easter eggsperiment #2

well, I'm pleased to say we had success today with our easter egg making

1) mum and giggi made these beautiful rabbits out of boiled eggs (the kits were from when we lived in Germany 30 years ago - still  good). No fructose here :-)

2) the chocolate and the moulds worked! see here for my previous attempt...
my tips:
- we picked up moulds and foil wrappers from Spotlight for around $10

- make sure you lightly grease the moulds with olive oil on paper towel

- let the chocolate cool a little before filling half a mould half full of chocolate (about 30g of chocolate for this size egg)

- clamp the moulds together with pegs or elastic bands before swirling the chocolate around to make sure that there are no holes

- put in the fridge and turn every 2 mins to ensure even coverage (for about 10mins)

- leave the chocolate in for another hour or so to make sure the chocolate has fully set.
et voila!

I really like that the eggs are hollow: less chocolate for one thing but more importantly it reminds us that on Easter Sunday the tomb was empty because Jesus had come back to life. I love opportunities like this to talk to my kids about what really matters :-)

easter eggsperiment #1

so... trying to be low fructose at easter time isn't easy. Here's what we've done to mitigate sugar consumption at this special time of year.

1) lower fructose hot cross buns
I used this recipe from taste.com as the basis.
My modifications were:
- substitute dextrose for the caster sugar
- substitute a diced green apple for half the sultanas
- lower the oven temperature to 170 C
It didn't quite taste as good but it was better for us and we didn't feel like we were missing out.

2) lower fructose easter eggs
So this 'eggsperiment' didn't quite work but here goes.
I used the low fructose chocolate recipe from here.
My modifications were:
- substitute dextrose for the regular sugar and add twice as much
(nb the dessicated coconut is 6g sugar/100g which isn't fructose free but not too bad considering)
This chocolate is great if you like it really coconutty and perfect if you don't really like dark chocolate. It doesn't however set very hard so isn't really appropriate for making into hollow eggs.
It did work fine in chocolate moulds so we channelled a northern hemisphere easter and made spring flower chocolates - I particularly liked the daffodils.

Tomorrow we try the egg moulds with dark chocolate. I'll keep you posted.

adventures in low fructose cooking: muffins

Well we're 6 weeks in to our fructose-free adventure. I was hoping that by now we'd have a bit more control over our appetites. Mine seems to be still fructose effected.

We have been eating a bit of 85% chocolate mainly because on holidays we weren't able to source anything stronger. BTW the Green & Black's 85% with Madagascan vanilla is far superior to the Lindt equivalent.

I also want to try eating more slowly and waiting (15-20mins) to give myself a chance to feel full.

I'm also taking the advice from The Sweet Poison Quit Plan of sticking to sweetener alternatives rather than glucose while we wait for our addiction and appetites to come under control.

Anyway I've gotten hold of Natvia which is I suppose the best of a bad bunch. It is derived from a natural source, part of the Stevia plant, is much sweeter than sugar but has many less calories. However, it hasn't been used for a very long time so the jury's out as to whether it has any harmful effects. A good thing however is that I don't think it has as nasty an after taste as some of the other sweeteners.

So here's our first go at baking with Natvia. We made banana muffins, a variation on the blueberry muffin recipe found on the natvia website. Find the recipe here. And while they're not fructose-free because of the banana, 2 bananas are spread over 22 muffins...

Our's were about half the size of the recipe so only needed 15mins. And they were quite crumbly so I may have over cooked them.

None of us could stop at one. They were a success all round. Even little badger thoroughly enjoyed his.

adventures in fructose-free treats: chocolate

As promised we decided to do a bit of a taste test to see which chocolate we enjoy most. So far I had tracked down the 99% Lindt and the 100% Dominican from Koko Black. My sister-in-law had found a 99% at the Kirribilli chocolate shop. And we thought that last of all we'd compare it to the 85% Lindt which is something more in the realm of normalcy. It probably wasn't according to normal protocols but we were cleansing our palates with coffee.

I wish I'd read about chocolate tasting notes before we began because we were struggling for adjectives, seriously in need of direction and suggestion. I think I'm still suffering a loss of adjectives since being pregnant twice, or maybe it's the lack of sleep???

Here's what we think:

It was unanimous that the 99% Lindt was our least favourite. It was strange because the flavour took a long time to hit your palate and when it did it was quite dull and bitter. It wasn't very creamy at all, just marginally better than eating cocoa powder and is weirdly crystalline in parts. However, did go brilliantly grated over chocolate ice cream, see here. My friend Caro thought it was 'gaggable'.

