We have the technology....we can make it better.

In the food industry and as a Mr. Mom type of guy, when any of us come up with a recipe or something we like, if it is not what we want, we change it.  It is normal and encouraged as not everything is made to our liking so it makes sense that we can change foods to our specific tastes.  Although, some changes are harder to do.

I made a cake, that has almost 2/3rds less of a cake of similar texture, taste and consistency.  It was based upon a normal thick and rich cake, but this one is different: no sugar.  So how does that work?  I turned a cake that would normally have over 4,000 calories into one that has just 2,000 calories.  What more, is that a single serving of my cake, has less than 200 calories. The cheesecake  Factory has a chocolate cake that tastes like mine and it is more than 750 calories.  So, ladies, or those watching anything about them, which would you rather have:  A chocolate cake that tastes great and has 200 calories a slice or one that has 700 calories a slice?

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present my flourless and sugar free chocolate cake. 

No sugar, means that I made it better than it used to be.  So, make something better.

Sugar free and low GL apple pie

Ever since my father-in-law found out that he had diabetics, I found it a little bit hard on him.  Meaning: as a chef, I enjoy it best when other people enjoy my food and meeting people who can't eat this or that because they physically cannot take it then it makes me sad and inspires me to do something about it.  I met a man who was type 1 and he was telling me how he loves to eat things that are really bad for him.  Like he loves to eat cookies but they could potentially kill him.  So what do you do?  Experiment.

 Have you tried to eat one of those sugar-free cookies that you can buy at the store?  The sugar-free chocolate chip cookies taste like someone sprayed a pieces of cardboard with a chocolate scent.  It tastes nothing like a cookie should and that is a problem.  In regards to what I made last night, pie, I know people who always wanted an apple pie, but can't have it because of the sugar.  We are not just talking the added sugar and brown sugar but also the natural sugars in the flours and such. What I did, was make a pie crust, from scratch and then make filling from scratch, both with no sugar and low GL's.

Things like all-purpose flour and other grains have a high carb content and also have a high glycemic load, so it takes longer for your body to break down the sugars.  So, replacing your all-purpose flour which has a GL of 66 per cup with something like whole wheat flour which has a GL of 44 per cup and barley flour which has about 28 GL per cup, definitely reduces the overall GL's. So about 2 cups of flour go into the dough and instead of having 132 GL's in the total crust, I had 71 GL's, which is a considerable difference.  I also replaced all sugar with truvia and added extra cinnamon, which was enough to completely take out those added calories and GL's.  So, that cup of sugar was replaced with Truvia.  So that was 774 calories, about, and about 139 calories that was flat out removed.  Everything else was the same except I did add one teaspoon of molasses,  which added about 20 calories and 3 GL's. 

 How did it taste?  Well, if you love apple pie because of the super sweet sugary taste, then you would not have liked it. But if you like apple pie because of the apples, flaky crust and spices, then you would have liked this.  I made a perfect crust, but because the whole wheat flour became more crumbly than normal, my wife called it an apple crumb pie, which seemed to fit.

A breakthrough in low calorie foods

After 9 trials and 20 pounds of sliced peaches, over one pound of sweetening agent, and over a cup of lemon juice, the first batch of real peach jam has been created by my new company. These trials were new and experimented formulas in making a sugar-free fruit jam that tasted good and still had low calories and low GL's for diabetics. Is this simple? No. A normal recipe that you may find for jam for making 6-8 jars can have as much as 5-6 cups of sugar in it. That comes to almost a cup of sugar in each jar of jam. That is a lot of calories extra; about 774 calories worth of pure sucrose. That is a lot of calories.

I finished my jam with the following information:
Serving size: 1 tablespoon
Calories: 7
Total carbohydrates: 3g
Sugars: 1

That's it!

The best part is, in an 8oz jar, there is 205 grams of finished product and that means that a whole jar has 78.4 calories!

I dare you to find a jar of jam that has less for the whole jar!

I thought my calculations were incorrect and compared it to a sugar free jam called Palamers raspberry spread. A tablespoon of their raspberry spread contained a whopping 40 calories! I thought how my numbers could be so far off and it came to me: I have 4 ingredients. Palamers has 6. Besides raspberries which are low in calories, it also had pear and grape juice. A cup of grape juice has 160 calories and a cup of pear juice has a bit much of the same. So that much extra calories are in a batch of jam from this company. Guess how many calories are in a single cup of sliced peaches? 11 calories. That is it, 11 calories!

This jam will start to make its way around and soon the trials on applebutter will begin. That's right, what about making low calorie and no sugar apple butter.