I'm taking a wild guess that the majority of people reading this blog made some kind of resolution that involves being healthier. Whether it be starting a new diet, working out regularly, or maybe to stop eating out so often. No matter what your resolutions are, here are some tips to help you make healthier choices (and hopefully it will last longer than just this year...)
*Healthy Fact:
You eat 50% more calories, fat, sodium, and sugar when you eat out rather than making your own food.
I found these healthy tips from The Diva Dish and use them everyday. I am also including some tips of my own :)
Changing Baking Recipes from Naughty to Nice:
1. Find your recipe:
Ok, so this may be harder than you think. If you have a recipe that calls for 3 sticks of butter and 2 cups of sugar your going to have a hard time mimicking that recipe. When searching for recipes, find ones that already don’t contain that much sugar, butter, and oil, that way you don’t have to change the recipe completely.
2.Change the grains:
I never use white flour. I almost always use whole wheat pastry flour when baking, but there are so many other flours that you can use. There is spelt, oat, amaranth, coconut, chickpea, rice, etc..All with great nutritional benefits. Different flours have different textures, for example, Whole Wheat Pastry is a little more heartier, so if your want a light and fluffy baked good, switch to something like spelt flour. Test out different flours, and get your preference.
I also use more than one flour when baking. For example with this recipe, I replaced 1/2 cup of Whole Wheat Pastry with 1/2 C. coconut flour.
3. Change your sugars.
Most of the time, I can get away with cutting the sugar in half. So if a recipe calls for a cup, I can usually just add 1/2 C. This does change the batter consistency to more wet, since I decreased the dry, so start with only decreasing by 1/3 or 1/4 of the sugar and go from there.
Also, I like to add pureed fruits into baked goods. This is PERFECT for banana bread, because it already has the fruit. Usually Banana Bread calls for 3-4 bananas, and what I like to do, is use only half of the bananas, and replace the other half with a pureed veggie of choice, like sweet potato or pumpkin. Bananas and Sweet Potatoes and Pumpkin are already sweet in taste, which is perfect when your trying to cut back the sugar.
It’s also nice if you puree bananas with some dates, like I did in THIS recipe, to add some natural sweeteners to your bread, and you won’t be missing the sugar that you took away earlier.
4. Cut The (Bad) Fat
Mostof the time, just like sugar, you can get away with cutting the fat in half, and replacing the other half with something like applesauce. Although, like I said in step one, look for a recipe that doesn’t call for 3 sticks of butter. That is going to be hard to fix. If something calls for 1/2 C. of butter, try 1/4 C. of a healthier choice of oil, and 1/4 C. Apple sauce.
5. Throw It In.
Additional items that your can throw into baked goods are an awesome way to add wholesome goodness. Starting with Nuts. Nuts are an excellent source of protein, healthy fats, and extra nutrients. Chop up some nuts and throw them in. Seeds are also a great addition, like chai seeds and ground flax seeds.
Here are some alternatives that I use to make my recipes more healthy, and then I'm going to include a recipe that I "healthified" to show how it works.
The Replacements:
Flaxseed/Chia seed-->Eggs: Truthfully, I'm not a vegan. I'm not even a vegetarian. I'm an eat-whatever-I-feel-like-arian. So I usually don't replace eggs in recipes because I'm against eggs, I have usually forgotten to buy eggs and I'm too lazy to drive to the store so I end up using flaxseed or chia seed meal to replace the eggs. However, chia seeds and flaxseeds are full of health benefits that should not be overlooked. Flaxseeds have 800 times more cancer-fighting lignans (plant compounds) than any other food. They also have omega-3 fatty acids and a whopping 4 grams of fiber in just 2 tablespoons.
Chia seeds overall have the same benefits of flaxseed except for three things: they have more omega-3 fatty acids, they have so many antioxidants that it takes them longer to go rancid, and in order to get the full nutritional content they don't need to be ground like flaxseed!
Here's what you do:
grind the flaxseed or chia seed (for egg replacement the chia needs to be ground) until it is a fine meal. Place in
one tablespoon of meal with
three tablespoons of water in a bowl and let it sit for 5-10 minutes. Then use in any recipe that calls for eggs. However, remember that this may not work for all recipes. For example, crepes are mostly eggs and would not turn out as well if the eggs were replaced. But, for most recipes this will work just fine.
Coconut oil and/or applesauce--> Butter/margarine
I'm not going to on a rant about margarine. All I'm going to say is that I don't believe margarine has any health benefits. There, that's all.
Sometimes I will use butter in recipes, but most of the time I use coconut oil. There is a lot of debate about coconut oil nowadays. I have read many articles for and against it. I have used it for a while and I love it
. I am going to write a post specifically dedicated to coconut oil and the myriad of benefits, but for now I'm just going to say that I actually prefer it to butter for it's flavor and for the texture it creates in foods. If you want to cut the calories in a recipe by decreasing the amount of fat, simply add applesauce. But remember you must also cut the sugar because applesauce has a high sugar content.
Rice Milk/Almond Milk/Coconut Milk--> Dairy
I have nothing against dairy, I really don't. My siblings and I are lactose intolerant in varying degrees. When using milk in baking I usually choose almond or coconut milk because they naturally have more lipids than rice milk does. I avoid soy milk, not only because it doesn't taste very good, but because I just try to avoid soy. Anyway, I promise you that non-dairy milks are not the devil. They perform just as well, and they are easier to get in an organic, more natural state than cows milk. I even made caramels out of coconut milk and coconut oil and they turned out great. If you want to use non-dairy milk in a recipe that calls for buttermilk, just add 1 teaspoon of vinegar for every 1 cup of milk. Mix the vinegar and milk together and voile! You have buttermilk (well, sort of).
Here is a recipe I found on allrecipes.com and changed to be healthy. Aaron really enjoyed the healthy version. He literally ate the whole pan in one evening.
Applesauce Bars (original)
- 1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 cup applesauce
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.
- In a medium bowl, mix together the butter, brown sugar and egg until smooth. Stir in applesauce. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and pumpkin pie spice; stir into the applesauce mixture until well blended. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
- Bake for 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Cool in the pan over a wire rack.
Here is my adjusted recipe!
Applesauce Bars
Aaron rating: ********** (8 out of 10)
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 tbsp ground chia + 3 tbsp water
- 1 cup applesauce
- 1/2 cup WW flour + 1/2 cup all-purpose
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
Topping
- 1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts
- 1 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar
- 3/4 tsp cinnamon
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 8x8 inch baking pan.
- In a medium bowl, mix together the butter, brown sugar and egg until smooth. Stir in applesauce. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and pumpkin pie spice; stir into the applesauce mixture until well blended. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
- In small bowl, combine walnuts, sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle over batter and lightly press to adhere topping to batter.
- Bake for 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Cool in the pan over a wire rack.
Happy cooking!
