|
 Healthy
Baking takes many forms from baking
with low-fat ingredients, addressing specific health problems, or just
watching your weight and health. It is a difficult type of
baking because it sometimes does not use mainstream recipes or ingredients
where many of them do not perform the same ways that
typical ones do. Even
reducing the fat using commonly found ingredients can be difficult.
Here, I share with you my numerous years of
experience on baking with less fat: I developed a 12 SKU Healthy Oven
Low-Fat Muffin and Quick-Cake Mix line, sold in major grocery store chains
nationwide. During that ten year period, I also came to have my first book
published,
The Healthy Oven Baking Book, by Sarah
Phillips, Doubleday, 1999
containing 125 reduced and low-fat desserts.
Here, I share my experiences with you
through a step-by-step explanation on how I reduced the fat in a
my mom's
Chocolate Fudge Cake with Fudgy Chocolate
Frosting.
It was a difficult task because
buttercakes such as this one,
rely heavily upon butter for their characteristics, such as flavor,
texture, color and look. When
I cut the fat down from 16 to 4 tablespoons of
course, the recipe went haywire. My task was to select ingredients that
would still keep the recipe reduced-in-fat, but still have a similar
flavor, taste, texture and color as the full-fat version. It wasn't
easy.
Happy Baking,
Sarah
P.S. if you have any
questions,
feel free to ask. |
|
Perhaps the best way to
illustrate how reduced-fat baking works is to tell the story of how I gave
my mom's Chocolate
Fudge Cake with Fudgy Chocolate Frosting, a makeover. It didn't happen
overnight.
|
I almost fainted
when the calculations of
Mom's
Fudge Cake showed 603
calories, 28 fat grams (11 grams of saturated fat), and 100
milligrams of cholesterol per slice (twelve slices per cake)!
|
|
 I
have vivid memories of Mom in the kitchen, instinctively mixing up her
famous chocolate fudge cake in a big bowl. She made it so many times, she
never had to look at the recipe. I learned it by heart, too: two sticks of
butter, two cups of sugar, two whole eggs (Mom preferred double-yolk),
one-half cup of sour cream, two cups of sifted all-purpose flour, three
ounces of unsweetened chocolate, one cup of hot brewed coffee, one
teaspoon of baking soda, and a pinch of salt. The frosting had four more
ounces of chocolate, one pound of confectioners' sugar, and one teaspoon
of vanilla, mixed with a whole raw egg (I doubt if she'd use a raw egg
today) and a few tablespoons of whole milk. |
HOW I REDUCED THE FAT IN MY MOM'S FUDGE
CAKE RECIPE:
|
1. I substituted
low-gluten cake
flour for the all-purpose flour, as cake flour will produce a
more tender cake which can be a problem win the absence of fat;
2.
To make up for the flavor lost by reducing the amount of melted
chocolate, I added one-half cup of cocoa powder, which is a surprisingly
low-fat ingredient;
3.
In addition I added two teaspoons of instant espresso to complement the
chocolate flavor. I used low-fat
buttermilk which has a similar full,
rich flavor to sour cream, but fewer calories and less fat. |
 Click
Here for More Healthy Baking Tips |
When my family decided to pay more attention to
our diet, I knew that Mom's chocolate fudge cake, as it stood, didn't fit into
the plan -- especially after I ran the
Nutritional Analysis on the original recipe.
If I had announced to my gang that they would
never eat chocolate cake again, they would have packed their bags and found a
new mom and wife. But I knew that somewhere in Mom's beloved recipe there was a
wonderful reduced-fat version just waiting to be discovered. So, I rolled up my
sleeves and got busy. Obviously, the place to start was with the butter. After
much experimentation, I cut the fat down
to 25 percent of its original amount—before the flavor and texture were
adversely affected. (in other recipes, substituting a
fruit puree like applesauce for
part of the fat works well.)
