Sweet lovers rejoice! You can still have all the sweetness in your cooking with some healthy sugar alternatives to replace refined sugar. Whether you're looking for a healthy teacake, a sumptuous marinade or a late-night dessert, here are five of the healthiest sugar alternatives to experiment with so you can have your cake and eat it too.
Raw honey
One of nature's most popular superfoods, raw honey is as natural as it gets when it comes to sweeteners. It's rich in vitamins and minerals including B2, B6, iron and manganese. It also doubles as a healing agent due to its anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. Depending on the plant where it comes from, honey can range from light and mildly flavoured to dark and strongly aromatic. Opt for raw honey in its unpasteurised state if you can as the pasteurisation process may reduce levels of some of its valuable nutrients and minerals.
Honey is best used sparingly in cooking because it is approximately 80 percent as sweet as sugar and high in fructose. To replace one cup of sugar, you can substitute with 3/4 cup of honey. It is recommended the overall liquid in the recipe is reduced by two to four tablespoons to ensure the recipe is well balanced. The same applies to maple syrup, another popular natural sweetener.
Honey is a perfect sweetener in cakes that require a moist, dense consistency and is best avoided in sponge cakes or cakes which require creaming (the process of beating softened butter and sugar together). It's also a beautiful accomplice for sticky salad dressings, glazes for meats, vegetables and marinades. Since it bakes faster than sugar, it's a good idea to cook it at a lower heat to prevent the dish from browning too quickly. Depending on the type of honey used, the taste can be quite overpowering, so make sure it's used in appropriate dishes.
This story is from the Issue #41, 2022 edition of Eat Well.
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This story is from the Issue #41, 2022 edition of Eat Well.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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ARE YOU TO FU enough?
Love it or hate it, everyone has an opinion about tofu. Tofu is a very popular plant-based protein for vegans and vegetarians, but now this humble bean curd is starting to shine for meat lovers too as an alternative source of protein.
Sweet TRAYBAKES
Whether you want to feed a group of people or make a batch of treats for the week, traybaking is a no-fuss way to cook up something sweet and easy that will please everyone. Your family and friends will love you when you offer them some of our: cinnamon scrolls; fruity chocolate; espresso brownies; lemon & coconut slice; or ginger cake with brown butter frosting.
ROLL UP
When you roll food, whether in Lebanese bread, a thin pancake or whatever you choose, you can create a parcel of nutrition that is perfectly suited to your own tastes and needs. Here are some roll-up recipes that will suit every occasion including: mango, snow pea, & sprout rice paper rolls; oat crepes with coconut yoghurt & mixed berries; or beef meatball & tzatziki flatbreads.
RICE BOWL Lunches
If you are working from home, or even enjoying your weekend, and lunchtime rolls around but you have no plans for lunch, then a rice bowl is an ideal saviour.
PLANT-BASED PIES
Pies are a piece of gastronomic brilliance: a filling with a case and lid you can eat is food genius. The first pies date back to Egyptian times and there is a recipe for chicken pie that was carved into stone more than 4000 years ago. For millennia, however, the pie casing was mostly used to cook the filling, but for around 500 years or more we have been eating the pie crust too.
20 FOOD CRAVING HACKS
Decipher the deeper causes of your cravings and discover tricks to curtail them.
Eggplant (Solanum melongena L)
Eggplant is a wonderful option for vegans and vegetarians, extremely nutritious and highly versatile in the kitchen.
5 PANTRY SAVIOURS
Whether you're cooking a simple breakfast or something more exotic, here are five pantry food staples you should have on hand to cook plenty of delicious meals in the comfort of your own home.
Cucumber (Cucumis sativus)
Cucumbers are delicious fresh but they also offer plenty more options in the kitchen.
Our Chefs
Meet the chefs who bring this issue's recipes to you: Lisa Guy, Georgia Harding, Lee Holmes, Sammy Jones, Raquel Neofit, Naomi Sherman and Ames Starr.
