Super Easy Sugar Free Not-Exactly-ANZAC biscuits

Still in sugar free mode - and after taking a day off for my husband's birthday to eat sugary dessert and then getting sick and feeling rubbish for days after, I'm thinking this sugar free thing is going to be permanent. Seriously, refined sugar is basically poison in disguise... but that's a rant for another post!

So I was craving biscuits to go with my cup of tea tonight, and I knew I had a lot of oats in the cupboard so I thought of ANZAC biscuits. Could I do them sugar free?

(Oh, and 'biscuit' is Australian for 'cookie' by the way.)

The result is not strictly an ANZAC. It has honey instead of golden syrup, added sultanas and I used an egg because I wasn't sure if it would bind together without one.

But they turned out well - not very sweet, but nice and biscuity. Satisfied my craving, anyway.

Super Easy Sugar Free Not-Exactly-ANZAC biscuits:

1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup rolled oats
150g melted butter
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup sultanas
1/2 tsp bicarb
1 egg

Preheat oven to about 180 degrees celsius.

Chuck it all in and mix. Too wet? Add a bit more flour. Too dry? You can add a bit of milk, but this will make them crisper. Otherwise a bit more honey or melted butter.

Form in golf ball size balls and place on a lined tray. Flatten the balls down a bit with your fingers or a fork. They don't spread very much.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.


Verdict: Not very sweet - could try more honey if this a problem for you - but will satisfy a biscuit craving, especially if you dip it in your tea!


Happy sugar free baking.

Yummy Sugar Free Sultana Cake

This is a go-to recipe that my husband whips up often. It's simple, quick and yummy. But normally it contains a cup of sugar and golden syrup, so it's not so healthy, and a definite no-no during our 100 days sugar free.

So we tried it out without any sugar to see if we could still make it work. It's such a quick cake to whip up if you're having guests over, it's versatile and tastes great so a sugar free, healthier version is just what we need.

BASE Ingredients:

2 cups SR flour
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
roughly 1 cup of milk - we never measure this, just add it gradually until the consistency is 'cake like'...

Fruit and flavour: (These ingredients are variable - choose your own combinations).

1 cup sultanas
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/4 cup slivered almonds

Method:

Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius.

Basically just chuck it all in and mix, adding the milk gradually like I said until it is a thick cake batter consistency. So easy. This cake can take literally 5 minutes to mix up.

Pour into a loaf tin.

Bake it for about 50 minutes, until it's golden on the outside and cooked in the middle.

We used to have problems with it being too dark on the outside and still gluggy in the middle, but we realised we had the oven up too high. If you still have problems, put some aluminium foil/tin foil over it for the last 20 minutes or so, to stop it getting too brown while the middle cooks.

Variations:

You can add any combinations dried fruit and nuts you like - just make it up to about 1-2 cups worth of fruit and nuts. Keep in mind sultanas and apricots are good for adding sweetness to this sugarless cake.
E.g.

• Sultanas, currants, apricot, slivered almonds and shredded coconut
• Or Sultanas, dried figs, pistachios and white chocolate chips
• Or Sultanas, dried cranberries, dried apricots, pistachios and dark chocolate chips

Other additions - this is a super versatile cake, so experiment...

E.g.

• Substitute half of the white flour for wholemeal
• Add in a few tablespoons of oats or oatmeal
• Add a few tablespoons of LSA for an omega 3 and protein boost
• Mix through 1 mashed banana plus half a tsp of bicarb soda

Serving suggestion: Best served warm with margarine or butter. Yum!

The texture of this is definitely a bit different to the sugar version, but if you hadn't tried the other version you wouldn't even know. It still tastes sweet and delicious.

Happy sugarless baking.

PS

If you want to know the 'sugared' version, it's basically the same, just instead of the honey, add 2 TBS of golden syrup and 1 cup of raw sugar, and reduce it to 1 egg.

Another sugar free cupcake experiment

Another recipe from The Healthy Chef - this time for Lemon Yoghurt Cupcakes. This one looked yummy and I really wanted to try it, but again, since it called for so much almond meal I was wondering how I could substitute it. This recipe called for 3 cups which would have cost me $25 for almond meal alone!!

This is the picture from the Healthy Chef website,  not my cupcakes.
As you will see below, mine didn't turn out quite so pretty or tasty looking...

Since my last experiment - the chocolate cupcakes - worked with LSA instead of almond meal I thought I'd try that again. But as soon as I started, I realised this was going to be different - maybe you've already worked out how.

Because of the linseed/flaxseed, the result is obviously going to be funny brown colour, not the lightness of pure almond meal.

My substitutions:

- LSA instead of almond meal

- apple puree instead of oil

Cue the yucky look mixture... and when I tasted the batter I realised despite the sweetness of the honey and the tang of the lemon and yoghurt in this, it wasn't going to be enough to mask the stronger flavour and slight bitterness of the LSA.

The downsides?

Made with LSA these cupcakes taste a little bitter and strange. Edible thanks to the large quantity of honey and the lemony flavour, but not like I was hoping them to be.

Quite a bit of honey - if you're going sugar free, honey is an acceptable occasional food, but it's still sugar when you have large quantities.

