About eight years in the past, pastry prepare dinner Brian Levy tasted such a candy mango that it opened his thoughts to the chances of creating desserts with out including further sugar.
He tapped into naturally occurring sugars in nuts and grains and every kind of fruits — contemporary, dried and frozen.
“An enormous factor of this was the problem of seeing how far I might go along with elements that weren’t close to pure sugars,” he mentioned. “Finally, I felt like I cracked some codes working with totally different sorts of elements.”
This 12 months, Levy grew to become the writer of a brand new cookbook referred to as “Good & Sweet: A new way to bake with naturally sweet ingredients.” The ebook options 100 recipes for dishes that use fruit and different elements to naturally sweeten the style.
Levy lately joined “Food Friday” on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” to debate just a few of his recipes and cooking insights, resembling what sugar substitutes he avoids.
One recipe Levy mentioned was a rosemary-lemon shortcake, which depends on freeze-dried sweetcorn. He referred to as that ingredient a revelation for him.
“It actually (has) received all the flavour and sweetness of contemporary summer time corn on the cob,” he mentioned. “All that taste will get concentrated when all of the moisture is taken out of it via the freeze-drying course of. However the entire vitamin is left in it. It simply has much more corn taste than an ingredient like cornmeal or cornflour.”
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Levy mentioned he nonetheless makes use of some standard elements, resembling butter and flour. However whereas others who keep away from further sugar depend on honey, maple syrup or different sweeteners, Levy mentioned he seeks elements with flavors that match the recipe past bringing some inherent sweetness.
He mentioned he needs to make use of meals that he is aware of what they appear like and the place they arrive from. He’s all the time searching for a “complete meals method.”
“All of the fruit that goes into these recipes carry together with all of it these vitamins, particularly fiber, nutritional vitamins and antioxidants,” he mentioned. “With all these vitamins that come together with the fruits, it does change the way in which your physique processes the sugar. So, it doesn’t hit your bloodstream as shortly as a bunch of cane sugar does.”
Levy mentioned he likes to consider each recipe as an experiment. Some experiments result in success. Others result in failure. He mentioned his failures usually concerned attempting new classes of dessert, citing meringue as one instance.
Levy declined to go public with what his subsequent experiments are. However he mentioned he’s conducting analysis for one more cookbook.
Listed below are just a few of Levy’s recipes:
