My new girlfriend is diabetic, and has mentioned how she misses being able to eat stuff like cookies. I’d like to make her some, and I’ve found a few recipes, but I don’t know which ones are worth it, health wise and taste wise.
So, I come to you folks of the Dope, who know everything. Which recipes out there can be trusted?
*Gah, realized I put this in the wrong forum. Could a passing mod kick it to Cafe Society for me?
IMHO -> Cafe Society
Never, and I repeat NEVER substitute any chocolate that is sweetened with sugar alcohols like maltitol for regular chocolate chips :eek: back at my last job someone used diet chocolate to make the ganache frosting a birthday cake for me and the entire department spent the rest of the afternoon in the bathroom:(
One main problem is that sugar is not just a sweetening agent, it is a texturizing agent and leaving it out or substituting something like splenda or equal for it can screw with the cookie itself. I personally prefer just limiting myself to a single cookie worked into my normal food schedule for the day.
This is what I do, too. One real cookie is way better than several substandard low-carb monstrosities.
That said, if you have to have diabetic cookies, go with meringes. Substitute Splenda for the sugar, and you have a carb-free cookie that also tastes pretty good. The recipe linked is for Peppermint, but they are fine just plain, or with any other kinds of flavorings - here’s another recipe with a variety of flavors. Just make sure whatever you add for flavor doesn’t also add a ton of carbs.
A friend of mine makes me a batch of sugar free Jello cookiesevery year for Christmas.
They still have carbs from the flour and butter, but those are carbs you just cannot escape if you want to keep baked goods in your diabetic menu. 1-1/2 cups of flour has ~143 carbs. Even if you only get a dozen cookies out of the batch, that’s still <12 carbs a big cookie. Easier to work into a daily carb limit than the 20-25 in an average regular cookie.
Meringues can be tricky, you bake them on a paper bag and you have got to follow the temp and timing exactly, and when the instructions say to turn the oven off, do not open the door and let the oven sit untouched for <whatever> length of time, they are serious, otherwise you can get sort of soggy meringues. You still run into issuesbecausze even in meringues sugar is a texturizing agent, typically you have to add different crap to try and get a framework for the eggwhite to foam upon.
Peeps, baking is a science, not an art … kitchen chemistry at its worst. There are reasons for certain ingredients to be always present in certain types of recipes. Speaking as a diabetic of some 30 odd years with all my body parts and nerve endings intact, just deal with eating a small amount of the real thing, stop trying to find substitutes you can gorge upon. That way lies insanity.
Huh, this is more complicated than I thought. I didn’t realize carbs had to be watched too. I guess I need to go read up on diabetes.
Thanks for the advice guys and gals. It’s appreciated.
Hmm I’ve never had much problem making them with Splenda (though I admit I only did it once or twice). But yeah, I’ve probably got more baking experience than the average person, so maybe I’m understating the difficulty.
I can’t agree more. And I look at it like this: it’s not a diabetic thing, it’s a health thing. If you want to be healthy, you don’t eat multiple cookies every day. Every once in a while? Fine. A small cookie every day? Fine. Sitting down and eating several cookies or other sweets every day? Doesn’t matter if you’re diabetic or not, it’s not a healthy diet.
Yup, all carbs. In a diabetic’s eyes, an orange, a potato, a piece of bread, and a cookie are all equally malevolent.
Heh, yup. I gave up taking a small piece of birthday cake at work on the monthly cake day because I got so tired of explaining that I planned to have that piece of cake, that as long as I planned for it, I could have something with sugar. So I started turning it down every time. No skin off my nose, really. I am more of a vinegar/umami snacker anyway.
Also, all the ‘natural’ sweeteners like agave necter - sugar also. Don’t listen to advertising. About the only ‘natural’ sweetener that isn’t going to tweak your glucose chemically is stevia. Although the stevia they are starting to seriously flog online that is granular and pours just like sugar is just as natural as splenda is.
Stevia is excellent but it has carbs unlike artificial sweeteners so you have to watch it.
When I was diagnosed in the hospital, the dietitian told me “It’s not so much sugar as it is carbs.” So pick the carbs you’ll get the most out of. Wheat toast instead of white; an orange instead of orange juice. I try to avoid anything that has more than 10% of its calories in carbs.
I usually sate my sweet tooth with a piece of sugar free hard candy. It’s still sweet, but it has negligible carbs (<5) that won’t spike my blood sugar. But like **aruvqan ** said, if you plan for it, you can still enjoy a splurge once in awhile. On Thanksgiving Day, I eat proteins only for breakfast and lunch so I can have dressing with my turkey and a piece of pound cake for dessert. 