Living Without Sugar - How to Give Sugar Up and Find Healthy Ways to Still Enjoy Sweetness

So, diabetes or overweight demand you to cut down on sugar. Better even, to cut it out completely. You noticed that you are one of those who react very sensitive on artificial sweeteners, and you learned that natural sweeteners still do contain calories so there are no option for you either. But you simply love the sweet taste of food and you don't want to sacrifice it. Now, what to do?

The best thing is to combine the following two strategies:

\"Sugar Free Recipes\"

  • give up sugar and get used to less sweetness
  • use naturally sweet foods to add sweetness to your meals

Giving up sugar

Living Without Sugar - How to Give Sugar Up and Find Healthy Ways to Still Enjoy Sweetness

The taste of sugar is somehow addictive, and we often add sugar to foods merely out of habit. If you want to give up sugar, it's similar to healing an addiction.

You might find that the easiest way is to gradually get used to less sweetness. If you put three spoons of sugar in your tea, try two and a half only for a while, and once you've gotten used to that you reduce it further to two spoons and so forth until you can comfortably drink you tea unsweetened in the end

If it comes to cooking and baking, most recipes allow you to reduce the sugar amount without problems or even cut it out completely, unless the sugar is an essential part of the recipe.

Naturally sweet foods

Many fruits taste naturally sweet and some vegetables too, for example:

  • rasp-, black- and cranberries
  • peaces and nectarines
  • apples
  • melons
  • butternut
  • corn
  • red and yellow pepper

Adding these to your meals can eliminate your need for sugar. Heating vegetables, especially roasting them, also makes them taste sweeter. If you, for example, add half an apple, half a banana and a few grapes to your oat breakfast, some berries to your yogurt or apples and raisins to your muffins, they will be lovely sweet and very healthy, containing lots of nutrients sugar could never give you.

Limits of sweetening with fruits and vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are the healthiest foods, but not all of them you can eat unlimitedly when you need to watch your sugar intake. Fruits contain different amounts of sugar and some vegetables are high in carbohydrates. When you have to keep your sugar and carbohydrate intake very low, you should best limit foods like:

  • bananas
  • mango's
  • cherries
  • grapes
  • pears
  • figs
  • carrots

Also be sparing with processed foods as they are often high in carbohydrates, and with canned fruit which usually contain added sugar. Dried fruit, whilst being a great source of energy and nutrients, contain more calories than the same amount of fresh fruit, therefore you should use small amounts only. The best and safest thing is to generally prefer fresh fruit and vegetables.

The bottom line

Giving up sugar and using healthy naturally sweet foods to satisfy your longing for sweetness is certainly the best way of living without sugar. You then don't have to worry about the calories in natural sweeteners or the possible side-effects of artificial sweeteners. It will be a much cheaper way, too. Remember that your chances of success are most likely higher when you make these changes gradually and take time to get used to your new way of eating.

Living Without Sugar - How to Give Sugar Up and Find Healthy Ways to Still Enjoy Sweetness

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Cake Recipes From Scratch - The Four Most Popular Recipes

Cake is a baked, rich dessert including flour, sugar, eggs and oil. It originated from Europe and now can be found in every corner of the world. It is crucial in every important event of a person like baby shower, graduation party, birthday party, etc. Nowadays, there are huge amount of different sorts of cakes. However, here are the four most popular cake recipes from the scratch.

Ranked at the top of the most preferred cake recipes from scratch is fruit cakes. Fruit is undoubtedly good for our health thanks for its vitamins, fibers and minerals. Fruit cake is easy to make, not time consuming and of course yummy. Strawberry, banana, pineapple, carrot are commonly chosen to make this kind of cakes.

\"Sugar Free Recipes\"

Then comes Funky cakes. Wanna surprise your loved child on his sixth birthday by a cake with a cartoon character? Wanna give a big heart shaped cake to your half on your tenth anniversary? Funky cakes do help. In fact, the ideas and recipes for this sort of cake is countless.

Cake Recipes From Scratch - The Four Most Popular Recipes

Among the most selected cake recipes from scratch, sugar free recipes are the most hunted. For those who has diabetes or keen to reduce their sugar intake for other reasons, this sort of recipes will help them create a delicious, healthy and sugar free cake.

