Nutritionist Tips for Healthier Desserts, Baked Goods and Treats: Use Less White Sugar and Better Alternative Sugars for Blood Sugar Balance

Want to have your cake, and eat it, too? I have some free nutritionist tips for helping you make all of your desserts and baked goods just a little bit healthier. We can lower white sugar (which can raise inflammation) and lower the blood-sugar affect through simple changes. Everyone still wants desserts~ we just don’t want to take the fast train to “diabetes-ville.” These healthy baking tips are how to get there.

I love making and eating desserts, and I’m even kind of a snob about pastries, breads, and baked goods. I would rather buy from a bakery or coffee house than a grocery store. I want a satisfying product, made with real food ingredients, including butter.

Now that I know about nutrition, I still make and enjoy dessert, but the ingredients I use make it less of an impact on my body. Are you ready to learn how? You’ll be surprised at how easy it is.

Persimmon and raisin cookie made with reduced white sugar. The white sugar was lowered to make the baked good slightly healthier, and impact blood sugar less.

Why Lower White Sugar in Desserts and Baked Goods?

Most diseases and issues involve some kind of body inflammation, whether its arthritis, other “-itises”, rashes, esophageal reflux, etc. A high-sugar diet can tip small problems into a worse state.

In addition, white sugar feeds gut bacteria, both good and bad. If someone has an imbalance of gut flora, this can help them grow more.

And last, some people believe that its important to keep the body slightly alkaline with fruits, and especially vegetables. Some diseases, like cancer, are thought to grow more easily in an acid environment. Foods that are acid include white sugar, fats, salt, and meats. (So its not that we can’t eat these foods – we just need to balance them with vegetables and fruits.)

Why Its a Good Idea to Use Saturated Fats in Desserts and Baked Goods

This may sound weird, because America is fat-phobic, but here’s the truth: If you eat low fat or fat free desserts, the sugar leaps into our bloodstream super fast, then causes a sugar high, then a huge insulin release to lower it again. Insulin can damages our arteries over time, causing our body to try to coat them with cholesterol as a protection method. Our bodies get super tired of the up and down yo-yo of blood sugar.

Let’s follow the French people on this: if we eat rich, fat laden desserts, the sugar enters the bloodstream more slowly, causing less of a blood sugar rise and insulin release. We’ll feel more satisfied with richer desserts, and maybe eat less dessert, too. (I only said “maybe eat less” – I know that I’m certainly less happy with cheap chocolate these days.)

Pumpkin pie dessert without pastry crust, gluten free pumpkin dessert in a bowl, pumpkin coconut custard, vegetable dessert — Crustless Pumpkin Pie Dessert, Made in a Pot, Gluten-Free. The sweetener used in this recipe was coconut sugar, which causes less of a rise to blood sugar than white sugar.

Saturated fats like butter are also healthier than vegetable oils for another reason: they are stable when heated. When vegetable oils are heated during their manufacturing process, and heated again during baking, it makes them carcinogenic. Other oils are separated by chemical extraction processes, and the chemicals often stay in the oils.

Full fat fermented yogurt in the process of making it, raw milk fermented into yogurt, homemade ferments, yellow cream on top — Whole raw milk in the process of being fermented into yogurt, with cream on top (not homogenized). Whole fat dairy enhances the also portion of vitamins A, D and calcium.

Examples of Saturated Fats to Use in Baking and Desserts:

Butter (grass-fed sources preferred like Kerry Gold or raw butter)
Palm oil (high vitamin A), coconut oil (brain benefits!)
Dairy with milk protein*: cream^, whole fat milk^, whole fat yogurt^
Pork lard* (SO good in cookies and pie crust!)
Duck lard* (SO good in cookies!)
[*Grass-fed sources for the dairy and lard are greatly preferred for beneficial substances like omega-3 and CLA]
[^ If we use non-fat milk, the calcium and vitamin D in dairy are not absorbable at all!! Calcium sort of “rides in” on the fats. And vitamin D is in the fat. (cite 3)]

Coconut oil and grass-fed pork lard on a plate, coconut fat, pastured pork fat, healthy fats for heating, healthy fats for desserts, healthy fats for baking, saturated fats, vitamin D — Coconut Oil and Grass-Fed Pork Lard. These saturated fats help vitamin absorption, and react in a healthy way to the heating during baking. Coconut oil contains brain-healthy lauric acid. Pastured pork lard contains vitamin D, which many of us who experience any winter are lacking.

Saturated Fats Are Fat Soluble Vitamins – Don’t Remove Them!

A second benefit of saturated fats is that they are themselves a source of fat-soluble vitamins like A, D and E.

