Customer Reviews

Sweet and Sugar Free: An All Natural Fruit-Sweetened Dessert Cookbook

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

 

 

"A Reader" from 1998 is reviewing the wrong book. "Sweet and Sugar Free" by Karen E. Barkie, does not contain any recipes calling for date flour. The book "A Reader" is referring to is called "Cook With Me SUGAR FREE" by Sharon D. Gerstenzang. It is also available here at Amazon, and is an excellent book.

This book, "Sweet & Sugar Free" by Karen E. Barkie, is also an excellent book. The recipes are not as simple as your recipes calling for 2 eggs, 2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of flour. When cooking with fruits and fruit juices, you need slighly different techniques to come up with a tasty finished product. That said, the techniques are explained in detail and after making a few of them, you really feel confident enough to try to alter some of your own recipes, to make them with fruit juices instead of sugar or honey.

Karen Barkie's recipes are reliable. The baked goods have a nice texture, a sweet flavor, and are family-friendly. After learning and experimenting with fruit-sweetened recipes and techniques, the recipes become quite easy. If you are avoiding artificial sweeteners or sugar, honey and other sweeteners that send your insulin soaring, these recipes will really hit the spot. They taste good, feel good in your mouth, satisfy the kids, and are relatively inexpensive easy to prepare.

The New England Apple pie alone makes this book a must for diabetics and anyone wishing to cut sucrose out of their diet! I have served these desserts to many different people and noone notices the lack of sugar or a "funny" aftertaste. Everyone raves about the great sweet fruit taste and the textures are normal. A must have!

"Sweet and Sugarfree" is a must for the diabetic. The recipes are all delicious. The only thing they could improve on would be if some of the ingredients, such as date flour, could be purchased instead of having to make your own. All in all it is an excellent book, but it is a bit time consuming.

Okay. Granted. If you eat a cupcake from the supermarket with that blue icing made from crisco and one pound of confectioner's sugar and then you eat something from this book it'll probably taste like cardboard.

BUT THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!

The point is that we've trained ourselves to like the taste of such overly sugar-filled desserts that we're all becoming diabetic! I just made the Orange Cranberry Muffins and they are delicious! They are soft and moist and have a nice orange flavor with the tartness of the cranberries. Now, yes, they aren't sweet as I'm used to eating "sweet" things, but they're refreshingly yummy and healthful, especially since I replaced the white flour with whole wheat (adding 4 tablespoons of milk).

PLUS, she gives you recipes for tons of jams, spreads, toppings, custards, puddings that you can make and serve with the muffins for breakfast. And it's all refined sugar free and no artificial sweetners, just natural fruit. So if the muffin is too un-sweet for you or if you're just getting used to the taste, make some of her delicious jams and have a muffin with jam for breakfast!

When she says sweet she doesn't mean sugar sweet she means the natural flavor of fruit sweet. And I think we should all wean ourselves off that overly-sweet flavor and learn to appreciate nature's sweetness.

Buy this, experiment with it, and slowly get used to the flavor of all natural sweetness.

The only criticism that I would make is that the recipes have very large yields. That's okay for the cakes and muffins because I just freeze whatever I don't want at that moment but that's not possible to do with the pies and cookies so keep that in mind.

The muffin recipe using applesauce is especially delicious actually quite sweet considering it has no added sugar. I made the pineapple carrot cake and the "natural" flavor was very intense. I think it would be better if some raisins were added to the batter to add a little burst of sweetness in every few bites.

Sugar-free desserts (no refined sugars, honey, molasses, or artificial sugar substitutes)---sweetened with fruit and fruit juices.

Cakes, cookies, pies, custards and much more!

If you've been desiring a way to ease your "sugar-addicted" family into a healthier eating pattern, Karen Barkie's book could be just what you've been looking for!

~Debi

I have so far tried the peanut butter cookies and the lemon moon cookies... and they were unedible. I'm hoping some of the cakes and pies are better, but the two cookies I tried so far are terrible! No one in our household will eat them.

Tried the apple almond cake. Came out like a giant bisquit and wasn't even close to being sweet, not even a hint. I had to add brown sugar to the icing so it would at least pretend to be a dessert.

Sorry but I just cannot recommend this one. I was really excited about it while reading it, too... I'm so disappointed.

If you read the intro, you'll find that this chef and her family had not consumed processed sugar for years before she started making these "desserts." Perhaps that had made her family more attuned to the sweetness of these recipes. I tried 6 of the recipes, and really wanted them to be delicious, but none of them were. I did not try the pies, which are easy to make sugar free; instead I tried some of the more exotic ones, like "pineapple blueberry bars" and "banana coconut bread." All of them simply lacked sweetness, while having a mild fruit flavor - I would rather simply consume fresh fruit than make these.

I was able to salvage each dessert by putting a sugar glaze on the top (1/3 c sugar and a few tablespoons lemon juice or milk). They tasted more like a dessert then, and I still didn't feel too guilty about eating them, since they did not have as much sugar as a "normal" dessert.

I have been the dessert "specialist" in my family for 30 years--and I am always searching for healthier ingredients to our meals, desserts in particular. I like the chemistry of baking as well as the attention to detail that goes into creating a product that delights and surprises because it is delicious as it is lovely. I bought this years ago to make special holiday gifts for the diabetic members of the family. I recently reviewed my notes which I made prior to the ability to access internet opinions. Evidently, my experience has been validated by others who were disappointed. I came here hoping for an updated/improved edition. Sadly, my original notes stand.
I was greatly disappointed in the texture of the end products--they all had the same bland taste and sticky, dense, texture. There is also an unpleasant (to me) smell to every recipe I used.
In the past, I have been on a macrobiotic diet and therefore understand how our taste buds change to the degree that when reintroduction of a little sweetness, salt, butter, etc. can seem like overload. Never-the-less--these were unpalatable from the get-go. I had to throw out the extra muffins in the freezer once I could smell the defrosted product-- the smell made me gag.
I really wanted this to be my go-to book for guiltless treats and gifts, but I will have to continue my search. Sorry to be graphic.

Yes, these recipes can be a little bland, and they aren't really low-calorie, but for novice bakers who want to cut refined sugar out of their diets, this book provides basic recipes that are easy to liven up. I for one need to know how much flour, baking soda, oil, etc. to use.
The author herself offers many suggestions for toppings and mix-ins to help sweeten or spice up these recipes. The fruit breads, for example. are really good with some no-sugar-added jams swirled into the batter. And I double or triple the spices called for. Finally, it's important to remember that this book came out decades before natural sugar substitutes like Stevia (although it's not a good idea to go overboard on that because of the licorice undertaste, but 4 packets for the fruit breads is about right to me).
Don't expect to duplicate the taste of your favorite sugary snacks. Fruit juice-sweetened recipes are different - but I for one have come to prefer them.