Delicious Baking for Diabetics: 70 Easy Recipes and Valuable Tips for Healthy and Delicious Breads and Desserts

By Angelika Kirchmaier

Do you miss eating sweets because you have diabetes? After reading the recipes in this book, that will be the thing of the past! Delicious Baking for Diabetics includes seventy easy-to-make desserts that will make you forget any feelings of missing out on eating sugar.

Angelika Kirchmaier includes classics as well as creative recipes with conversion formulas to adapt ingredients to your own taste. Delicious Baking for Diabetics includes recipes for cakes, cookies, and breads including:

Walnut croissants
Cashew biscuits
Chocolate truffles
Berry tarts
Zucchini cakes
Flourless pound cake
Vanilla chocolate raspberry cake
Spicy yogurt pancakes
Herb pizza

Detailed information explains what is important when baking dough and using ingredients, which sweeteners are acceptable, and which spices give that extra touch to cakes to make them really special. All recipes include amounts of protein, fats, carbohydrates, and carbohydrate moiety and exchange.

Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Good Books and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of cookbooks, including books on juicing, grilling, baking, frying, home brewing and winemaking, slow cookers, and cast iron cooking. We’ve been successful with books on gluten-free cooking, vegetarian and vegan cooking, paleo, raw foods, and more. Our list includes French cooking, Swedish cooking, Austrian and German cooking, Cajun cooking, as well as books on jerky, canning and preserving, peanut butter, meatballs, oil and vinegar, bone broth, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: May 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781629141220

Book preview

Baking Tips for Diabetics

DIABETIC DESSERTS: BASICS

Long gone are the times when diabetics were forbidden to nibble on cakes and cookies. Thanks to new ingredients and preparation methods, a moderate enjoyment of treats no longer stands in the way of adhering to a diet plan.

WHAT CHARACTERIZES A DIABETIC CAKE?

Diabetic cakes are different from traditional cakes in the following ways:

   a minimum amount of sugar, or substitution with liquid artificial sweetener

   less and healthier fat used,

   the use of whole grain flour, and

   the replacement of artificial flavorings with natural spices.

With sweets, it is a matter of optimizing the combination of ingredients so that:

   the blood sugar can rise as slowly as possible,

   body weight doesn’t increase (a normal weight improves the diabetic metabolism), and

   valuable micronutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, and bioactive ingredients are provided.

Four things are necessary to make a good diabetic cake:

1. Choosing the ingredients

2. Adapting the recipes

3. Choosing the baking pan

4. Optimizing the baking process

CHOOSING THE INGREDIENTS

A wholesome diabetic cake can only be made with ingredients that are healthy and rich in micronutrients. On the following pages we have compiled useful tips to help you in the search for the best and healthiest ingredients. This way, you will make the tastiest diabetic cakes with ease.

FLOUR

Give preference to whole grain flours when baking. All of the recipes in this book contain wheat or spelt whole grain flour. As a substitute you can also use whole grain flours from any other type of wheat, such as emmer or einkorn.

Cereal grains like rye, buckwheat, amaranth, and millet contain little or no gluten, so using a whole grain cereal grain to completely substitute for a wheat grain isn’t possible in traditional cakes. The result would be a greasy, flat cake.

Those who abstain from grains with gluten, such as wheat, spelt, or rye, due to celiac disease or a wheat allergy can use gluten-free flour instead of wheat whole grain flour. Gluten-free dark bread mix without added salt is the best replacement. The flour can be substituted 1:1. Depending on the flour mix, you might need additional water. Dough made with gluten-free flour has a sticky, gummy consistency. It’s easiest to remove the dough from the bowl using a pastry scraper.

Whole grain flour has far more protein and micronutrients in comparison to conventional white flour. Proteins cause the blood sugar level to rise more slowly and help maintain a more level blood glucose curve. Micronutrients perform many different functions in the body. They allow it to run smoothly and repair areas that are fatigued. In other words, a perfect combination for diabetics.

