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Whispers Food & Cooking
Cooking Tips ~ Food Ideas ~ Beverage & Dessert
May 2009
COOKING TIPSTips For Cooking With Limited Amounts Of Sugar
by Stephanie Larkin
Do you love sugar but have to cut back? Does your low sugar diet preclude your favorite desserts and make your food taste bland? If so, not to worry, there are ways to bake even your favorite desserts using less sugar, with or without sugar substitutes. It just requires some experimentation and a working knowledge of what sugar actually does in a recipe. Once you understand what the role of sugar is in your baking and cooking, you can make appropriate adjustments and substitutes.
In most types of cooking, sugar is only there for the flavor - the sweetening power. You can easily reduce the amount of sugar that you use in fruit compote, for instance, and you'll probably find that the fruit flavors are far more intense. Natural sugars like fructose in fruit and lactose in milk a lot of nutritional value along with the carbs and calories. Using natural sweeteners like apple juice is one way to add sweetness while cutting back on granulated sugar. Sugar substitutes are another way to add sweetness to drinks and food without adding calories or carbohydrates.
However, baking with sugar is a different story. Granulated sugar does more than sweeten baked goods. It can affect volume, moisture texture and color of the finished cakes, cookies, pies and candy. Substituting other ingredients for sugar in baked goods can cause your baked goods to fail - or at least come out far differently than you expect. If you are using sugar substitutes in baking, or trying to cut back on sugar in your baked goods, here are some tips to help you out.
Sugar substitutes work best in cold recipes, or added at the end of cooking time. Heat can destroy the sweetness of most sugar substitutes and leave an unpleasant aftertaste.
Try using sugar substitutes half and half with sugar in your baked substitutes.
Use spices and other flavor enhancers to bring out the flavor of dishes when you reduce sugar. Lemon and orange zest brings out fruit flavors. Vanilla and nut flavorings make baked goods smell buttery and sweet, which enhances the sweetness of your recipes. Cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and allspice all enhance sweetness in recipes.
When you cut sugar in chocolate recipes, substitute strong, cold coffee for some of the liquid to enhance the chocolate flavor without adding additional sweetness.
Top reduced sugar baked goods with fruit or fruit spread to put the flavors right up front so that they are tasted immediately.
Sprinkle reduced sugar cakes with cinnamon and sugar substitute for the same effect.
Texture and Volume
Sugar helps cookie dough to spread during baking. Without sugar, the cookies may not spread properly. When baking cookies using sugar substitutes, flatten each cookie slightly before baking just as you would peanut butter cookies.
Intensify sweetness in a dish with fruit juice. Reduce the juice to 1/3 of its original volume by boiling it over high heat for extra sweetness.
Muffins and cupcakes cooked with lower sugar may not rise as high or achieve the round-domed top that we expect. Bake them in mini-muffin tins rather than regular size to allow them to rise higher.
Add ½ teaspoon of baking soda to a recipe to make baked goods with reduced sugar rise in a shorter baking period.
To increase volume, use whipped egg whites in recipes that call for eggs. Start with eggs warmed to room temperature.
Appearance of Baked Goods
Spray the top crust of a fruit pie with cooking spray and sprinkle with a tiny amount of sugar before baking. You can reduce the amount of sugar in the filling because each bite of crust puts the sweetness up front - and your pie will brown nicely as a bonus.
Cakes and breads made with reduced sugar or sugar substitutes don't brown because there is less sugar to caramelize during baking. Try adding a tablespoon or two of molasses to the recipe to deepen the color and add moisture.
Sprinkle cinnamon or nutmeg on top of breads, cakes or muffins to give the impression of browning.
In fruit dishes, add a small amount of dark brown sugar to give the finished product a deep, rich, buttery brown color.
Texture and Moisture
For moister baked goods, use mashed or pureed fruits in place of some of the sugar and butter. You can use applesauce, but ripe bananas, sweet potatoes and carrots are more flavorful and add more tenderness and moisture. (Tip: Why puree? Buy baby food jars of pureed fruits and veggies to use in baked goods. They have no added sugar or salt.)
When using a sugar substitute, cooking times are considerably shorter. Pull cookies and brownies out of the oven before they look done. They'll continue to cook while they cool.
