A cowgirl from very early on, I fell in love with Texas and plan to stay here the rest of my life. I am really happy to be able to bring my Sin Free Desserts to south central Texas for my fellow Texans and other visitors to enjoy.
After battling weight problems for the last 10 years and trying about 8000 different diets and another 5000 different supplements and “latest weight loss breakthroughs”, I decided to quit trying to lose weight now, now NOW. What I needed to do was to change my lifestyle to a healthier lifestyle and lose weight gradually but permanently.
Sounds good, right?
Well, the only problem is that I just LOVE sweets. I didn’t eat them 24/7. But I did like to indulge once and a while or maybe a bit more than that.
So, one day I decided to try making a cheese cake using stevia instead of sugar. I made the crust out of crushed pecans, a little butter and some agave syrup. I topped the cheesecake with a raspberry sauce that I made using raspberries and also stevia to sweeten it. It came out great. My husband and I loved it. It was surprisingly good. Later, for a dinner party, I made it again to test it out with others, and it was a big hit with my guests. So I knew I was onto something.
I have since done a lot more research into various natural sweeteners and now bake using low glycemic alternatives to sugar. These include stevia, monk fruit, coconut palm sugar, agave and molasses – all organic of course.
With stevia and monk fruit particularly, it took some work to find sources of these that were what they said they were. A high percentage of stevia on the market is actually 99% sugar alcohol and less than 1% stevia. At the same time, some of the versions of pure stevia did not taste very nice. So it has taken some work to build up a small arsenal of truly healthy sweeteners that actually taste good.
Meanwhile, as my husband is gluten intolerant, I had been experimenting with alternatives to regular wheat flour. As a result, I discovered some really neat flours that were gluten free. Some were not made from grains at all, but rather nuts, seeds, beans or even coconut – such as quinoa flour, garbanzo bean flour, almond flour, milled flaxseed and coconut flour. All very low in carbs.
With all of these incredible discoveries, I started making up and testing recipes for different desserts using these alternative flours and natural sweeteners. The first ones were almost inedible – too bitter, too dry, too crumbly, too dense, etc. But as I continued to work over the recipes and refine them, I gradually perfected them into what I now call “Sin Free Desserts”.
I welcome your input. If you have other ideas, other recipes, alternate ingredients or other modifications that you feel will improve the results, I am all ears. As I develop more recipes, I will be adding more and more options.
Of course I have kept a close eye on my weight as I have been testing these desserts and have consistently and gradually been going down in weight – a miracle in itself. Thus I feel the term “Sin-Free” has been justly earned.
I hope you ENJOY!