But an advantage brings disadvantages!

Whole grain flour has not been standardized in the market like conventional white flour. This means that whole grain flours exhibit varying baking features. What this means for you is that the recipes must always be adjusted according to the producer, season, and batch. Sometimes the flour absorbs more liquid, sometimes less. With a bit of practice and the help of the step-by-step photos in this book, you will quickly figure out when the dough needs an extra spill of water or whether it’s better to mix in a little less liquid.

A second disadvantage is the consistency. The use of whole grain flour results in cakes that taste dry and often crumble when being cut. Many love this consistency, but others don’t like the texture.

There are two tricks for baking with whole grain flour: first, add lots of fat, sugar, and eggs to the batter. This, however, isn’t advisable for a healthy diet, diabetics, or a slim figure. Better for you to use the second trick, which magically makes every whole grain cake moist. Simply grate an apple (with the skin) into coarse pieces and mix with the dough. Using the apple with the skin in large chunks is very important. If the apple is grated without the skin or in fine pieces, the cake will become greasy. An apple has micronutrients, creates a moderate cholesterol-lowering effect, and adds beneficial ingredients—an extra healthy pill in your whole grain cake.

Whole grain flour from an organic farm is preferable, from a nearby region. No conventional pesticides can be used with organic crops. Additionally, organic farming is gentle to flora and fauna and the environment.

EGGS

Every egg is not the same! If your health is dear to your heart, avoid eggs from farms where thousands of hens are crammed together for egg production. The healthiest eggs with the lowest cholesterol levels come from farms where the animals can roam free and are fed with species-appropriate foods rather than feed designed to fatten them. It is best to ask the manufacturer or to find direct sellers online.

Warning! Organic doesn’t automatically mean healthy. For example, organic can also mean that the feed came from organic crops.

FAT

Many of the cake recipes in this book are prepared with oil. Canola oil tastes the most neutral. You can also use oil with a more intense flavor, such as a bit of olive oil. Both are currently considered healthy oils.

Oil has many advantages over solid fats: It contains considerably more mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Fats that are more solid contain a higher percentage of saturated fatty acids. Consuming too much of these makes a new roundness in the hips and stomach noticeable after a short time. Saturated fats don’t just affect the exterior. They can have an effect in your body as well, such as causing vascular damage—the exact area where diabetics are already vulnerable. Use oil instead of solid fat whenever possible and reduce the amount of fat to a minimum.

Solid fat is necessary for cookies made from shortcrust dough, or else the dough won’t roll out properly and reach the desired consistency. In this case, use a high-quality butter. Butter easily takes on outside scents, so be sure to pack it airtight in a freezer bag or freezer container.

Replace half the butter with sour cream at a 2:1 or 2:2 ratio. For example, instead of using 200 grams of butter, use only 100 grams and 50 – 100 grams of sour cream.

In this way, you can often skip on adding ice. Sour cream contains about 20 percent fat, which is considerably less than the 80 percent fat that butter and margarine contain.

As true with eggs, the amount of saturated fat in butter and sour cream depends a great deal on the feeding and care conditions of the animal. The more grass and less concentrated feed the animals are allowed to eat, the lower the dairy product will be in saturated fatty acids. In other words, the total amount of fat is not the only deciding factor in whether a dairy product is healthy or not—the way the animals were fed and kept is important as well.

Reduced-fat margarine is not particularly effective for baking because the water in the margarine changes the consistency of cookies. Often, froth comes up out of the cookies, which is caused by the synthetically solidified fat, an artificial product.

DAIRY PRODUCTS

Yogurt, farmer cheese, and sour cream can also replace fatty products like butter when baking.

SWEETENERS

Currently, liquid artificial sweetener is recommended as the best sweetener for diabetics. By using premade sweetener mixes or different artificial sweeteners, you can reduce the risk of overstepping your ADI. The ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake) provides information about the amount of daily ingested doses that can lead to side effects over time.

