Turning your back to the different desserts or muffins or cookies lying right there on the table is quite heart-breaking. Especially, if you are the one with diabetes, the urge to have that one bite increases when you see a great variety of baked goods.
Relax, we have an amazing solution for this, without controlling the temptation you just need to swap some of the ingredients with healthier options and enjoy the diabetes-friendly desserts and other baked goods.
1. Replace butter with avocado
Instead of using butter, you can use avocado in the same amount. Not only avocado will provide a creamy texture to your baked goods but also heart-healthy fats and fibers. But yes, adding avocado will give your dish a slightly different taste.
2. Try using unsweetened applesauce
In place of butter and sugar, try adding unsweetened applesauce. Doing this will give your cookies, cakes or other baked goods a better and thicker consistency. Also, it provides with sweetness without any calorie of fats of butter.
3. Sugar substitutes
If you wish to add artificial sweeteners only, rather than having sugar use stevia or simply reduce the amount of the required sugar by half. While buying any artificial sweetener, remember you need to check the amount that’ll go with your recipe same as the amount of sugar. Keep in mind that the amount and the baking time differs depending on the artificial sweetener you select.
4. Use nut flours instead of white flour
It is true that hazelnut and almond flour has more fat but do not affect blood glucose levels like white flour do. If you don’t want to make a sudden change in your baking style or in case you cannot find nut flour, add half the amount of white flour and part whole-wheat flour. Now, slowly and gradually when you become used to it, start adding more of whole-wheat flour and less of white flour.
5. Add in spinach, zucchini, carrots and other vegetables
When you add half to one cup of chopped or shredded vegetables to your recipes, you are ultimately increasing the nutritional value of your muffins or other baked goods, without even changing its taste. You can add 1/3 of an avocado and around 2 cups of chopped spinach to strawberries, artificial sweetener, an egg, bananas and almond flour for the banana muffins. In fact, you can have fresh or frozen spinach.
6. Make an open-faced pie
Leaving the top crust off will ultimately lessen the number of carbs, butter, and sugar in your pie. One more tip, if possible replace the flour for ground nuts and it will make your muffins or pies even healthier.
7. Swap chocolate for cacao nibs
Unlike milk chocolates, cacao nibs do not contain sugar which is why they are highly recommended and are far better than any other chocolate. If not this, you can have other alternatives such as unsweetened cocoa powder, dark chocolate which is actually around 70% cocoa or try to add less chocolate than required.
8. Plan your overall meal ahead
If it’s already planned that today you are going to have desserts, make sure you reduce the number of carbs in lunch. According to American Diabetes Association, if you plan your meal before the time, it would be beneficial for those having diabetes.
9. Limit portion sizes
Use mini-muffin tins and try to make smaller portions. If there’s only single serving of your muffins or cookies, you can freeze the remaining ones in order to avoid overeating.
10. Add fresh fruits
Nothing can beat your baked goods if you add fresh fruits to it. Freshly chopped or grated apples, blackberries, peaches, pears, and nectarines will surely enhance the flavor and natural sweetness. And in that way, you can easily ditch artificial sweetener or sugar.
11. Use pureed apple or mashed banana
Give your baked goods an exotic taste with pureed apple or mashed banana along with bit rapeseed oil and sugar, which can be a great substitute for creaming butter. Do you know why it is better than the creaming butter? Because there will be no extra saturated fat from the butter will be added.