About the author:
Stephanie Larkin is a freelance writer who writes about topics pertaining to food and cooking often discussing specific products such as Splenda
Article Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com
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FOOD IDEASChoosing the best cuisine for your party
by Anirban Bhattacharya
Food plays a vital role in any party whether it is a birthday party, backyard friends’ get-together or a wedding party. So make sure that you hire best food catering service for your party to avoid disappointment to your guests. Before finalizing the menu of the party with your catering services, you should pay attention whether your guests will be able to eat these recipes or not. They might keep a diet or have some health problem like allergies or so on. Therefore, it is important to ask your food catering service to prepare various dishes, so that everyone is able to choose something appropriate for them.
Before you decide any menu for the party, you need to know which meal you are serving whether it’s going to be a breakfast, lunch, tea, cocktail, dinner or dessert? Then search for the best caterer service that specialize and can provide versatility to your menu. You need to make sure you feature variety -- in flavor, texture, appearance, temperature, color -- to keep all of the senses stimulated of your guests. Traditional cuisines with a twist can also be one idea for the party but make sure your food catering services is good at it but it's helpful to have your eyes and taste buds ready.
Wedding is a big affair and a good wedding catering service can make it a mesmerizing memory. Good pairing of food and wine adds more delight to the taste buds. Know about the best pairs of food and wine from your party catering service or Internet and include those in your budget to your menu. Try to choose foods and wines from the same geographical region or ignore all rules and choose your favorite wine.
The choice of cuisines also depend on the location and types of guests, if there are going to be lot of kids consult your caterer service to prepare something which is dry and does not end the kids to mess up on their clothes. For outdoor/ beach wedding or any other party, food that needs to be eaten with a fork and knife is not the best plan. Hence, ask your wedding catering service and food caterers to plan accordingly.
About the author:
Myself webmaster of http://www.bidgourmet.com, an online resource to find a caterer, catering service, food catering, party catering, culinary professionals for various types of events and parties.
Article Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com
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BEVERAGES & DESSERTSWhat To Look For When Buying German Wine
by Kristian Phillips
Over the last few decades, German wine has acquired a somewhat negative reputation of being cheap and sweet. However, German wine is much more than just Blue Nun, Liebfraumilch and Hock. The country boasts a range of good quality and great tasting wines - you just need to know what to look for and how to get the most from them.
German Whites
The most common white grape grown in Germany is Riesling and this makes arguably the finest German wine available. Riesling is a hardy little grape, being able to withstand the harsh winters that are often present in Germany. It produces a wine that is generally light in body and alcohol and that ranges from dry and crisp to sweet and unctuous. Riesling makes a great aperitif and also works well with spicy foods. Other white German wines, a little more unusual perhaps but certainly worth a taste, are Silvaner, Muller-Thurgau and Pinot Gris.
German Reds
If red wine is more your thing, you should taste Spatburgunder. You may have come across this as Pinot Noir in other wine growing countries and it makes a deliciously fine and fruity wine. Red wine is harder to produce in the German climate but another good grape definitely worth a try is Dornfelder, which is generally darker and richer.
Understanding the Language
To help you in your quest for German wines, you might need a hand with the language and terminology. “Troken” is a good word to know, as it indicates that a wine is dry. If you see “Kabinett” Riesling, this means that the wine will be very light and crisp. “Spatlese” Rieslings will have more flavour and sweetness than a Kabinett wine, whereas “Auslese” Rieslings are sweeter, richer and fuller again.
Eiswein
If you fancy tasting a more unusual German wine then “Eiswein”, which literally means “Ice wine”, is common in Germany and might appeal. Eiswein is a tasty sweet German wine, which is packed full of fruit flavours. It is made from grapes which are left on the vine until it is cold enough for the water in the grapes to freeze. This concentrates the sugars without adding any flavours. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that Eiswein is not the cheapest German wine that you will come across, as the tricky grape picking process makes it quite expensive to produce.
About the author:
Louise Truswell works in and writes about the wine industry – writing about German Wine. To find out more and to choose from a selection of German wine, visit - www.virginwines.com
Article Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com
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