Finally, what could be better than a chocolate cake for dessert? Chocolate is considered as the king of cake. It is traditional yet delicious and elegant. With no shadow of doubt, it attracts millions of people all over the world by its instinct odor, delicious taste and shining brown.

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Cake Recipes From Scratch - The Four Most Popular Recipes

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How to Make Sugar Free Cake Mix Taste Better

Sugar free cake mix is a must-have in your pantry if you or someone else in your family needs diabetic desserts or just wants to cut down on your carbs or sugar in general. However, the last think you want is for your sugar free cake mix to turn out tasting like a diet dessert. Here are some tips that can help your sugar free desserts and cakes taste more like the real thing.

Using applesauce as a partial substitute for oil when you're making a sugar free cake mix can help cut down on both the sugar and the fat in the recipe, making it better for both diabetics and dieters. Applesauce improves the texture but don't overdo it-substitute about half of the oil with applesauce and you'll get a good result.

\"Sugar Free Desserts\"

Another way to improve sugar free cake mix is to use a tasty dessert mix with no sugar added to create layers in the cake. A plain sugar-free cake can taste too, well, plain, but if you put a creamy and flavorful dessert mix in between like Lemon Dessert Mix it will add flavor interest. In addition, you can make sugar free icing out of a dessert mix like this by mixing preparing it according to the package directions and then mixing it with cool whip. You can also add the dessert mix right into the mix (also add one more egg than the cake mix package requires) in order to make a rich and moist pudding cake.

How to Make Sugar Free Cake Mix Taste Better

Another good fix for sugar free cake mix is to add canned fruit to the mix, like crushed pineapple or peaches. Pick fruit that's package in water, not in syrup, or you'll get more added sugar (and calories) than you bargained for, but the fruit can add a little bit of natural sweetness and moistness to what could otherwise be a bland, dry cake.

Finally, you can use fruit juice in place of water or milk with sugar free cake mix. Thawing orange concentrate is a good way to add orange flavor, which goes well with both vanilla and chocolate cakes, or apple juice can be used with angel food cake mix to add a delicate apple flavor. These are just some of the many ways you can improve sugar free cake mix so it doesn't taste like you're being deprived.

How to Make Sugar Free Cake Mix Taste Better

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Diabetes Drink - Sugar Free Drink Solutions

Don't you just hate it when you ask for a sugar free drink in a pub or restaurant and all they've got to offer is diet cola or water?

Or you're offered a pure fruit juice - "Well, that's sugar free - isn't it?" No it isn't - the naturally occurring sugar is rather high, but here are a few drinks you might like to try...

\"Sugar Free Recipes\"

I got so fed up of the standard cola offer, I decided to experiment and you might like to try these alternatives to 'just cola'.

Diabetes Drink - Sugar Free Drink Solutions

1) Diet cola and diet tonic water in the same glass. It gives a slightly sharper taste and makes a very long, refreshing drink on a hot day.

2) Split a pure fruit Juice (e.g. orange) with a friend and add sparkling water to your half. Or try mixing it with diet tonic water.

If you want to make a refreshing drink at home, try this pineapple slushy:

Take 1 can sugar-free ginger ale, add 1/4 cup of unsweetened pineapple juice and ice cubes. Place in a blender and blend until the ice-cubes are crushed and you get a slushy mixture.

Why not experiment with other unsweetened fruit juices? And if you want a little bit of kick, you could add rum extract to give more flavor.

If you have any ideas for sugar-free drink recipes I'd love to hear about them.

Diabetes Drink - Sugar Free Drink Solutions

© 2006 Carol Ann

Carol Ann created http://www.your-diabetes.com to present information on diabetes from a diabetic's viewpoint

Find out more about diabetes; how to recognise it; live with it; important linked health issues. Plus, read inspiring stories from other diabetics and share your experience.

Discover How to Take Control of Your Diabetes with my complimentary 86-page guide, including a 53-page list of carbohydrate values of different foods. Get your copy now at http://www.your-diabetes.com

Easy Sugar Free Desserts For Everyone!

