Baking a sweet surprise

It turns out that mixing, rolling and kneading may yield more than the outcome of delicious baked goods. Baking has been found to relieve stress, and many benefits lie in the actual process itself as it may take us out of our busy minds to focus on the task at hand. However, it can be difficult when a desire to bake comes up against a need to reduce one’s sugar consumption. When browsing the hoopla digital ebook collection I was happy to rediscover the book Baking with Less Sugar: Recipes for Desserts Using Natural Sweeteners and Little-to-No White Sugar, written by Joanne Chang, award-winning chef, restaurateur and owner of the Flour Bakery + Cafes in Boston.

In the book’s introduction, Chang writes about the challenge she made to herself to create recipes that minimize sugar while still resulting in a baked good that passes her personal “can’t stop eating it” test.

Sporting a cover image of a beautifully frosted cake studded with walnuts and accompanied by delectable looking photographs, this book features recipes with low amounts of refined white sugar as well as those where honey, maple syrup, and molasses are used.

This book is a pleasure to peruse and read, and I’m looking forward to trying several recipes in the coming weeks. First in line is a recipe for Oatmeal-Raisin-Cranberry cookies that contains only 6 Tbsp of added sugar in the entire batch.

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Cheryl Lindemann is a collection development specialist at Capital Area District Libraries, and a co-host of the Reader’s Roundtable Podcast.