Category: Sugar

  • Banana bread 

    Banana bread 

    Bananas generally get scoffed in our house. I like them a bit under-ripe, so they have a bit of bite, then there’s usually a window of opportunity of a few days when the boys will eat them, before they start to go brown. After that, we usually keep them to make pancakes at the weekend.  Recently, my boys have been asking me to save them to make banana bread instead, so I’ve been experimenting with a few recipes from t’internet.

    Our new fave is this one, from the I Quit Sugar website. I can’t copy the recipe here, unfortunately, but I wanted to share the link because it’s so good and very easy to make.

    The recipe uses dry ingredients and wet ingredients, measured separately, then mixed together. The wet ingredients are 3 bananas, 2 eggs, coconut oil, milk, cider vinegar and vanilla essence.

    The dry ingredients are: buckwheat flour, almond meal (I assumed this meant ground almonds) baking powder & soda, salt and a variety of spices. I used cinnamon, ginger, allspice and nutmeg, as I didn’t fancy the cardamom suggested – it seemed too exotic for banana bread.

    It also has an interesting topping of pecans drizzled with coconut oil and cinnamon, which we really liked and did the second time I made it. They give it a bit of texture, but soften over a couple of days – unless you eat it quickly, of course. I chopped mine up to make the loaf easier to slice.

    One tip I would give is to grease the loaf tin and pour the mixture in directly, rather than faffing about lining with paper. My loaf tin is fairly old but it is non-stick and it turned out very easily.

    As you’d expect from IQS, there’s no added sugar in the recipe, so it feels very virtuous and the kids think it’s cake. Winner. Best served still warm and slathered with butter.

  • Coeliac mince pies

    Coeliac mince pies

    IMG_0034-4This is my first coeliac Christmas and it’s taken me by surprise. Nine months in and I thought I was getting used to the change in eating habits. But Christmas is really an added challenge, isn’t it? Things I tend to forget about from year to year seem to keep popping up to taunt me: stollen, German lebkuchen biscuits, mince pies! I do feel like I’m missing out.

    My 6 year old LOVES mince pies and in our family we tend to make them with a macaroon topping, which gives them a slight crunch and makes them look very pretty. I haven’t seen them in the shops so I agreed to make some. I’m still trying to stay low sugar, so I made mini ones.

    I used Doves Farm gluten free plain flour for the pastry and followed their very simple shortcrust pastry recipe, which you can find here. This pastry doesn’t work so well with cutters so I pressed balls of pastry into the (greased) mini muffin tray and shaped them with a dibber. The set was one I got from a Pampered Chef party BC*.

    I filled them with some nice shop-bought mince meat, and topped them with the macaroon mix, which is made as follows:

    2 egg whites
    100g ground almonds
    100g caster sugar
    1tsp cornflour
    2tsp water
    1/2 tsp vanilla essence
    Sliced almonds

    Lightly beat the egg whites. Fold in the caster sugar and ground almonds. Stir in the cornflour blended with water and vanilla essence. Easy! This mixture topped about 20 mini mince pies.

    Spoon the mixture on each of the mincepies instead of using a pastry top. Pop a single almond slice on each mince pie, and pop them in the oven at 190C for about 20 mins. They rise into beautiful little domes and go lovely and brown.

    Cool the pies on a wire rack. They freeze nicely and can be defrosted either at room temperature or in the oven.

    I have no idea of the origins of this recipe, but it’s become a firm family favourite.

    * Before Coeliac

  • 48 hours later…

    48 hours later…

    IMG_0006.JPGWasn’t that a film title? I’m sure I remember watching something with a name like that.

    Anyhow, I’ve been on a no sugar regime for a couple of months and I’ve seen quite a lot of improvement. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever tried cutting out. Sugar is just everywhere. And I’m not just talking about added sugar, here – this is serious, I’m really going for it to see how much improvement I can get: so fruit, honey and anything ending in -ose is out. The intention is to cut it out as far as possible to begin with, then maybe I’ll be able to find a level of intake that is ok.

    I find it quite ridiculous that I need to avoid fruit and dried fruit to make myself better – things that I’d always known to be healthy are now off limits! It seems irrational and I still can’t get my head around the fact that fruit can be bad for my body.

    It’s been quite revealing to see how much sugar I was consuming. I didn’t think I was eating that much to start off with – I don’t really drink fruit juice as I tend to have water or fizzy water, and puddings are generally a treat in our house. But I was having fruit yoghurt or granola for breakfast – both packed with sugar. A snack might be dried fruit: raisins, dates, prunes, apricots. But we’d often have a bit of chocolate in the evening and as well as drinking wine, I’m rather partial to a gin and tonic or a Pimms and lemonade in the summer.

    And what I’ve noticed since I’ve been sugar free is that barely a week passes without it being somebody’s birthday (almost obligatory to eat cake) or people come for Sunday lunch so I’d make a dessert.

    So I cut it all out, and began to reap the benefits. But sometimes I slip a bit, particularly at weekends – it’s just not Friday night in my book without a glass of wine! But sometimes that one glass would turn into 2 or 3 and I’ve accidentally had a load of sugar. Or somebody at work brings some gluten free treats just for me and I feel obliged to have one (I’m not ready to tell my colleagues I’m off sugar as well as gluten – I can’t face the inevitable questions).

    Eventually I began to notice something. I found out that when I have something sugary, it actually takes 48 hours for it to show up in my skin. Two days later, I get a breakout. That’s quite a long time. But I had a look online and I’m not alone! members.irosacea.org

    Also, I find it strange that sugar isn’t featured on any of the rosacea support lists of food to avoid: www.rosacea.org

    I bet there must be other people out there who haven’t yet discovered that sugar is their skin’s nemesis, and the fact it sneakily takes 48h to show up only makes it harder to figure out. If you know anyone suffering with rosacea or acne, please ask if they’ve considered sugar as a trigger – it was only by chance that I figured it out and I’ll be forever grateful to the lovely lady who suggested it to me.

  • Me vs Sugar

    Me vs Sugar

    I can’t believe it took me so long to figure this out. I can’t even take the credit, as it was a colleague of mine who suggested sugar might be the cause of my rosacea…

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