Are you looking for some easy desserts and sugar free cookie recipes for your special sugar free diet friends? Are you searching for some new sugar free cookie and dessert recipes for this coming Christmas party? How about creating some new and delicious sugar free recipes for everyone?

Mary is busy searching for sugar free desserts for her coming Christmas party. She is going to invite a numbers of sugar free diet friends .

\"Sugar Free Dessert Recipes\"

According to her, her friends were very pleased to be included in her Christmas party list. Because most of the host cannot provide sugar free food for them, therefore they will not be invited.

Easy Sugar Free Desserts For Everyone!

She found some amazing sugar free recipes here...

Special Pudding

Ingredients
1000 ml milk
280g flour
6 eggs
Action
a. Mix the flour and milk together, and beat well.
b. Whip eggs to a froth and add the eggs to the milk mixture.
c. Boil it for 2 hours, and serve hot with rich cream.

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Nutmeg and Muskmelons

Ingredients
Nutmegs
Ripe muskmelons
Ice lump
Pepper and salt
Action
a. Wash nutmegs and melons.
b. Whip dry and cut into two.
c. Shake out the seeds lightly and put a lump of ice in each half.
d. Eat with pepper and salt.

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Milk Rice

Ingredients
750 ml hot milk
100g rice
1/2 teaspoon salt
Raisins (seeded)
Action
a. Wash and drain the rice.
b. Soak the rice with water for 20 minutes.
c. Pour away the water, add the rice and salt into the milk and boil.
d. When done, press the rice into small cups and serve with cream and raisins.

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Cream Puff Dough

Ingredients
500 ml water
4 level tablespoons butter
500g flour (sifted)
4 eggs
Action
a. In a saucepan, combine the water and butter and mix thoroughly.
b. When the water is boiling and butter thoroughly melted, turn instantly the flour and stir rapidly over the heat. In a moment you will have a perfectly smooth and soft dough free from sticky-ness.
c. Remove from heat and stand it aside till partly cold.
d. Break the egg into a cup, then turn it into the batter.
e. Beat for a moment, then add another and another.
f. Beat thoroughly and add the fourth good egg from the cup.
g. Beat he batter for 5 minutes and stand it aside for 1-1.5 hours.
h. Drop by tablespoonfuls into greased shallow pans and bake in a 170°C oven for 35-40 minutes.
i. When the puffs are done, they will be hollow and light.
Note:
a. The batter must be dropped far enough apart to leave rooms for swelling.
b. You may fill the puff shell with a little cold mashed fresh banana pulp, chopped nuts and raisins.

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Tea Biscuits

Ingredients
240g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter (melted
Water
Action
a. Mix the dry ingredients and rub in butter with the tips of your fingers.
b. Add water to make a dough just stiff enough to roll out.
b. Roll 1 cm thick and cut with a round cutter and bake in a greased pan in a preheated 200°C oven for about 10 minutes.

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Drop Biscuits

Ingredients
240g flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter (melted)
Milk
Action
a. Mix he dry ingredients and rub in the butter.
b. Add milk to make a mixture that may be dropped from a spoon without spreading.
c. Drop on a buttered pan 1 cm apart and bake in a preheated 200°C oven for 8 to 10 minutes.

------------------

Banana Raisins Pie

Ingredients
100g seeded raisins (chopped)
250 ml water
2 tablespoons sifted cracker crumbs
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon butter
1 large banana (in thin slices)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 lemon rind (grated)
1 egg (well beaten)
2 tablespoons seeded raisins (cut in pieces)
Action
a. Cook 100g chopped raisins in water until plump.
b. Remove from fire. Add crumbs and mix with flour and butter.
c. Let it stand and covered until cold.
d. Add cinnamon, lemon juice, lemon rind, honey and the lemon extract to the slices of banana.
e. Combine mixture, add egg and pieces of raisins.
f. Bake between two crust.

Now she has enough easy desserts and sugar free recipes for her coming Christmas party!

Easy Sugar Free Desserts For Everyone!

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Extraordinary recipes, cooking tips, and a free e-book will be given to all my newsletter subscribers. I shall show you how to create wonderful recipes for all occasions, including weddings, birthdays, parties, and many more. Please feel free to explore my work at http://www.allcookmakeeasy.com

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