Butter has 11% of the vitamin A RDA per one tablespoon, as well as vitamins E, B12, D (some) and K2.

Palm oil is a super rich source of vitamin A and E, too. Only one tablespoon contains 80% of vitamin A, and 10% of your vitamin E!! (Cite 1)

Grass-fed pork fat (yes, lard) is a rich source of vitamin D (who knew?).

Cream and whole milk have many vitamins in them, too, as well as helping to slow down white sugar’s absorption. One cup whipped cream has 35% DV Vitamin A, 16% DV of vitamin D, 5% DV of vitamin K, and more B vitamins. (cite 2)

Black coffee and sugar reduced short bread cookie, how to reduce sugar in desserts and baked goods, brown cookie wedge on saucer — Whole grain short bread cookie, made with coconut sugar

Coconut oil works well in cooking, as long as you like the taste and have no nut allergy. There are no vitamins that I know of in this one. However, coconut oil contains a compound called lauric acid that is beneficial for brain health. It also has antibacterial and antiviral properties. Win-win!

If you’re using it to make your own chocolate, I would recommend using half or two thirds of coconut fat for solidity. Mix with one third to one half quantity butter or palm oil for a buttery taste.

SCD dessert recipe, GAPS dessert recipe, gluten free dessert recipe, dairy free dessert recipe, low sugar dessert recipe, low fat dessert recipe — Peanut butter Apple Brownies (SCD Diet, GAPS Diet legal, Paleo Diet) This delicious dessert is gluten and dairy free, with honey as the sweetener! The peanut butter protein and the fat in the recipe, as well as the fiber in the apples, helps slow down the sugar absorption into the bloodstream.

How and Why to Cook with Coconut Sugar

The third tip is to use coconut sugar instead of white and brown sugar. The advantage is that it causes less of a rise in blood sugar. That’s great, because we now know that cholesterol gets put on our arteries to protect us from insulin release, which is released after eating sugar. White sugar = high blood sugar = insulin (lowers blood sugar) = cholesterol in bad places. Got it?

Coconut sugar tastes less sweet than both white and brown sugar, and browns faster in the oven. Overall, I think it tastes more like honey, or maybe brown sugar. If you still want sweets to taste more normal, you could use 1.5 TB white sugar mixed in. Coconut sugar does not cause crunchy sugar crystals on the outside of baked quick breads, like I’ve seen with other sugars (date sugar crystals? Anyway, yuck!) I cook the dessert at the normal temperature.

Delicious Key Lime Pie homemade with less white sugar (1/3rd to half of recipe instructions) for a better blood sugar outcome.

How to Bake Desserts and Cookies with Less White Sugar

Did you know that sugar counts (strangely) as the liquid in a recipe. So whatever you cut out in sugar volume, you will replace half of that removed volume with some extra liquid. For instance, if you cut out one cup sugar, add in half cup liquid. If you cut out 3/4 cup sugar (or 12 tablespoons), add in half that volume in liquid (6 TB).
(It’s easier with the English baking system to sometimes convert the cup measure into either tablespoons or ounces first to do the math.)

If I am making cookies, I usually just cut the sugar to half or two thirds of the original recipe. I may just use the brown sugar, and skip the white. (The Nestle chocolate chip recipe for cookies calls for three cups of sugar!) I do not add in extra liquid to replace the sugar as advised above. I may add a bit of liquid just if they look dry (but I live in Colorado, so everything is dry!)

If one did add liquids to crunchy baked goods like cookies, I think they would end up more like muffins.

That’s it! Wasn’t that easy? Happy baking!

If you enjoyed this article about making desserts with better sugar, less white sugar, and helpful saturated fat, please share it with your friends, using the social media buttons below. Have you tried these mods, and liked the results? Let me know in the Comments below.

You can read more about How to Add Fruit and Vegetable Vitamins to Desserts and Baked Goods here. You can learn more about Omega 3 Essential Fatty Acids (in grass-fed dairy) here.

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Sources/ Bibliography:

Weston A. Price Foundation website: www.WestonAPrice.organd a 2012 conference.

Cite 3- Nourishing Traditions book, by Sally Fallon (later Fallon Morrell) – A great source of nutrition information in the first forty pages alone.

My education from the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism, Boulder, CO, as well as cooking experience and a penchant to hang out in the health food store.

Cite 2 -Cream vitamins: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/51/2

“20 Foods that Are High In Vitamin A” from
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-high-in-vitamin-a#section1

Butter 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/butter#vitamins-and-minerals

Cite 7 – Info source (not an affiliate link): Amazon.com for palm oil nutrition panel