Sugar-free winter baking

When the weather is miserable, there’s nothing better than tucking into a warm, freshly baked treat straight from the oven. And there’s nothing worse than having your sweet treat moment ruined by the fear of extra kilojoules.

That’s why the best kind of winter baking is sugar-free. We recently caught up with fellow food blogger and baker extraordinaire, Andanté Wiehahn from LekkerBek. She’s an expert when it comes to using the right replacements to create all the best recipes without sacrificing on sweetness.

Here’s what she says you need to know to keep your kitchen a sugar-free zone of deliciousness:

Meet Canderel Yellow
This is your new sweet little secret in the kitchen. It’s specially formulated with a blend of ingredients for superior baking and cooking. Made from sucralose, it can be used for cakes, cookies, muffins, pastries, brownies and even cheesecake.

Short and sweet
As a rule of thumb, recipes made with sucralose instead of sugar require a shorter baking time. So make sure you look for visual signs that your recipe is done. Check if it has risen, look at the colour around the edges and see if it bounces back when pressed. Also try sticking a skewer into the centre and seeing if it comes out clean.

Go with what you know
For best results, try to use recipes that have been specially developed for sugar substitutions. Remember that baking involves a lot of chemistry. So changing one ingredient can change the ratio of the entire recipe. If science isn’t your forte, leave it up to the experts like the chefs who develop the recipes for the Canderel Kitchen.

Sweet substitutions
One stick of Canderel Yellow is equivalent in sweetness to two teaspoons of sugar – and has ten times less kilojoules. So the amount of sweetener you’ll need to use when baking will be much less than the amount of sugar you would ordinarily add to the mix.

Feeling hungry? Try this amazing coffee and pecan cake recipe. Serve it warm with dollop of fresh cream and forget about those winter blues.