 Egg
yolks
provide fat and lecithin (a natural emulsifier),
which contribute to the fine texture of baked goods, and
egg whites
contain proteins that give structure to the final product. The little bit of
lecithin in just one yolk can make a big difference. Too many egg whites
will make a baked good dry and rubbery. |
Of course, I didn't get it
right on the first try. But, get it right I did, because I came to understand
the interplay between the ingredients and the techniques used in reduced-fat
baked goods. Add finally, after many trials, I came up with a rich, delicious,
Reduced Fat Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake with the Fudgy Chocolate Frosting
that my family loves.
MY PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: Taste Comes
First
1. I believe
that it is best to only reduce the butter in a recipe which relies heavily on
butter of fat for its characteristics---such as a tender
White Cake
Recipe, a crunchy
Sugar Cookie, a smooth and tart
Key Lime Bar
Recipe, a
Fudge Brownie Recipe, a flavorful
Pumpkin-Orange
Cornbread, or a
Dark Chocolate Cheesecake.
Here, I reduce the butter, and then add or
subtract new ingredients in my book,
The Healthy Oven Baking Book. There is
no magic formula that I can give you--each recipe has to be tested over and over
again, sometimes 100 times or more, while slowly reducing the fat and altering
the other ingredients to see what works best.
For instance, it took me months to develop a classic
Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
which that has only 4 tablespoons of butter in it !!! I also added in
1 TBSP canola oil and 1 TBSP corn syrup in the recipe to maintain a crunchy,
chewy taste, as well as alter the other ingredients !! The result was a crunchy
cookie with a chewy inside, with 70 calories, 3 grams of fat, and 9 milligrams
cholesterol.
|
Ignore
the information that says you can use applesauce as a substitute for butter
in any recipe. The best candidates for fat replacement with fruit purees are
quick-bread and those recipes that use oil, such as the
Basic Healthy
Muffin Recipe
When you replace the butter with
applesauce in a recipe that depends upon butter for its characteristics,
such as a crispy and crunchy cookie, you will get a cookie that bends and is
soft or may not resemble a cookie at all. So, in those types of recipes, I
recommend reducing the amount of butter, instead of substituting it with
applesauce, to the point where the lower-in-fat one is still similar to the
full-fat version. That takes LOTS of experimentation, sometimes adding in or
taking out ingredients from the original recipe! |
2.
Fruit purees
can be used effectively as a fat substitute in both muffin, quick-bread recipe
and other oil based recipes that rely upon oil to act as a flavor carrier,
reduce stickiness in a recipe and help to retain the flavors during the baking
process.
Many ask me for stead-fast rules to follow when substituting
oil with applesauce. There are a few, but it sometimes takes a lot of testing on
your part to get it right. And, substitutions sometimes may never work in
general they don't.
As an oil substitute, I like to use unsweetened applesauce and
other thick fruit purees. I generally take 1 cup oil and substitute it with 3/4
- 1 cup unsweetened applesauce. You can also use pumpkin, banana, mango, squash
and other purees in recipes, but I always use an extra 1/4 cup unsweetened
applesauce along with the purees, because I have found that recipe, when baked,
turns out more moist with a better texture. I always add in 1-2 TBSP canola oil,
as well to enhance the recipe's flavor.
You also must adjust the
baking powder or baking soda, and the type
of flour, as well as add in more
flavoring, plus review all of the
other ingredients.
Because applesauce is considered to be an acidic ingredient, add about 1/4
teaspoon of baking soda, to start, to the recipe to smooth its flavor.
AND, if a recipe calls for all-purpose flour and you're using applesauce as a
fat replacer, more than half of the time you'll need to use whole wheat pastry
flour instead. In the absence of fat, you'll need a more tender flour containing
less protein.
PLUS, I always increase the flavorings when baking with applesauce. When you use
it as a replacement for a large amount of fat, the flavor of the recipe becomes
bland because fat is a flavor carrier.
ALSO, mix the dry and liquid ingredients separately from one another and then
add the liquids to the dry. Mix gingerly because with less fat the end recipe is
more prone to getting tough and dense when baked.
BAKE until just done. Low-fat batters can quickly turn from done to overbaked
and dry.
I hope this helps. There are some of my low-fat recipes posted here.
The Healthy Oven Baking Book, by Sarah
Phillips, Doubleday, 1999
<<<<< HEALTHY
BAKING TIPS, Next Page >>>>>
|
| |
