[Staceyy]

Shortly after attending culinary school to become a pastry chef, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I was devastated as I absolutely loved to bake and loved to eat sweets. I experimented with a lot of artificial sweeteners and was mainly disappointed with the results. I still continue to experiment and have had some successes also which I would like to share with you.

I make my own low carb flours which I use to prepare pancakes, waffles and muffins. I keep the following on hand at all times: white flour, wholewheat flour, soy flour, whole almonds and, old fashioned oats.

If I'm making muffins, I will follow a traditional recipe that we'll say calls for 3 cups flour. I will look at my flours and might decide to mix 1 cup white flour, 1 cup wholewheat flour, and
1 c soy flour together. Sometimes I will use all wholewheat flour or any mixture I decide on. I will sometimes grind almonds to make almond flour or oats to make oat flour. I caution you not to use soy flour in your waffle or pancake batters as it tends to stick too much to the griddles. I have not as yet tried my combination flours in cookies, cakes or piecrusts.

If a recipe calls for oil, I will use canola oil.

I am not a big fan of putting artificial sweeteners in most baked goods as it alters the texture and flavors too much and makes things stick to the pan. When baking cakes or muffins therefore, I prefer to cut down on the amount of sugar rather than add all artificial sweetener or even a combination of sweetener and sugar. Yesterday for instance, I baked a large batch of muffins Amish Raisin Bran Muffins that called for 3 cups of sugar. The recipe makes 6 dozen muffins. I reduced the sugar to 1 cup of sugar with very satisfactory results.

I've found a combination of half sugar and half Splenda does work well in Sweet Potato and Pumpkin pies. This also will work well in baked bread and rice puddings (I use brown rice) and in baked custards. I also use half sugar and half Splenda when I bake pies such as apple, pineapple, peach and berry. These pies taste pretty much the same as if I had used all sugar.

So I basically mix my flours, use canola oil, and reduce sugar or mix sugar and sweetener together (usually half and half) I do this with just about any standard recipe. And the results are pretty much the same and even sometimes better.

I'm still experimenting, and from time to time will post some of my other results but I hope these tips will help. I am committed to making superior low carb products for my husband (who has also just been diagnosed with diabetes) and my family.