Customer Reviews

Fruit-Sweet and Sugar-Free: Prize-Winning Pies, Cakes, Pastries, Muffins, and Breads from the Ranch Kitchen Bakery (Healing Arts Press)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a fantastic collection of delicious tasting cakes and pastries, prepared according to the level of a fine pastry chef. You can skip some of the finer points (like roasting the nuts before you use them and sifting the flour 3 times!) if you want to speed up the prep time and aren't so particular. THis is what I do. Recipes show a deep knowledge of natural ingredients and interesting combinations of ingredients that I would never have thought of myself.

While some people complain that they cannot fine the fruit juice concentrate she uses, one can easily substitue any concentrated fruit juice, as she clearly explains in the brilliant introduction. I live in Israel and have had great success with the concentrates I can find here. Even die-hard sugar fans wouldn't guess that some of the cakes I have made are sugar free. A great cookbook!

My wife and I keep this cookbook handy in the kitchen at all times, where it can be easily reached when we feel the desire to whip up a tantalizing and healthy dessert. After sampling these recipes, we could never go back to sugar! The Very-Berry syrup is a delight on waffles, pancakes, and French Toast, and the Cranberry Banana Walnut bread graces our table every Sunday morning.

The author explains how to acquire commercially made fruit sweetener, or if one prefers alternative frozen fruit juice concentrates, there is an excellent explanation in Chapter 1, "The Fine Art of Baking", on how to prepare them. We found that chapter to be enlightening and inspirational, and it sets the tone for the entire book.

I wanted a book that would give me ideas about how to cook without sugar - the proportions one would need of a liquid ( of any sort) that would replace dry sugar in a recipe. I have not used the sweetener the author uses but substitute what I can find - i.e. apple butter, fruit sweetner from Black River in Mississauga, Ont, Canada (comes in small 500 ml sizes for about $5.00 bottle)and the recipes have turned out very nicely. I would love to try her sweetener too but oh well..
This book was a good introduction to how to cook without sugar- if you like experimenting with anything sweet that is not straight sugar. You just need to be a little inventive and use her proportions!

I have owned this cook book since 1994. The recipes are easy to follow with good instructions and illistrations. I really enjoy the Old Fashioned Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and the American Beauty Apple Pie. You cannot tell that there is not refined sugar in them. I have taken many items to work and social occasions, with rave reviews. I gave up refined sugars in 1993 and I feel better and have more energy. This book made the transition easy. I would love to find a Volume 2 available.

For the Apple Pie alone I would recommend this book to anyone interested in reducing the amount of refined sugar in their diet. Her recipe is one of the best I have tried and her pie crust was better than many I have tried.

Others have complained that fruit sweetener was expensive and hard to come by. I will admit it is more expensive than sugar, but I have never had trouble finding it and given that it is concentrated you use less of it than you would refined sugar; typically about half as much.

The only reason I did not give this book a 5 star rating is because I would have liked it better if the author had included other sweetener alternatives because I don't find fruit sweetener compatible with all flavors. For instance it works well in fruit desserts, but I did not care for it as a sweetener for pumpkin pie; for that I would prefer something like brown rice syrup.

Overall though the book is very well written, the instructions are very detailed and the author covers a wide range of desserts. It remains one of my favorites.

I have this book and love the recipes. The instructions are very detailed and help a lot in coming up with great results. The sweetener I use is the Wax Orchards sweetener. http://www.waxorchards.com/sweeteners.htm I can buy it at my local Whole Foods.

My favorite recipes? The coffee cake, oatmeal raisin cookies and cream puffs.

This book is too good to be true! I owe the author my taste buds and my thanks. I made the pumpkin pie, and it was excellent. Light, whipped and softly sweetened. Someone's feedback suggested brown rice syrup. I don't think brown rice syrup would be a better tasting substitute, it has quite a unique flavor. However, if you can't find, or don't want to use the fruit sweet concentrate, you could try real maple syrup (for the pumpkin pie) in the same measurement the author uses . Which by the way, I had no problem finding the fruit concentrate! Just walked into a health food store, and there it was with all the honey. It is worth buying large amounts since it stores at room temperature, you can store it for very long periods. Being healthy has never been cheap. See if the stores that sell it will cut you a discount if you buy in bulk. Or try contacting different companies directly to see if they'll give you a direct discount on the fruit concentrate. I found one that will sell it to me almost wholesale. All I have to say is WOW! I suffer from Candida over-growth, and for whatever reason fruit sugar doesn't exacerbate the problem. I've been struggling for 12 years to bake sugar free or with natural sugar, with one flop after another. I actually started to breakdown and cry from joy after I tasted some of Ms. Feuer's cookies. Someone finally got it right! I highly recommend this book. Thank you, thank you Janice!!!!

I have had this book for about 2 weeks and so far have tried 2 recipes, both with great success. I couldn't find the concentrated sweetener she talked about, so I followed her EASY instructions and made my own using canned frozen concentrated apple juice. It's not time consuming, as one reviewer said--it only takes 10 minutes, for Pete sake!! The gingerbread is amazing! I also am now using the fruit concentrate in recipes other than in this book, and they come out great! This is a blessing for those of us who don't want to use artificial sweeteners. It gets 5 stars from me!!

I too was disappointed in this cookbook. I bought it with the same assumption as the other disappointed woman who submitted a review of 2 stars. The fruit sweetner is is sold as a commercial made product only and not for the average consumer in mind. You can order it through a natural food store, but you have to purchase a case of 4 gallons at $35.00 per gallon. Obviously this is not something the average home can afford to buy nor store. She does offer the options of substituting fruit juice concentrates for the fruit sweetner, but she doesn't tell you which ones to use in place each recipe. Ex. Do you you use apple, white grape, orange or a combination of these for a particular recipe. Also she recommends to cook down the fruit juice concentrates before using them. This is time consumming and not beneficial to a family on the go. I would like for her to rewrite this book for the average consumer in mind.

I bought this book thinking it would be a healthy and tasty way to cut down on sugar. After I got it and read through the Introduction and the recipes, I realized the author calls for the use of a concentrated fruit sweetener that is very hard to get. She buys her supply in 1,500 pound shipments from a fruit processing company in California. I don't think too many people have access to something like that without a lot of trouble and expense. The recipes looked delicious, though. There are a few that do call for frozen juice concentrates. I just wish I had found a cookbook that was made for real people instead of professional bakers.