I'm Diabetic but I Still Want Dessert!

I did good for the first year of the diabetes diagnosis, but then all hell broke loose and I was consumed with finding and creating desserts that I could safely eat without raising my blood sugar.

Enter my dear friend Kay, who has lived with type 2 for many years. She recommended I start exploring cheesecakes made with artificial sweeteners. Cheesecakes are full of protein and you can create them with very little sweetener and still have them turn out scrumptious. Plus because it's not actually a cake you're not dependent upon flour and sugar to create the texture you're looking for.

In addition, I have recently discovered the joys of erythritol, a powdered substitute for sugar which I found in the pharmaceutical department of my grocery store. I have been safely using erythritol to sweeten things without compromising my glucose levels. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you look into it for your baking needs. It is one of the sugar alcohols and it does not have the aftertaste of other artificial or natural sweeteners. 

So here's my recipe for cranberry cheesecake. I know the holiday season is long gone, but cranberries are so good for you and I love their tartness. 

This cheesecake is made in a 7 inch springform pan, smaller than the standard 9 inch. Prepare the crust according to my recipe A Berry Fraiche Tart, but use only 3/4 cup of almonds, 3 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 cup of flour (use a high fiber flour like almond flour, oat flour, or even coconut flour).

Crazy Cranberry Cheesecake

A Low GI Dream

2 pckgs cream cheese

¼ cup erythritol

¼ cup splenda

2 tbsp stevia blend

1 tbsp coconut flour

2 eggs

1 egg white (leftover from making crust)

1 ½ cup fresh cranberries

¼ cup triple sec

splash of water

¼ cup erythritol

Put cranberries in a small sauce pan with triple sec water and erythritol. Simmer until all the cranberries have bursted and it has thickened a little bit. Set aside to cool or put it in subzero freezer for 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 or 325 if you have convection.

Combine room temperature cream cheese with sugars and flour in a stand mixer. Blend till creamy. Add eggs one at a time and vanilla on low-speed. Blend until very smooth.

Pour the mixture into a prepared springform pan over your parcooked crust.  Scoop the cranberries over the top of the cheesecake and swirl with a knife.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes until the center is still moist looking and the outside is set. I bake it with a broiler pan full of water underneath to create steam and keep it from cracking. This also keeps me from having to do a water bath.

You can use this recipe for a 9 inch springform pan by adding another package of cream cheese, increasing the sweetener to your liking, adding one egg, and another tablespoon of butter.

A Berry Fraiche Fruit Tart

If I swear to you that I am NOT consumed with creating low GI desserts for my own consumption, will you believe me?

You'd be pretty naive if you did. Jus' sayin'.

But I have good sound reasons for my actions. Promise.

We were entertaining my family for dinner to celebrate the birthdays of my two nephews. They are young adults whose schedules prevent us from seeing them too often. But we managed to find a day in between their birthdays, which are a month apart, to have them over, cook a meal and shower them with . . . okay, gift cards. Yep, how creative is that. But in our defense, they are young men and trying to figure out what gift to buy them is damn near impossible.

Coming up with an idea for dessert, however, proved pretty easy. I knew that the younger of the two nephews also has been trying to steer away from sugar in his diet. I had baked a low GI lemon cheesecake a couple weeks before and thought about doing another cheesecake. The lemon cheesecake--I love anything lemony--was topped with homemade blueberry sauce. And it was a big hit at Easter dinner. But the crust, ohhhh the crust. The crust on that cheesecake was unbelievably yummy. Roasted, salted almonds ground up into a coarse meal, combined with oat flour and butter and just a touch of Stevia Blend to give it some sweetness. By the time the cheesecake was cooked through, that crust was a deep dark toasty color and was soooo much better than your run of the mill graham cracker crust. The crust was truly the star of the cheesecake.

So I started to think about what else I could do with the crust and came up with this fruit tart idea that was incredibly simple to make and absolutely delicious. Berries are high in fiber so they're a good fruit for diabetics. Also, the use of a little Stevia Blend gives the base of this tart the little bit of sweetness I'm looking for without jacking up my glucose level. And the fact that I use oat flour instead of wheat flour in the crust also ensures that my sugar doesn't get a big spike.

First, the crust . . .

1 1/4 cups roasted, salted almonds
1/2 cup oat flour
4 tablespoons of cold butter cut into cubes
1-2 tablespoons Stevia blend, depending on how sweet you want the crust
1 egg yolk

Throw the almonds into a food processor and pulse until ground into a coarse meal. Add the flour and Stevia Blend and pulse again. Add the cold butter and pulse until it's a coarse meal. Then add the egg yolk and run the food processor until it starts to come together like a dough. You don't have to wait until it's one big ball. You can stop when it starts clumping all around. Then you know it's moist throughout and you can work with it.

Dump it onto a lightly greased tart dish (I use a quiche dish with fluted sides) and start pressing it down on the bottom and up the sides. This is enough crust to cover the bottom of an 8 inch quiche or tart dish and go up the sides of it. It can also easily cover the bottom of a 9 inch spring form pan.

Since the ingredients of the tart are not baked you need to bake the crust. If you were using this crust for a cheesecake, you wouldn't need to par-bake the crust at all. I set the oven at 350F and baked the crust for 45-50 minutes. When the top edges get brown, cover them with foil for the last few minutes of baking while the bottom gets brown. You can do this by ripping off a couple long strips of foil and folding them down around the top edges of the pan. Believe me, the browner this crust gets, the yummier it is and the more it will melt in your mouth. So be patient! It takes awhile for the brownness to happen.

And now for the simplest and most delectable dessert ever . . .

Berry Fraiche Fruit Tart - Low GI and Gluten-Free!!
8 oz of creme fraiche
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons Stevia blend
assorted berries
1/4 cup chocolate chips or other dark chocolate bits

First, make sure the crust is completely cooled!! Can't stress that enough. You don't want a warm crust to melt your creme fraiche.

Blend together with a spoon the creme fraiche, vanilla and Stevia blend until well blended. Pour the mix into the prepared crust and spread it around evenly. Put the tart with the creme fraiche back in the refrigerator for an hour. Or you can do what I did and put it in a subzero freezer for 10 minutes until it sets.

Take your cleaned berry assortment and arrange them decoratively and densely on the top of the creme fraiche. I sliced the strawberries but left the blueberries and raspberries whole. You could stop right here and this tart would be fabulous. It doesn't absolutely need the chocolate on top. And it would be slightly lower in sugar without it, depending on how dark your chocolate is. But I've been known to take things too far, and this tart is no exception. So, on with the chocolate topping!!

Put chocolate bits in a Pyrex measuring cup and zap them in the microwave for a minute. Stir to make sure they are melted. If not, zap them for 10 second intervals just until melted. Then transfer with a spatula into a plastic zip lock bag. Cut a small tip off of one corner and squeeze chocolate onto the top of the tart.

If you're not serving it right away, refrigerate it. Once the chocolate turns hard again, you can cover it with plastic wrap.

This tart was gone by the time the family left my house. That never happens! I'm always left with some dessert. Note to self: make 2 next time!

I'm springing into these parties:

Celebrating Change with Chocolate Bread Pudding!

Okay so it's been awhile. To my 142 followers, thank you so much for not "unfollowing" me despite the fact that I haven't posted since March.

All I can say is, it's been a heck of a year! So many changes I have barely had time to think, let alone write.

The biggest changes are as follows, and these are in no particular order . . .

I met and fell in love with the man of my dreams.
I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
I took a part time job as the principal cookie baker for a gluten-free bakery.
My new love and I bought a house together and combined households after knowing each other about 10 months!

How crazy is that?! 

I have so much to share about my journey over the last few months but since getting diagnosed with diabetes is one of the biggest changes I've been coping with, I thought my first post should be my latest recipe adaptation.

So, if you are type 2 diabetes, and you've been looking for a holiday--or any day really--dessert to serve, try my . . .

Chocolate Bread Pudding
adapted from Alton Brown's Chocolate Bread Pudding Recipe 

2 large eggs
2 egg yolks
1/3 cup Splenda
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons Stevia Blend
1 1/2 cups half-n-half
1 to 1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 ounce strong coffee or espresso
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
10 ounces stale high fiber bread, or about 8 or 9 slices
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, preferably 72-85% cacao, broken into 1/2 inch pieces

Alton Brown makes all this in a blender and I thought that worked really well. First the eggs, then the sweeteners and cocoa, then the milk, coffee and vanilla. Blend each ingredient for a short time as you go. It only takes a few seconds for each ingredient so it's really a low-fuss dish. I used leftover coffee and I thought it turned out really good. The darker the chocolate, the less sugar in it, so stick with a 72% to 85% cacao and you should be able to keep the overall sugar content low in this dish.

My recipe is for a medium size bread pudding in a deep glass 9 inch casserole. I buttered the dish, threw the bread in it, tossed the chocolate pieces on the top and then poured the egg mixture over the whole thing. Then I refrigerated it for 8 hours. The bread really was stale so refrigerating allows the bread to soak up the egg mixture.

Then it goes in the oven for about 45 minutes at 325 degrees F.

Alton Brown instructs that you spritz the thing with melted butter and then stick it under the broiler for a couple seconds. I found this step totally unnecessary and burdensome. I ain't got all day to stand around watching things in the broiler. I served this with a brunch and I had a frittata to worry about. So at the last minute, we whipped up some fresh whipped cream with a little bit of Stevia Blend to serve with the bread pudding.

And let me just say . . . OMG this was so stinkin' good! I've been experimenting with a variety of desserts that are low in glycemic load, but this one turned out FAN-FRIGGIN-TASTIC!!

So here are my DIABETES DISCLAIMERS:

1. I am not a doctor, nurse, or nutritionist. I manage my type 2 diabetes (which, btw, was really bad because I had an A1C test that put me at 12.2!!) completely by diet.

2. The high fiber bread in this bread pudding recipe is no sugar added 100% whole wheat high-fiber store-bought bread that anyone can find in the grocery store. These are breads I've been eating for awhile so I know they do not make my glucose spike significantly.

3. There is lots of info about artificial sweeteners, but from what I have read, Splenda and Stevia do not increase glucose levels. The Stevia Blend, however, has sugar in it, so I use it sparingly as a flavor enhancer, not as the primary sweetener. Since it has sugar in it, it could affect glucose levels if you used a lot of it.

4. I check my glucose level 2 and 3 hours after eating one of my recipe adaptations, just as I did with this one. Two hours after I ate the bread pudding, my glucose level was at 127, which means there wasn't a significant spike and I was back down within a reasonable amount of time after eating.

I hope to write more about my journey over the last year, sharing low glycemic load recipes I've either found or created, maybe sharing some pics of our new home and getting back to some crafting and jewelry-making. 

I'm celebrating change with the following leading ladies:

Our Delightful Home Show Me What You Got Linky
Skip to My Lou Made by You Monday
Boogieboard Cottage Masterpiece Monday