Lowering Carb Counts in Recipes

Good afternoon, friends! Today is a fresh September morning -Autumn has truly arrived. And with Autumn comes Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays. Picking apples, seeing relatives, eating lots of pumpkin and apple flavoured desserts; these are all things that I enjoy. 

With all the food intake that occurs on Thanksgiving, it's ideal for the dessert to be low-carb. But what if your favourite apple spice cake has 793 carbs in it? Don't fret! There is a way to lower the carbs in a recipe, and I will show you how.

Just a Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down!

This may be true with Mary Poppins, but sugar definitely does not help a recipe's carb count go down! Sugar is a major addend of the equation to a recipe's carb count. There are many ways to substitute sugar in a recipe, but these two are my favourite ways.

1. Maple Flakes 

Decacer Maple Flakes are exactly what they sound like. Flakes of maple sugar. It works wonderfully as a sugar substitute, and a pinch by itself doesn't taste half bad! 1 cup of white sugar is about 200 grams of carb in it, whereas 1 cup of maple flakes has only about 144 grams of carb in it. However, I do not suggest taking out all of the sugar in a recipe and substituting it for maple flakes. 

If there is originally 2 1/2 cups of white sugar in a recipe, I would suggest using 1 3/4 cups of white sugar and about 5-7 teaspoons of maple flakes.  You can buy Decacer Maple Flakes at www.costco.ca . Try them out in your next recipe and tell me how it turned out in the comments!

2. Vanilla

If you want a little bit of extra sweetness in your recipe and a little less carbohydrates, then vanilla is the way to go! Lets say a recipe has 2 1/4 cups of sugar. You could probably get away with using 2 cups of regular sugar, and a splash of vanilla. The great thing about vanilla is that it's carb-less, so you can use as much of it as you want without effecting your blood sugars at all! 

The only thing to be cautious of when substituting with vanilla is that you shouldn't substitute it for more than about 1/4 of a cup of sugar or else you risk ruining the texture/consistency of your dessert. You can buy vanilla just about anywhere that sells food. Try it in your next recipe and comment down below about how it turned out!

April Showers Bring May Flours!

Flour contributes greatly to most recipe's carb counts because it is so high carb. But you can substitute corn starch for flour and end up with a dessert that is still just as yummy! 1 cup of all-purpose flour is roughly 95 grams of carb. 1 cup of corn starch is roughly 117 grams of carb. Now, I know what you're thinking. But no, I'm not stupid. I know that 117 is more than 95, but let me finish explaining. 

For whatever amount of flour that is called for in your recipe, you only use half as much corn starch! So if you originally need 1 cup of flour, you only need half a cup of corn starch. If you originally need 1 tbsp of flour, you only need 1/2 tbsp of corn starch. If you have 2 cups of flour called for in your recipe, that's 190 carbs. But if you use corn starch, then you only need 1 cup which is 117 carbs.

You can buy corn starch in the baking section of most grocery stores like Superstore, Fortinos, and Walmart. Try it out in your next recipe and tell me what the results were by commenting down below.

Thanks for reading this post of That Stupid Pancreas!

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Today's question of the day is...

What is your favourite food EVER? Mine is freshly toasted golden-brown marshmallows. Comment down below!