Baking

I fancy doing some baking, but I want healthy recipes. Any suggestions? I love banana bread and carrot cake but they're usually full of sugar and fat.

The problem with baked goods is they tend to require flour, sugar, butter and eggs. For sweet baking you can't really substitute these for healthier alternatives. Don't bother with sweetener, it's lower calorie but it can ruin the texture of the food and it's worse for you than sugar.

Best to half or quarter your quantities, substitute the chocolate (if there is any) for nuts and dried fruits and enjoy a small amount of the 'proper' recipe as it should be eaten :) we did this with a batch of cookies the other week and they were fantastic.

How about baking some biscuits packed full of oats?

Yeah I think I'll try these ideas. I was thinking of replacing sugar for honey and flour for wheat free flour? And maybe mashing in some bananas

Honey is no lower in calories than granulated sugar and is still basically sugar. Honey also has a really discintive taste which can take over other flavours. Wheat-free flour isn't necessarily better for you either, unless you have an intolerance. Substitutions rarely taste as good as the original recipe. You can always give it a go, if it works you have something nice for next time... if it doesn't work, at least you tried.

One recipe that does make reasonable use of honey is flapjacks. Oats, oil, honey, dried fruit and chopped mixed nuts (and seeds if you like). Even so, flapjacks are still best made with golden syrup and butter!!

Honey isn't lower in calories than sugar, but (depending on the variety you can buy) it is a healthier alternative if you're choosing between the two as it is sweeter and denser than sugar so less is needed. Also it contains some vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, has antimicrobial properties and can help with digestion, whereas sugar is empty calories. Additionally, honey is lower on the GI index which means that it won't cause crashes in blood sugar levels like sugar.

You could also try substituting sugar for agave nectar (which is low GI) or maple syrup which is lower GI than sugar and contains lots of minerals of antioxidants.

Oh yeah, I never thought of maple syrup, good idea. Do you know much about that manuka honey? I've heard it's really good for you but quite expensive? I didn't know honey was good for the digestive systmem either, will have to add it to my baking more.

Yeah manuka honey is really good for you, it's great for the digestion and is often recommended to people to help with IBS. Also it's got antiviral, antibiotic and antibacterial properties and can help with stomach ulcers and throat infections (and can also be used externally on the skin to treat skin infections, eczema and acne).

It is quite expensive though as you have to make sure you get an "active" manuka honey to get the benefits. These have a UMF (Unique Manuka Factor) number and it's best to get one with a UMF over 15, which are generally over £15 a jar.

It's good for you, but it has a unique taste. It's quite strong and distinctive and not overly sweet like 'normal' honey. Health stores have it on offer quite often, don't bother with the supermarket as they tend to be massively overpriced. The UMF factor will also depend on whether you're using it for its therepeutic benefits,  for general cooking UMF 5 would work fine and it's quite a bit cheaper than the higher UMF varieties.

That's handy- I wanted to find out more about the stuff too so that's saved e some research! Brilliant, thank you