Enjoying A Healthy Diet - 3 Easy Ways To Create A Delicious Healthy Dessert
For most of us, desserts are THE symbol of calorie bombs – meals high to extremely high in sugar and fat. But have you ever given the dream of a healthy dessert a serious thought? A dessert that you don’t need to feel bad about when eating it? Sure, even a high calorie dessert is perfectly okay if you just have it every now and then. But wouldn’t it be great if you could create desserts that are so healthy that you could enjoy them almost whenever you feel like?
In fact, there are quite some types of desserts that are already fairly healthy, for example everything that contains lots of fruit, little fat (like cream or mascarpone) and sugar. And there are many ways to make the not so healthy ones healthier.
For the not yet healthy recipes that you don’t want to miss, try the following tips!
- Add some fruit
- Reduce fat
- Reduce sugar
Fruit is one of the healthiest food groups we have. Experts advise us to eat at least five portions of fruit or vegetables every day. But that does not mean that you need to eat five plain and simple fruits every day. You can use them creatively.
Option 1: Fruit salad
For example, make a fruit salad. Choose fruits of different colors to get a nice colorful mix. Then add a bit of pure fruit juice (the non-sweetened, 100% one) as a dressing, and maybe a few raisins. Arrange the salad in a pretty dessert plate and sprinkle some chopped nuts or almond flakes over it. This doesn’t take you long to prepare and it’s one of the healthiest desserts possible. The variety of fruit gives you fiber and many important vitamins. Because many fruits are sweet, you don’t need to add sugar, meaning all calories you eat are fructose, which is still a healthier sugar than table sugar. And because of the fiber, the fruit fills you quicker than any sweets. It’s not so easy to overeat on fruit.
Option 2: Pudding with fruit
Serve fruit with a homemade vanilla or chocolate cream or sauce. If you use low-fat or fat-free milk and a minimum of sugar (or no sugar at all), then you get all the health benefits of milk (without the calories in the fat) in addition to the ones of the fruit. Did you know that milk contains almost all nutrients in perfect balance?
Option 3: Yoghurt with fruit
Make your own fruit yoghurt. It tastes much nicer than the fruit yoghurts you buy (because you are actually using fruit) and is much healthier. In Germany, we have a wide variety of nice fruit yoghurts, but here in South Africa, I don’t like to buy fruit yoghurt because they are all sweetened and full of preservatives. It’s much better to buy plain yoghurt and mix it with fresh fruit. If you don’t like the pieces in there, put everything in an electric blender until smooth. Yoghurt mixed with home made jam also makes a nice dessert. You can add treats like dried fruit, chopped nuts or grated chocolate to make it even tastier (dark chocolate doesn’t contain so many calories, so this should be your preferred choice).
Option 4: Ice cream with fruit of fruit puree
We all love ice cream. Serve a scoop or two together with a handful of grapes or berries, or make a fruit puree to pour over it. Fruit purees are very easy to make and only take you a couple of minutes to prepare. You can even stew fruit and thicken the liquid with a bit of corn flour and serve the hot fruit with your ice cream. Vanilla ice cream for example goes very nice with hot cherries or raspberry puree. If you stew fruit, adding some spices like vanilla pod or cinnamon can give it a very irresistible taste.
Tip #2: Reduce fat
Many desserts unfortunately contain quite a bit of fat, using cream or high fat cheese types like mascarpone. Never mind! You can solve that problem very easily.
Option 1: Use low-fat or fat-free dairy products
As I mentioned above, use low-fat or fat free milk instead of full cream milk for your chocolate or vanilla sauce or cream. Replace the high-fat cheese in your cheese cake, trifle or brownies with a smooth low-fat cottage cheese or ricotta. It will still taste great.
Buy low-fat yoghurt instead of the full cream version. It’s also nice, and especially if you top it up with fruit or nuts, you won’t really miss the extra fat.
A great basis for smoothies and fruit shakes is buttermilk which is very low in fat compared to other products (only 1%). You can even use it for baking cakes or muffins.
Option 2: Choose healthier fats
Coconut milk is a great alternative for cream in many recipes. It contains significantly less fat, especially if you buy a low-fat version (12-14% fat, whilst cream has 30%). Check the label, as the fat content of different products can vary greatly.
In many baking recipes you can use margarine instead of butter. It still does contain quite a bit of fat, but it’s made of vegetable fats which are healthier than animal fats and don’t have such a negative impact on your cholesterol level. Check on the label if the margarine is suitable for baking, as not every product is.
Tip #3: Reduce sugar
Our taste buds have gotten very used to us adding a lot of sugar to almost everything that is sweet. We often add sugar to things that are already sweet, like fruit salad. But just as we got used to extreme sweetness, we can also get used to eating less sugar. And as time goes by, you will notice how deliciously sweet some foods actually are just the way nature produced them.
Option 1: Use less added sugar
As long as the sugar is not an essential part of the recipe, you can simply reduce the amount. In cakes, muffins, creams, sauces and puddings this is generally not a problem.
Option 2: Use alternatives with lower sugar content
A good alternative is using natural sweeteners like fructose, honey or maple syrup. They are not very nutritious but they some of them still contain a few more nutrients than table sugar which is nothing but “empty calories”.
Option 3: Use naturally sweet foods
The best way to reduce sugar is certainly adding dried fruit like raisins or apricots, or even fresh fruit, to your dessert. Many fruits are naturally sweet and negate the need to add extra sugar. Note that dried fruit has much higher sugar content then the same amount of fresh fruit, so you will need less. If you want a lot of fruit and sweetness, it’s a good idea to combine a larger portion of fresh fruit with a smaller portion of dried fruit.
Conclusion
It’s really easy to create healthy desserts! The possibilities are endless. Eating healthy does not mean that you must sacrifice the delight of a tempting dessert. Not at all. If you have a portion of mascarpone trifle or a piece of cheese cake every now and then for a special occasion, that most definitely won’t harm your health. So there is no need to stress too much about it unless you must closely watch your calorie intake because you got a weight problem, are diabetic or suffer from high cholesterol. But if you can make your dessert healthy, why should you not?
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Little Lady Cakes provides a list of substitutes that can help you to make your favorite cake recipes healthier and lower in calories.
