Product Review: Arequipe de Antaño LIGHT

Dulce de Leche or Arequipe (known in Colombia) is a milk sugar caramel spread. It is really common in South America, and has become much more present in North America in the last 10 years.

In Colombia it is most commonly spread on obleas, a thin wafer that is eaten as a sandwich.
I have used this in a previous recipe: Sugar Free Thumbprint Cookies (recipe on my website www.thesugarfreebee.com).


I use "Arequipe de Antaño Light" a product imported from Colombia, which is sweetened by Splenda.


I first tasted this when my Aunt sent this all the way from Colombia. Thankfully I have found this little jar (which is a bit pricey: 5.19 CDN) at my local Latin market.  This spread is SOOO Delicious.  If you have tried the regular dulce de leche and love the flavour, you will be happy to know that this diabetic version is just as good. It doesn't have the bad after taste of sweetener. It has an identical texture to the regular version and is so versatile as a spread or decoration or even as an alternative sweetener.  I recently made a cheesecake where I incorporated a tablespoon of this instead of granular Splenda.  WAS GREAT!

I highly recommend this product!



Nutritional Information in 1 tbsp (25g)
Calories: 35
Carbs: 5g
Sugar: 0g
Fiber: 8g

Sugar Free Chocolate Cheesecake Cookies

I saw this recipe being made by a Youtube blogger CTFXc and I just had to find the source and try it out myself à la Sugar Free!

I tracked down the recipe to cookie wizards from Two Peas and Their Pod (http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/).  They have quickly become one of my favourite baking bloggers and I only hope I could create such delicious desserts with sugar substitutes.

Back to the cookies:  Their recipe "Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies" involves a red velvet CAKE mix with extra flour and of course, cream cheese to make the cheesecake interior.  The photos alone makes my mouth water.

I unfortunately don't have a sugar free cake mix, but fortunately I do have my own sugar free chocolate cake recipe.  I decided (since I had no red fruit coloring at home) to make these a completely chocolate cake/cookie with traditional cheesecake interior.

WELL, they did not come out looking good at all!!  I tried to make the batter into the consistency of the cookie dough, but I think the buttermilk just made it impossible to solidify.  I had to add an extra 1/2 cup to get any semblance of solidity. Not good!  And so because of that, my cream and cottage (Shhh) cheese mixture could not be enveloped by the chocolate batter.

And so this is what happened on my first attempt (the cheesecake was on the bottom):

They don't look that bad but when you flipped them over, there was a gaping hole where the cream cheese mysteriously disappeared!!!

My second attempt also didn't prove to be successful.  I put the cream cheese mixture on top. This time it didn't dissolve, but it also didn't create that delicious gooey interior as the original.

I know what I will have to do to adjust. Either use a traditional chocolate cookie recipe and then roll the cream cheese inside, or when using the cake batter mixture, avoid adding the buttermilk.

Better luck next time.

The only upside was that they did taste pretty good. Tasted a lot like a cupcake (flat cake perhaps?).  

Sugar Free Strawberry Meringue

When I first heard that my husbands favourite dessert is a meringue I thought....great! Impossible to make sugar free!!  If you don't know, meringues consist of beaten egg whites and sugar and baked until hard. That's it.
What I didn't realize is that in Brasil, the meringue is slightly different. From what I have gathered, it is similar to a Pavlova (an Australian dessert).

Somehow, my husbands godmother (a goddess in the baking world) still managed to make a decent meringue using only a sugar substitute.  I decided to try it myself and for the most part it was successful.

The egg whites did form into stiff peaks but after baking they proceeded to deflate :( Also they weren't very crunchy....it was more of a taffy like consistency.  Then my second mistake: the chantilly.  I was told to use frozen chantilly (like Cool Whip) and then beat that into stiff peaks. DIDN'T HAPPEN!

But nonetheless it didn't come out too bad.  Another problem were the proportions. Definitely not enough to make an entire cake.  In the end I made 4 mini cups and they looked much better.

Here is the final product.  I am still going to work on it. For starters I will make fresh whipped cream and see if I can use some egg stabilizers like Cream of Tartar.

For now here is a picture of the dessert. It still proved to be a successful Easter dessert!

Sugar Free Thumbprint cookies

These are still a work in progress but I attempted a thumbprint cookie, which you see often in those cookie boxes: they are the ones with the jelly in the center.  Well I tried those and made them a little more Colombian by putting some 'arequipe' or more commonly known as dulce de leche in the middle.

As always everything was sugar-free, including the dulce de leche which I bought from a South American food store.  They did taste great but they unfortunately didn't hold very well.

I will try chilling them for longer and seeing if that helps to hold in the print. Another possibility is that I put the filling before I begin baking.  I only added it afterwards because I was afraid it might burn?!?  I know you can do this with jam so I should try it with that next time.

