LOW-CAL, LOW-FAT DIET DESSERT RECIPES
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
Sweet & Skinny
(Clarkson Potter) ISBN 978-0307719201 0307719200
Learn how to make delicious diet desserts for weeknight meals, dinner parties and holiday dinners. Pastry chef, Marisa Churchill, reduces butter and uses fat substitutes to create low-cal baked goods that don't taste like low-fat desserts.
Her diet dessert recipes include low-fat, low-calorie cakes, cookies, brownies, pies, pastries, ice cream, dessert sauces, frostings, truffles, quick breads and more.
Low-fat, low-cal desserts
Sweet & Skinny is organized by type of diet dessert, from quick baked goods to holiday desserts. The first chapter features basic dessert recipes, like a simple fudge sauce. Each chapter begins with an index of diet desserts.
Marisa Churchill introduces each diet dessert recipe with baking tips and serving suggestions. For example, she says that you can use her low-fat, low-cal whipped topping recipe as a Cool Whip substitute in her spiced chocolate mousse recipe.
Make-ahead sidebars explain how long diet dessert recipes can be made in advance and how they should be stored, e.g., the lemon tart filling can be made one day ahead and refrigerated, tightly covered.
Holly Stewart's food photos depict delicious low-calorie, low-fat desserts made from Sweet & Skinny recipes. Step-by-step photos show home cooks how to make lattice pie crusts as well as other baking techniques.
Cooking with sugar substitutes
A sources page lists websites where you can buy Guittard chocolate, Truvia sweetener and other baking ingredients.
Sweet & Sugar-free sidebars provide sugar substitutes for some Sweet & Skinny recipes. In the pumpkin ricotta cheesecake recipe, for example, Marisa Churchill explains that you can substitute 20 packets of Truvia for one cup sugar.
Each diet recipe in the 240-page cookbook specifies calories and grams of fat per serving.
Sample diet dessert recipes
Cream cheese pie crust. Quick sour cream whipped topping. Oatmeal sour cherry cookies. Peanut butter banana cream pie. Molten chocolate souffle cake. Ginger snap apple pie parfaits. Almond Joy macaroons. Pecan sticky bun coffee cake. Chocolate peanut butter cups. Raspberry custard tarts. Individual s'more tarts. Coconut lime truffles. Orange chile chocolate bars.
Contents
IntroductionKeys to Sweet & Skinny Desserts
The Sweet & Skinny Pantry
- Sweet Foundations
- American Classics
- Desserts in a Hurry
- Sweet Treats
- Dinner Party Showstoppers
- Holiday Favorites
Index
Author
Marisa Churchill is a pastry chef who appears on Food Network Challenge.