Although artificial sweeteners don’t affect blood sugar level or calorie count, the amount ingested should be kept as low as possible because of potential side effects. In other words, use as little sweetener as possible. Your palate will then become accustomed to a more subtle sweetness that you’ll find completely adequate.

Five artificial sweeteners have been tested and approved by the Food and Drug Administration: aspartame, acesulfame potassium, saccharin, sucralose, and neotame.

The up-and-coming natural product Stevia in the form of steviol glycosides doesn’t have too much in common with nature. The sweet-tasting steviol glycosides component is extracted from the plant using a complex technical procedure. Processing one ton of stevia leaves requires about 190 pounds of aluminum sulfate. The resulting sweet-tasting steviol glycosides don’t behave like items in transit in the body, but wander through intestines, portal veins, and liver, and are then finally removed in the urine. Steviol glycosides decay at 248ºF (120ºC) and are therefore not necessarily suitable for baking (Umschau Zeitschriftenverlag, DGE-aktuell, März 2012). Substitute sugar for artificial sweetener at a maximum of 10:1. For example, 10 grams of sugar replaces at most 1 gram of artificial sweetener. Using exactly 1 gram of artificial sweetener or a little less depends on your personal taste. Using a small amount of sweetener won’t change the consistency of the dough.

Sugar substitutes like fructose, xylitol, and sobitol have no advantages. On the contrary, they often lead to gastrointestinal problems, such as gas and diarrhea, and add calories and raise the blood sugar level.

Some cakes, such as sponge and pound cakes, require a certain amount of volume for the cake to turn out well. In this case, use the amount of sugar necessary for the volume of the cake and then balance out the sweetness with liquid artificial sweetener.

You can calculate the necessary amount of sugar and sweetener with a simple rule of thumb: Add up the amount of all the ingredients: flour, eggs (add 50 grams per egg), oil, etc.; ingredients that contain sugar (such as chocolate) and the apple do not need to be counted. Take 10 percent of the sum to estimate the amount of sugar you should use and 1 percent for the liquid artificial sweetener.

AMOUNT OF SUGAR FOR YOUR CAKES:

   5 eggs (at 50 g = 250 g), 200 g oil, 250 g whole grain wheat flour = 250 g + 200 g + 250 g = 700 g

   10% of 700 g = 70 g of sugar

   1% of 700 g = 7 g of liquid artificial sweetener

Your recipe contains:

   5 eggs

   200 g oil (or 100 g oil and 100 g sour cream)

   250 g wheat whole grain flour

   70 g sugar

   max. 7 g artificial sweetener

   1 apple, grated in coarse pieces with the skin

A pound cake with twelve pieces should not contain more than 70 g to a maximum of 100 g (one-third to one-half cup) sugar! This results in 8 g (about 2 teaspoons) of sugar per piece.

For cakes that don’t require volume, like cakes made from a yeast dough, completely replace the sugar with artificial sweetener. The resting period will be increased an insignificant amount, but the end result after baking won’t change.

Sweeteners with flavoring

For sweetener that doesn’t just taste sweet, you can turn to aromatic sweeteners, which you can make by placing whole spices in sweetener containers, like cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, cloves, star anise, coffee beans, etc. Tip! Purchase containers with screw tops, to which you can easily add spices. Once the sweetener is gone, remove the spices with tweezers, if they won’t come out of the bottle themselves, and add more sweetener with fresh spices.

Warning! Don’t grind the spices! They will swell up and leave behind a thick spice heap that won’t want to be separated from the bottle.

SPICES

Only a small amount, but oh! Hidden in spices are a host of vitamins, minerals, and bioactive substances. So season every dish with wonderful spices!

The classics like vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, or the zest from organic oranges and lemons are perfect for sweets. You can also use fresh minced or dried spices and flowers such lemon balm, mint