egg):

- 1/4 c mashed banana
- 1/4 c unsweetened applesauce
- 1/4 c pureed silken tofu

These are all low-fat/ fat-free methods of replacing eggs in a recipe.

Oil
When substituting fat in a recipe you need to first ask yourself- do I plan on also substituting eggs? Because if that is the case, you may want to just substitute eggs with something like Egg Beaters, and use the applesauce to substitute for the oil content in the recipe. It is important to remember that a recipe is all about balance. If you play around too much with the fat content, it may be difficult for the recipe to turn out as you'd like it to. But, in the case of a recipe where you are only substituting oil, you can do an almost equal one-to-one substitution of unsweetened applesauce to oil.

Sugars
You may ask... what is wrong with my sugar? As I have learned in my experience baking the granulated sugars we use today are often bleached in a process that is less than healthy for our bodies. So, if you have the option available to you, there is unbleached organic granulated cane sugar that can be used in place of regular granulated sugar.

Butter
You may or may not choose to keep the butter in a recipe. If you choose to do away with it and substitute oil, remember to consider that you must balance the liquid to dry ingredients ratio since you will be adding more liquid than solid to the recipe than was there originally. You may also choose to substitute with margarine. Though, from personal experience, I have found that is best to stick with margarines labeled "good for baking" and not the lower fat versions and this often tends to cause problems in the recipe.

Milk/ Cream
When and if a recipe calls for milk or cream, you can often time substitute lower-fat milk (like 2 or 1%) in place of the full-fat version, or, in the case of cream, non-dairy creamer.

Oh no! Carbs!
Many people today are concerned about the sugar/ carbohydrate content in their baked goods. But don't fret! There are also ways to cut the sugar in your sweets.

- Reduce Sugar: Many older recipes from the 1970s and older can have the sugar content reduced by as much as 1/2c.
- Spreadable Fruit: In fruit-based dessert, some of the sugar can re replaced with 100% fruit spreads.
- Brown Sugar: Brown sugar is white granulated sugar mixed with molasses, which lowers carbs a little. Every 1/2c of brown sugar you use instead of white you'll reduce carbs by 30g.
Other things that you can do to help in your healthy princess-style baking are as follows:

- Measure your dry ingredients by spooning into the measuring cups and scraping off the excess with the back of a knife.
- Lower-fat items tend to stick more to bakeware so you'll need to either spray your bakeware with non-stick spray, coat with a butter/flour mixture, or use non-stick bakeware.

Some good sources for healthy baking are vegan websites as well as Nick Malgieri's book "Perfect Light Desserts".