The great thing about these cookies is that with the basic cookie dough recipe, you can fill them with anything really.  Jams in different flavours, chocolate, caramel....cream!  They are such a versatile type of cookie which is what I love.

Once my recipe has been perfected, I will post it on the website under Cookies!

Happy Sugar-Free Baking!

NEW WEBSITE: THE SUGARFREE BEE

HELLO any readers that may be already out there.

I wanted to inform you all the I have begun a website known as: The Sugarfree Bee

www.thesugarfreebee.com

I am very excited to be starting it. I just felt that with the quanity and variety of recipes I will be presenting, it would be easier to chronicle them all in a website with multiple pages and tabs.

Shall not fear, this blog will still be kept up and it will chronicle my experimentation and development of sugar-free treats, and also look at SF products already in stores, as well as taste reviews of those products.

Come along for the ride!  This is only the beginning and I am hoping that it will soon build up and people will start reading and trying out recipes.

Please feel free to leave any comments. I will answer as best I can!

XOXO,

Miss SugarFree Bee!

Sugar Free Birthday Cake and Frosting!

Cakes are an essential to celebrating a birthday, however when you live with Diabetes, it can become quite frustrating when you realize that no one out there ever considered making a sugar-free cake.
So, it takes a loving mother (or a loving spouse) to make it homemade!

Unfortuntately, it is easier said than done.  As mentioned in the previous post Baking 101 à la Sugar-Free,   making a fully sugar-free cake can leave you and birthday boy a bit disappointed with the taste texture and even look of the cake.

Fortunately I have finally found the closest Birthday Cake recipe that still tastes great, has a fluffier texture, and with some fancy frosting (also Sugar-Free) looks great!


Vanilla Cake


Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup safflower oil 
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 cup Splenda sweetner
• 1 cup buttermilk (alternatively 1 cup milk with some lemon juice)
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup warm water

Instructions:

• Heat oven to 350F (180C)
• In the first bowl, whisk oil, egg, vanilla, sugar, and sweetner until fully dissolved and homogenous 
• Whisk in the buttermilk
• In a second bowl, combine flour, baking soda and powder. 
• Cup at a time, add dry ingredients to the wet ingredient bowl and whisk until smooth
• Add warm water and continue whisking
• Pour batter into the mold/cake pan and tap it to remove any bubbles
• Bake for 18 - 20 minutes or until center is cooked
• Cool before frosting

Vanilla Orange Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup Cool Whip (sugar-free)
• 1/4 cup Splenda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-2 tsp icing sugar
• Zest of an orange (optional)
• Food coloring (as desired)

Instructions:

• Fold in ingredients to the cool whip
• Keep chilled or else it starts to dissolve

**I tried this without the icing sugar, but the consistency was a bit like a foam spray (bubbles and all) and so the small amount of sugar made it into a shiny smoother cream. (Compare the Cowboy's pants to his shirt)

Here is an example of this recipe made for two boy's birthday cake.  For some reason (I want to blame my oven), the cake layers came out a bit lopsided. Fortuntately I had enough frosting to hide all imperfections.  Everyone present was happily surprised when I told them (after their initial bites) that the cake was actually made with Splenda and not sugar!

Baking 101 à la Sugar-Free

Cakes, breads and other pastries require a certain balance of flour, fat, and sugar to get the proper fluffiness, moisture, and sweetness to get the much sought after "mmmm" of recognition.  When you bake the sugar-free way, you tend to lose that necessary ingredient to get this texture and taste. Unfortunately sugar substitutes may to a certain degree cover the "sweet" aspect of glucose based sugar, but it does not complete the other two requirements of fluffiness and moisture.

One thing that I learned which has been quite a saviour for my baked goodies, leaving me with happy belly and low glycemic index is from Marlene Koch's "Desserts Sensationnels avec Splenda" (I have the French version) but in English "Unbelievable Desserts with Splenda".  She surprisingly includes sugar in her "sugar-free" recipes - scandalous! As she explains,  the teaspoon to tablespoon of sugar allows the baked goods to regain the texture and fullness of fully sugared treats. The spoons of sugar do increase the sugar load but, as she writes, what is harmful for Diabetics are the CUPS of sugar in recipes. The small spoonfuls will have a  lesser effect on blood glucose levels.

While I do agree with this to a certain degree, I still opt for fruit based sugars to sweeten up my goodies. For example, apple sauce is able to replace moisture as well as sweetness (but watch out because too much can make quite a mushy dense pastry); sugar-free jams usually have enough sweetness in themselves to easily replace the spoonful of sugar; lastly a spoon of honey works well, as honey is a low glycemic index sweetener (more on G.I. in another post) therefore it doesn't raise blood glucose levels as quickly as table sugar does.