Cooking with stevia

How to make low-calorie desserts?

It is stupid to deny to yourself that you can stay away from sweets and desserts: after all our bodies are wired to like them. What you can do, though, is to make healthier choices. For instance, you can cut sugar and fat from your cooking. Sensational Stevia Desserts author Lisa Jobs offers the following 10 tips for easier and healthier homemade desserts:

Use sea salt and unbleached flour instead of regular table salt and all-purpose bleached flour. The reason: simply the less refined nature and additional health benefits in each.

Use unsweetened dried fruit. Doing this will save a lot of extra calories and sugar. Dried fruit has plenty of natural sugar already, so there's no need to add more.

If you forget to soften your butter or simply don't have time to wait for it to soften at room temperature, remove a stick from the 'fridge, cut it in small pieces and heat it in a microwave-safe dish for 15 seconds on power level 5 or medium power.

Use stevia extract instead of sugar or artificial sweeteners for your holiday treats and greatly reduce your calories, carb intake and sugar intake. Stevia is derived from an herb and has no calories, carbs, fat, sugar or artificial sweeteners. It doesn't affect glucose levels, so diabetics can use it. Stevia is sold in health food stores, natural food grocers and online. For stevia dessert recipes, visit the web about stevia cookbooks like Sensational Stevia Desserts.

When choosing white chocolate chips or baking bars, be sure to buy a brand, like Ghirardelli, that contains only the cocoa butter as the "fat" ingredient and avoid those that only contain sugar, hard vegetable fat and have artificial chocolate flavoring. You see white chocolate really isn't chocolate at all because it has only the fat from the cocoa bean and other non-chocolate ingredients.

If you don't have time to make or simply don't know how to make homemade pie crust, be sure to use all-natural brands available at your local health food store or natural foods grocers. These healthier options include better ingredients like expeller pressed soybean oil and organic evaporated cane juice instead of undesirable ingredients like partially hydrogenated soybean oil or cottonseed oils and high fructose corn syrup commonly found in supermarket brands.

Use all-natural peanut butter. Most commercialized brands add sugar, contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (can include cottonseed, soybean and/or rapeseed), monoglycerides, diglycerides, extra salt and molasses. Natural peanut butter is simply raw or roasted peanuts and usually offers salted or unsalted versions.

Keep these points in mind to prevent your cheesecake from cracking: Don't over beat the batter, especially after the eggs have been added. Make sure cake is firm around edges and center still "jingles" a little when pan is shaken. When baking is completed, turn oven off and leave oven door open slightly with a wooden spoon. The cake will set when cooled.

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