Can a dessert be healthy, even healing?

Energetically, desserts have A LOT to offer our bodies. Soft desserts like puddings and kantens (vegan gelatins) relax our bodies after a hectic day and open us emotionally to an enjoyable evening. Baked desserts like a cobbler or pie are deeply nourishing and build our strength in a pleasing, harmonious way. Fresh fruit desserts cool and energize.

The trick is to prepare desserts that build our body instead of tear it down. Unfortunately, super-refined ingredients have become common in the Standard American Diet. Just like a sponge devoid of moisture sucks up spilled water, a food devoid of nutrients sucks up your bodies minerals as it passes through. For this reason, refined sugars and other foods are implicated in osteoporosis and other diseases marked by nutrient depletion. 

Here are some simple tips to preparing tasty, healthy desserts:

• Choose sweetners like rice syrup or maple syrup that are virtually unrefined; sea salt versus refined salt; whole wheat flour over white flour. 
• Make the transition slowly to give your taste buds time to adjust. Soon, you will greatly prefer the complex tastes and textures of healthful desserts.
  • Use a larger proportion of white flour initially and slowly add more whole wheat flour.
  • Start with natural sweetners with a sweeter taste initially (agave nectar, turbinado) and slowly move to less refined varieties (rice syrup, barley malt, maple syrup).
  • Start with a healthful recipe and make the above adjustments (instead of starting with the unhealthy recipe). Once you get the hang of healthy desserts, you'll be able to alter complex recipes more easily.
• Use kuzu instead of corn starch.
• Use agar instead of gelatin.
• Use safflower oil instead of butter.

The great thing about desserts is that it is easy with some basic pantry ingredients to put together a  

I like to separate dessert components into three basic categores, the grain, fruit, and the sauce. Some desserts have one of each compontent, others only a grain and a fruit, still others have two sauces and one grain, etc. so be open in how you may combine them.

Grain

• pie crust
• biscuit
• crumble
• granola

Fruit

• fresh berries
• cooked apples or pears
• orange or mango slices

Sauce

• nut cream (soak nuts in water for a few hours and process with some sweetner)
• sweet balsamic vinager
• drizzle of natural sweetner mixed with a spice like cinnamon, lavender, ginger, etc.
• fruit juice-sweetened fruit spread
• kanten mady by jelling fruit juice: combine 1 cup fruit juice with 1 tbsp. agar flakes, soak 10 minutes, then heat to a boil and simmer 5-10 minutes until flakes dissolve
• pudding made by heating 1 cup ricemilk or soymilk, then whisking in 1 tbsp. ground kuzu
• melted chocolate

And here are a few fun desserts made by combining the above components:

• Strawberry Shortcake = biscuits + berries + nut cream
• Pear Shortcake = biscuits + baked pear slices + drizzle of melted chocolate
• Parfait = pudding + fresh berries or sliced tropical fruit + granola (layered)
• Plum Crumble = chopped plums and apples + sweetner mixed with kuzu + flour, sweetner, oil topping
• Apple Cobbler = chopped apples + sweetner mixed with kuzu + biscuit dough topping
• Kanten = fresh fruit + half apple juice and half cherry juice kanten + nut cream topping (stir fresh fruit into kanten as soon as it is done simmering - set aside to gel
• Baked Fruit = cored apple or pear + filling of nuts, dried fruit, nut butter or nut cream + water or fruit juice in bottom of dish

Choose the quicker, softer desserts like Parfaits, Kantens, and Puddings for week nights and make a more elaborate dessert like a Pie or Cobbler on the weekend.

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