Can your holiday baking be any healthier?
The joy of baking seems to be on the rise during the holidays. Whether it’s for a cookie exchange or a festive gathering, baked goods are plentiful. There are so many sweet temptations that it’s often hard to resist a handful of delicious baked goods that appear during this time of year. I’m not much of a baker, but when I bake, I often find myself looking at the ingredients and wondering how I can make it healthier.
While swapping ingredients in a recipe for healthier alternatives doesn’t work 100% of the time, it does work quite a bit and is worth a try.
Here are some tips on how to swap out some ingredients for healthier alternatives when baking this holiday season.
1. Instead of using white sugar for baking, why not try a natural sweetener as an alternative? Here are some options with the conversion amounts.
Brown Rice Syrup: Consists of ground and cooked brown rice. It is moderately sweet. In recipes you will want to use a little more sugar and reduce the amount of other liquid. (1 cup of sugar = 1 1/3 cups of brown rice syrup).
Honey – One of the oldest sweeteners, honey is sweeter than sugar, so you’ll want to reduce the amount of honey compared to sugar (1 cup sugar = 1/2 -1/3 cup honey).
Maple Syrup – Contains many minerals and is excellent for baking. Be sure to buy 100% pure maple syrup and not maple flavored corn syrup. (1 cup of sugar = 1/2 – 3/4 cup of maple syrup).
2. When a recipe calls for oil, an easy substitute that works great is applesauce. I use this almost every time oil is called for in a recipe. (1 cup of oil = 1 cup of applesauce)
3. Sometimes people want or need to avoid dairy, but a favorite recipe calls for milk. When that happens, you can use the same amount as the recipe calls for, but substitute one of the following:
almond milk
rice milk
hemp milk
soy milk
4. If a recipe calls for all-purpose flour, you can try one of the following in a 1:1 ratio. However, this could cause a change to the overall texture, so changing this can sometimes be trial and error. I have personally tested all three options below and most of the time it has worked quite well.
Whole wheat pastry flour
almond flour
Oatmeal
Enjoy the baking festivities this holiday season and try some healthy substitutes in your recipes. Pick one thing to change if you’re not comfortable changing multiple things in your recipe, but give it a try because you just might like it better.