It’s That Time of Year
If there is one time of year when sweet treats should come to the forefront, it’s Christmas time. Gingerbread cookies, popcorn balls, toffee, sugar cookies, puddings, cakes and pies, start appearing every time we turn around. It’s definitely a sweet time of year!
Let’s not let our nourishing food principles go to the wayside, but instead make delicious, naturally sweetened sweets. I think you will be surprised at how much you can do with natural, unrefined sugars. They really have a depth of flavor that white sugar just can’t match. I have learned to love naturally sweetened desserts, and would honestly not even want to go back to refined sugar sweets.
Here are a few examples of naturally sweetened desserts on my site.
Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream
Decadent Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream
Maple Honey Pumpkin Pie
Honey Sweetened Blackberry Gelatin
The Challenge
The challenge I present to you is to dust off old family recipes using less than stellar sweeteners and revamp them using the best type of sweeteners. (If you aren’t familiar with some of the natural sweeteners, don’t worry, I will be doing a post early next week explaining the use of different natural sweeteners). If you are already a natural sweetener pro, then please, share your wealth with us!
Update: My Guide to Natural Sweeteners is up now!
Here are the rules:
On the 16th of December, a Tuesday, I will be hosting a Mr. Linky carnival, where everyone can use the Mr. Linky to post their links. (see a past carnival to see how this works).
1-Your entry must showcase a sweet something- sweetened entirely from a natural, unrefined sweetener. I realize that is a rather wide (or narrow, depending on your view point) definition, so I will be doing a follow up post to this one, explaining the different sweeteners I consider good choices. Examples: Unrefined cane sugar (like rapadura), maple syrup, sorghum, coconut/palm sugar, honey, etc.
Whole grain would be nice, soaked even better, but neither are mandatory. We are concentrating on natural sweeteners. But do make sure that you use nourishing fats (lard, butter, coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, are all great).
2-Please post a link back to the carnival post, so that your readers will be directed to everyone else’s posts.
I can’t wait to see what you all come up with (who doesn’t need a few more sweet recipes in their recipe boxes?).
See you then!
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Excellent idea! I’ve been looking to develop a naturally sweetened fudge and this presents the perfect opportunity to experiment a bit.
Jenny,
That sounds soooo wonderful. I love fudge. I wish your experiments success, and hope that you share the results with us! 🙂
What a wonderful idea. I can’t wait to see the results. I won’t use it, but I recently of Ani Phyo’s raw vegan chocolate. The ingredients included, cacao butter, shaved, cacao powder, mesquite powder, maca powder, and agave I haven’t tried it yet, because I’m waiting on my ingredients to come in. All of which can be ordered from Ultimate Super Foods. If you are interested in seeing the video it’s under the Weekend Videos on my blog. 🙂
I have a lovely bunch of mangos to make pudding with as soon as they soften, but I’m a little nervous because I haven’t posted a blog before. Any pointers on the Mr. Linky setup would be great. There is a raw fudge recipe I found too, but you have to keep it in the freezer because it’s soo gooey, mabey not the best winter recipe. Hope I can post at the carnival, I’m gonna try. Thanks!
Great idea, Kimi! I’m definitely in for this one. Who doesn’t love their natural sweets? 🙂
Hi Kimi,
This sounds great. I have been so intrigued with your “carnivals” and am looking forward to participating this time. I always try to use natural sweeteners but am still working on trying to get the soaking thing down…
One thing I want to share which I experimented with…
I made Irish Oatmeal from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook – oh my it was delicious. I’ll try to post about it in a few days. But in any event, I had way too much that we would ever be able to eat…so I spread it out very thin, dried it in my oven at 150 degrees and then ground it up to make flour. I am going to try and bake with it and see what happens.
It is a “soaked” grain – I think – since I did soak the oats overnight when I made the oatmeal. Does this sound odd?
Oh – and I wanted to mention…I tried baking with the Sprouted Flours form Summers Baking Co. Well – so far, not so good. My baked goods came out VERY dense and my family did not like them. I’ll continue to experiment and keep you posted.
Thank you so much for all you do on this site. You are such an inspiration to me. I wanted to mention that yesterday at our homeschool get-together, I shared your blog address with all my friends. They are NT newbies and are anxious to learn more from you.
All the best,
Mary
Hi Kimi,
Here is the link for the sprouted flours…
http://www.creatingheaven.net/eeproducts/eesfc/
All the best,
Mary
Yum! This sounds like a great idea, Kimi! 🙂
Blessings,
Michele
Anita,
That sounds divine!
Spencer Anderson,
You will find using the Mr. Linky pretty simple, I think! Let me know if you have any trouble, and I can enter it in for you. 😉
Mary,
You are so very sweet! Thank you so very much. 🙂 Your soaked flour sounds very interesting! Do let us know what happens with it. And thank you so much for the link to the sprouted flour. I am making my own right now, but I wanted to look for a company that sold it as well, for those who didn’t want to make their own. What have you tried making with it so far?
I just ordered 30 whole raw organic vanilla beans for under $20 after shipping! Heres the link to e-bay for those interested, Christmas is coming after all!
http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vY2dpLmViYXkuY29tL3dzL2VCYXlJU0FQSS5kbGw/Vmlld0l0ZW0maXRlbT0yNTAzMzkyNTk0MjE=
Hi Kimi,
With the sprouted flour, I used sprouted spelt for cookies – they came very heavy and dense. I then tried the sprouted wheat to make waffles – oh dear…they were like hockey pucks! LOL!!
None the less, I will continue on and keep you posted. 🙂
All the best,
Mary
What a great idea! I can’t wait to see what recipes get posted. I’ll have to do some experimenting to see which one I’ll end up contributing.