We then moved on to the 100% Dominican from Koko Black. This was significantly better. It had a stronger flavour and was creamier than the Lindt. You could still describe it as pungent but it has a much more interesting taste than the Lindt. It was my favourite.

Then we moved on to the handmade 99% cocoa chocolate from Coco Chocolate in Kirribilli. It was creamier again. But I think it had some kind of distinctive 'green' flavour. I wasn't able to put my finger on it. Apparently it makes a heady accompaniment to whiskey... And is suitable for vegans but not for the faint hearted. This was the favourite of both my husband and my sister-in-law.

I'm not convinced about the 85% it still has 14% sugar which is half a sugar cube per square of chocolate which seems rather a lot. It did seem very sweet and the squares are too big.

I meant to take a photo at the end because it was funny how much chocolate we had left over. Not the norm where chocolate is usually involved but perfect for our purposes.

adventures in fructose-free treats: icecream

It's been great hanging out with some others on this fructose-free journey and picking up their tips and tricks. The main message for me is that it seems to be more difficult the second time, so best to stick with the program. The other thing is that croissants make excellent sugar free treats (as long as you don't buy those ones from the supermarket that you stick in the oven - it has to be the super buttery flaky ones... I think I can hack it).

In the spirit of the boxing day sales we picked up an ice cream maker. I wasn't sure which one to get since Choice hasn't done a review (and seeing as it makes their top 20 of least used, most re-gifted gifts, I'm not sure they're going to do a review any time soon). So, we just waltzed into DJs picked their most popular model which also was on sale and we're giving it a go.

Tah-Dah...

We chose The Sweet Poison Quit Plan chocolate ice cream recipe. Super easy. No eggs even. And I'm loving using all my mum's retro baking accessories.

I also inherited my sister-in-law's dextrose stash as they move overseas next week. It looks a little like caster sugar but is less sweet, weighs less and is squidgy like brown sugar. It takes a bit of getting used to. But here goes.

Now here we get to amateur hour. I hadn't realised that you need to freeze the ice cream maker's mixing bowl for 12+ hour before you can make any ice cream. Oops. So the ice cream mixture went into the fridge to be cooled which isn't a disaster and we ended up putting on the churner at 8am this morning.

Giggi waiting patiently for the churning to occur:

Churning under way:

Final product after a couple of hours in the freezer, with some blueberries and grated 99% Lindt:

The verdict pretty good first effort. Probably could have done with another churn as I didn't leave the freezer bucket in long enough to begin with. But yummy! Here's to our first ice cream this month!

week 3 fructose-free

We are still on the bandwagon possibly more committed than ever. I've finally read the Sweet Poison Quit Plan by David Gillespie and found it thoroughly inspiring. He's a bit sarcastic in tone for me and despite my scientific training I kind of skipped over all the medical stuff. I'm a bit ambivalent about it: he's not medically trained himself and I'm happy to just try it out and see if it's good for us. Although if even half of what he says about fructose is true, it's pretty frightening stuff. Besides the putting on weight issue there are purported links to diabetes (my concern - got to love your genes), dementia, heart disease, stroke, cancer, PCOS, depression and anxiety.

He also has great advice about how to break the addiction. There's the obvious stuff of clearing out your cupboards (anything > 4g of sugar per 100g has got to go). Then there's working out when you're most tempted to indulge in fructose and having a plan of what you're going to substitute instead so that you don't feel deprived. Like the way I have a handful of cashews with my morning coffee... But I found it helped my mindset that we just don't eat the stuff anymore. If you're eating it sometimes you're constantly weighing up 'can I eat this or not'? I love just not having to make the decision, it's just automatically out.

I also LOVED his chapter on how to help your kids in the process. Insightful and wise.

The thing I'm trying to weigh up is whether to eat the sweet substitutes or not. I'm pretty much against the 'artificial' sweeteners. Not loving the metallic aftertaste anymore. I'm just trying to decide whether to go down the road of making your own cakes, biscuits, custard and ice cream using glucose (sold as dextrose in the home brew aisle). I guess it's good for celebrations and helping your kids not to feel left out but I've actually enjoyed not eating that stuff for the last 3 weeks and don't want to get back in the habit. Maybe we can make it less frequent - and I guess if I have to make it all myself (it's not commercially available) we won't be having it as frequently anyway ;-)

We're also giving 100% chocolate a go. Koko Black has a 100% Dominican chocolate bar (around $7.50 for 40g). And Lindt has a 99% excellence bar ($5.10 for 50g). It is a bit like eating cocoa powder but at least you don't demolish the whole block in a sitting. I'll get back to you on which one we prefer. We started with the Dominican...

PS is it terrible to re-gift chocolates or other sugary delicacies we've received when we think it's poison but the recipients are happy to receive them???