Upgrade Your Holiday Baking
Filed Under Natural Cooking |
Last night I made my annual batch of holiday gingerbread cookies. Mmmmmm… and my home still smells warm and spicy! I use an old recipe that my mom always made for me – not a “natural” recipe by any means, but with a few changes, it meets my standards well enough that I feel good about eating and sharing them.
There are always ways to make your favorite recipes more natural. Of course, more natural doesn’t necessarily mean fewer calories, less fat or nutritionally healthier, but choosing ingredients that are less refined and closer to Nature contributes to a more energetic wholeness. It’s all relative! But even organic sweets are still meant to be treats.
Here are some ideas of ingredient substitutions when making your favorite seasonal sweets:
• molasses —> blackstrap molasses (stronger taste but lots more minerals!)
• butter —> organic butter (not margarine! there’s nothing natural about margarine)
• brown sugar —> organic dried sugarcane crystals
• all-purpose flour —> kamut or spelt flour (whole wheat has been hybridized over several decades, and now has more gluten than it originally did – harder to digest!)
• white sugar —> organic sugar crystals… or honey or agave syrup (will make the recipe wetter, so you’ll need more dry flour to bind and might have to adjust baking powder etc. Experiment!)
• maple syrup —> organic dark maple syrup (the darker, the more minerals and flavor)
• cornstarch —> kuzu/kudzu
• artificial vanilla extract —> organic vanilla extract (contains alcohol) or flavor (no alcohol) [also applies to other flavors]
• cocoa —> organic cocoa or carob
• table salt —> sea salt
• refined cooking/baking oils (canola etc.) —> unrefined and refined oils that require refrigeration (some brands to look for at a health food store: Rapunzel, Spectrum, Flora, Omega Nutrition etc.)
Many other ingredients are available in organic versions – like spices, eggs, raisins, oats… and even the vanilla cookie crumbs, coconut and icing sugar I need to make the rum balls that Santa always used to request when he’d deliver on Christmas Eve.
Even after “going natural”, I knew that recipe was a keeper!
If you need an ingredient but can’t for the life of you think of what might be a better choice, you can always ask at your local health food store or poke around online for some ideas. I’m not sure I’ll be able to easily find organic rum for those rum balls…
This is just a starting point to get you thinking about those annual recipes that you know you’ll splurge on. Try upgrading them, even just a little bit…
Happy Holidays!
Rebecca
