Real sweet : more than 80 crave-worthy treats made with natural sugars PDF
Preview Real sweet : more than 80 crave-worthy treats made with natural sugars
Dedication For Scott, Caroline, and Andrew, the sweetest things in my life DEDICATION INTRODUCTION: A WORD FROM THE REAL SWEET TOOTH SWEET SWAPS IN THE REAL SWEET PANTRY OTHER INGREDIENTS REAL SWEET TOOLBOX 1. All-Day Snacks and Lunch Box Treats Coconut Sugar: The Femme Fatale 2. Bake Sales and Edible Gifts Muscovado: The Bad Boy 3. Picnics and Potlucks Turbinado: The Hero 4. Candies and Confections Evaporated Cane Juice: The Sidekick 5. Dinner Party Fancies Honey: The Sweet Sophisticate 6. Spoonable Sweets Agave Nectar: The Girl Next Door 7. Frostings, Fillings, and Accoutrements Maple: The Gentle Giant ACKNOWLEDGMENTS UNIVERSAL CONVERSION CHART SOURCES THE SWEET SORTER: RECIPE INDEX BY SUGAR INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR ALSO BY SHAUNA SEVER CREDITS COPYRIGHT ABOUT THE PUBLISHER INTRODUCTION A Word from the Real Sweet Tooth I HAVE A LEGENDARY SWEET TOOTH. In the way that a college kid might brag of his drinking prowess, I can sugar-imbibe you under the table. Brownies for breakfast, lollipops for lunch. Don’t even play; I’ll take you down. But as the years go on, and my body chemistry and palate change, and we add more tiny people to our household who become demonically self-propelled in the presence of all things sugary, I’ve started rethinking our sweet treats here and there. Not a complete overhaul or elimination—let’s not get crazy!—but definitely a shift, leaning into a diet heavily influenced by buzzwords like “balance” and “moderation.” Snore, right? Wrong! I’m in it to win it with a real- world approach to desserts and sweet treats these days—tons of flavor, high pleasure factor, just a bit of a rethink in terms of ingredients. And it’s been blowing my mind, friends. Here’s the thing: while much of my work to this point has been fueled by a steady stream of granulated white sugar (“Hi, my name is Shauna and I wrote an entire book on homemade marshmallows”), behind the scenes I’ve spent countless hours playing around with more natural, unrefined, and less refined sugars. What started as an experiment to introduce a few more nutrients into the treats I keep around the house for my husband and our two little munchkins (and, ahem, myself) quickly became a bit of an obsession. Forget nutrients, man! I became positively starry-eyed at the potential of alternative sugars to add layers of crave-worthy flavor and texture to sweets. * I swapped in dark muscovado sugar and discovered the Bad Boy of natural sugars. Basically dark brown sugar on steroids—rich, smoky, and heady with molasses—it turns out the kind of blondie that bar cookie dreams are made of. * Turbinado sugar plays the Hero in the natural-sugars pantry; using it instead of white granulated sugar not only gives a flavor boost but also adds a subtle crunch and gorgeous sparkle to streusel toppings, cookies, and quick breads of all sorts. * Coconut sugar acts as the exotic Femme Fatale in the story of unrefined sugars, accomplishing many of the same results as white sugar in candies while amplifying caramelized flavor with its toasty, almost musky quality (and being a nutrient-rich, low-glycemic sweetener to boot). * Even white sugar bombs like marshmallows can go au naturel with maple syrup and maple sugar (the Gentle Giants of the natural- sugars kitchen, with their combination of mild sweetness and powerhouse flavor), flipping the script on every campfire s’more experience for the rest of your days. And that’s just the beginning. After years of relying on white sugar’s ability to add sweetness to recipes without interfering with other flavors, I made an exciting discovery: the job of flavor-packed natural sugars isn’t just to sweeten, it’s to totally interfere! Equal parts sweetening power and seasoning! Brainstorm! Soon I was creating an arsenal of recipes—everything from lower-sugar, good-for-you treats that are perfect for lunch boxes and any day of the week, to twists on bake-sale classics that swap out the usual refined suspects for better sugars, to divinely indulgent desserts that outshine the rest of the menu at the fanciest dinner party—but always with a fun, modern (read: not hippie) vibe. These are real sweets with seriously real ingredients, no doubt about it. Since we’ll be spending a lot of time together, let’s just get one thing clear from the outset: sugar is sugar. Your body will process every sugary calorie in these recipes in more or less the same way. By no means am I touting the recipes here to be “health food”—this book is decidedly non-diet-y, which is my top requirement of a good sweet treat. You will never convince me that a brownie made with black beans will make life worth living. But! I do often notice a difference in how I feel when I have a treat with alternative sugars (the burn tends to feel a bit slower, less crazy-making), and I also like the fact that sometimes I can add a nice little nutrient punch along with the sweetness. But above all, it’s about flavor and satisfaction. And we’re going to get there with better, higher-quality ingredients, better sugars, and better techniques that work in the home kitchen. So that’s what I’m going to share with you in these pages—a collection of my favorite sweet treats that use the kind of flavorful, natural, less processed sugars and sweeteners that have their place in a balanced life. To me, this is truly baking, and eating, in moderation. Prime your sweet teeth, friends—we’re goin’ in. SWEET SWAPS I know what some of you might be thinking—Do I have to buy all these sugars to use this book?—and the answer is no! Of course, using the ingredients as listed is the best route, but as long as you swap dry sugars for other dry sugars and liquids for liquids, experimenting is encouraged (see “In the Real Sweet Pantry” and the sugar profiles peppered throughout the book for tips on the best applications for each). And although you’ll have some loss of flavor and color, you can even use conventional supermarket sugars in equal measure for dry natural ones in most cases: white granulated 100 percent cane sugar in place of turbinado sugar, coconut sugar, maple sugar, rapadura, and evaporated cane juice; dark brown 100 percent cane sugar for light or dark muscovado.
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