You have to bake over the holidays, but you don’t have to bake fattening, I-need-to-nap-for-three-hours decadents to indulge that sweet tooth.
Try these three kitchen hacks for healthier baking:
Boosting fibre
Swap your white, all-purpose flour with a whole-wheat flour to add some healthy fibre to your cakes, muffins, and cookies. For maximum freshness, be sure to store your whole-wheat flour in bags in the freezer.
Reduce fat with healthy butter
Reducing fat in baking is actually easier than you think. For example, swapping regular butter for apple butter is a boon in itself; one tbsp of butter contains 11 grams of fat and 100 calories, while apple butter has zero grams of fat, and just 30 calories.
This simple swap works for cakes, loaves, and cookies, but not for things like pie crust, which depend on certain percentages of fat to make it flaky. If your desserts are based on chocolate, substitute half with puréed bananas, prunes, plums or dates to halve the fat content.
Related: 5 Best Christmas Cookies with Three Ingredients or Less
Add some seeds
Tossing in sunflower, pumpkin, or sesame seeds to your recipes is an easy way to make your treats that much more nutritious. Seeds offer good amounts of omega-3 fatty acids that may help lower bad cholesterol, ward off diabetes and combat the effects of aging. Always keep your seeds stored in the freezer, as they can turn quickly due to their high fat content.
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