The upsides?

If there are any, it's that they are nutritious.

However, if made with almond meal, I think these would be amazing!

The Bottom Line?
Made with LSA? Fail.

Made with almond meal - I think they'd be a winner. Soft, moist and sweet.

I think I need to try and source some cheap almonds and grind them myself to try this recipe again.


Serving Suggestion: LSA version - keep them to yourself. Probably no-one else will want to eat them.

Almond version - I imagine these would be great cold with a dollop of yoghurt. Yum.



Happy baking and here's hoping your experiments are more successful than this one!

Road testing healthy chocolate cupcake recipe

I was so excited to come across all the recipes on The Healthy Chef and couldn't wait to try some out. But when I actually went shopping for the ingredients, I realised how expensive this venture could be. Most of the cakes call for almond meal, which in the required quantity was far too much money. The chocolate cupcakes Im testing below would have cost about $12 just for the almond meal alone. The website names coconut flour as an alternative to almond meal for those with nut allergies, but I'm not sure you can even get that in my little town, and I can't imagine it being much cheaper.

So I decided to experiment with some substitutions of my own. I already had LSA at home, which is ground linseed (flaxseed), almond meal and sunflower seeds. Since that already contains almond meal, and I had read about using flaxseed, I thought I'd give it a go.

There were two recipes I wanted to try - a chocolate cupcake and a lemon cupcake - but I thought I'd go with the chocolate first as it looked harder to stuff up.

The recipe for these chocolate cupcakes is here on The Healthy Chef.

My changes:
- I substituted equal measure of LSA for the almond meal.
- I also added an extra tablespoon of honey, after I tasted the mixture and thought it was a bit too lacking in sweetness.
- I was using vanilla essence, not extract or paste, so I added a fair bit of that since essence is not as strong.
- I used unsweetened almond milk.
- I used regular Cadbury cocoa powder.
- I used olive oil - basically because that's what I had.


The mix looked chocolatey... But if you gave a spoonful of this to a child they'd probably make a face...

The mix was a funny, airy, puffy consistency, not smooth like if you were making regular chocolate cupcakes. I think it's because of the flaxseed soaking up moisture and going gluggy. Because of that I wouldn't leave the mixture sitting too long before baking. But even with having to go settle a crying baby twice during this process it was fine, so it's not a big deal.

They took exactly 25 minutes as the recipe said. They definitely smelled like chocolate in the oven.


The downsides?
If you tell someone you're giving them a chocolate cupcake and give them this without warning, they'll probably throw it at you yelling 'liar!'

Ok, maybe not that extreme, but these are definitely not sweet. It's like the difference between really dark chocolate and milk chocolate. If you're used to dark chocolate, or prepare yourself for it, you should like these.

If your new in your sugar free healthy eating journey, then you may struggle to acclimatise your taste buds at first. I would recommend eating them with some puréed or smashed up berries on top to give some sweetness. I think they'd be really yummy like that.

The Upsides?
They are quick and easy.

These are actually healthy - the protein and good fats from the nuts and linseed, and the absence of refined flours and sugars mean that the nutritional values justify the calories. And if you use good quality dark cocoa or raw cacao then you are getting a whack of antioxidants as well.

So if you can retrain your taste buds, then this is a chocolatey fix you can enjoy and know you're not harming your health - in fact our doing yourself some good. (As long as your not eating the whole lot at once obviously.) They are also more substantial - you feel like you've eaten something.

And these are also gluten and lactose free.

Bottom line: Success!!
So you can use LSA in place of almond meal for these cupcakes. They cooked well and have a nice moist consistency.

They aren't super sweet, but you can't expect a healthy sugar free cupcake to be just like a sugar, white flour version. And the point is to retrain your taste buds anyway.

Serving suggestion: Eat warm with smashed berries over the top.


If you try these or any other recipes, please share!
Happy healthy baking.

Zucchini & ricotta pita bread pizza

With peas... Weird you say? Don't knock it till you try it!

(Although I did grow up with things like peas, corn and carrot on my pita bread pizzas so maybe my taste buds have grown accustomed.)

But you can put whatever veges and healthy toppings you like on this healthy, low calorie homemade pizza.

The basics of this pizza are a small wholemeal pita, tomato paste and ricotta cheese. Ricotta has significantly fewer calories than many other cheeses.

Then what topping you add is up to you. The trick is to load it up with tasty veges and flavours and go easy on the calorie rich, fatty things like meats and mozzarella cheese.

My pizza was:

- 1 pita pocket

- spread with approx:
1 Tbsp tomato paste
2-3 Tbsp tinned diced tomato
1 Tbsp ricotta cheese (low fat even better.)
1 tsp of Dijon mustard for a bit of bite

- add:
3 thin slices of pepperoni, quartered and spread evenly
4-6 thinish slices of zucchini
1 tbsp frozen peas

- sprinkle with:
Pinch of paprika
A tiny bit of grated cheddar, mozzarella or parmesan if you can't bare to skip it completely.


Works out to about 300-350 calories per pizza and can be low fat depending on your ingredients. Load it up with even more veges for an extra filling low cal meal.