I almost fell off the wagon. My graduate studies were exacting and stressful. One of my children had a crisis. My husband had a couple mishaps. I didn’t have any energy left. Gawd, those sweets would taste good and make me feel a little better!
We were eating brunch as a fabulous restaurant that served us a small dessert, even though we hadn’t ordered it. Eat it? Leave it alone? I ate it. It was an exceptionally delicious, petite cylinder of apricot-cream sprinkled with toasted sugar and topped with a small scoop of ice cream. Yeah, I loved it.
That night at a different restaurant, I passed up the dessert my husband and son gobbled down. The next morning, I woke up craving gluten-free pastries from the bakery at the end of my street. One package of those amazing chocolate filled spongy cakes won’t kill me, will it?
I resisted, but it wasn’t easy. Visions of chocolate chip cookies, s’mores, chocolate mousse, ganache-filled tarts, pain au chocolate, a tray of glazed petit-fours, chocolate truffles and more sugary treats filled my head.
I ate a piece of cheese. I made myself a fruit smoothie. I ate a Kind Bar (8 grams of refined sugar). And I told myself that I’d get through the day. Let’s see how I feel tomorrow, I told myself.
I got through the next day, and the next. My sugar sobriety has now reached almost ten months. There’s no end point, no future day when I’ll fill myself with extra scrumptious goodies whenever I please, with no consequences whatsoever.
Returning to my sugar-addict habits–eating far too many sugary cookies, cakes, candies, ice cream, sugar-filled you name it every day—is not an option. My body would not forgive me.
I bought a bag of organic oranges. I took one orange, quartered it, and put it into my high-speed blender. It turned into a pile of pale orange fluffy pulp. I spread the pulp out onto a parchment-covered baking sheet, and put it into the oven at 270 degrees F. I put a folded kitchen towel in the oven door to keep it open a crack to allow the moisture to escape. (This might be easier with a dehydrator, but I don’t have one.)
I checked it after a couple hours. It was starting to dry. After about eight hours in the warm oven, I took it out. The pulp had dried into a ragged sheet that stuck to the parchment paper. I scraped it off into a bowl and crumbled it with a wooden spoon. Now what? I tasted it. Orangy. Sweet. Hmmm.
I used the dried pulp in my favorite gluten-free chocolate chip cookie recipe. It turned out OK. The cookies were sweet with a hint of orange. I used stevia-sweetened chocolate morsels in the cookies, which taste mildly sweet.
Yes, oranges contain lots of fruit sugar, but my refined-sugar-free diet allows any and all types of whole fruit. The cookies weren’t a revelation, but they were 100% refined-sugar free, and they tasted good enough, much better than the chocolate chip cookies I made using date paste as a sweetener. Those disappointing cookies tasted mostly like dates.
Dried orange pulp is an OK alternative sweetener, but I’ll keep experimenting. (I’m looking at you, chicory root!) I’ll report back any successes.
In the meantime, my husband bought a sugar free cola made with sucralose the other day. I took one sip and nearly gagged. Sucralose is utterly sweet and horribly artificial tasting. It took me a while to get that wretched taste out of my mouth.
Us sugar addicts deserve better. I’m doing my best to find a way to make delicious baked goods without refined sugar or dreadful artificial sweeteners. The challenge of the holidays is here. One. Day. At. A. Time. I’ll get through it.
No Comments