Sweet and Natural: More Than 120 Naturally Sweet and Dairy-Free Desserts (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you are concerned about eating refined white sugar and white flour, dairy products, and other highly processed ingredients, Sweet and Natural will help you avoid them while enjoying incredible desserts. Author Meredith McCarty explains why these foods cause a host of health problems, from allergies to diabetes. Then, she describes the ingredients for making healthful desserts, starting with unrefined flours and sweeteners.

Health and pleasure are of equal concern in this book. For baked goods, McCarty recommends using whole-wheat pastry flour. If you must avoid wheat, she explains how to use other grains and flours. In talking about ingredients, as well as in her recipes, McCarty is meticulously detailed.

If you are already familiar with minimally processed ingredients, you will appreciate McCarty's recipes. They produce Martha Stewart-pretty results, as eight pages of color photos demonstrate. Even if you are used to cooking with brown rice syrup and agar (a thickener made from a sea vegetable), the creative ways McCarty uses them offer new possibilities, as in her maple-sweetened Pecan Pie. If this book is your introduction to naturally sweetened, dairy-free desserts, you may enjoy those made with fruit best, particularly the compotes and sorbets, such as Mango Coconut Sorbet.

Sweet and Natural offers perhaps the widest range of recipes and most detailed information about techniques and ingredients for making natural desserts. If you want healthy sweets, this charmingly illustrated book is indispensable. --Dana Jacobi

From Publishers Weekly

McCarty (Fresh from a Vegetarian Kitchen) contends that "you don't need to desert dessert just because you want to eat healthy" and offers more than tempting delights that prove her point. Replacing milk, eggs, butter, sugar, chocolate, white flour and gelatin with soy milk, tofu, canola oil, brown rice malt syrup, organic unsweetened cocoa powder and agar flakes, McCarty works hard to re-create formerly fattening favorites in a way that's acceptable and appealing to vegans, dieters, the health conscious and those with food allergies. She is especially successful with fruit selections, which make up the first half of her book; Mango Coconut Sorbet and Deep-Dish Apple Pie with Streusel Topping are both richly flavorful. Cakes, breads, cookies and puddings follow, each recipe containing a complete nutritional analysis. McCarty writes an excellently detailed introductory chapter on methods and ingredients and concludes with a much-needed source list. She is a purist, advocating nonaluminum baking powder and homemade pump sprays for cooking oil (no dangerous aerosols!). For the dedicated health food fan, her carefully constructed recipes will be welcome?especially the opportunity to trade in a plain apple for some guilt-free Chocolate Pecan Bourbon Bundt Cake.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (February 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312200293
• ISBN-13: 978-0312200299
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,049,727 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious, Beautiful, and Informative!, December 16, 2000

By	"vegangirl" (tucson, az) - See all my reviews

Meredith McCarty has put together a most marvelous book for health-conscious people who want tasty desserts. In addition to over 120 recipes, there is a wealth of information about baking, health, ingredients, techniques, history of foods, etc. This is a great resource. All recipes are vegan (meat- egg- and dairy-free). The book is divided into 8 different dessert sections, plus pages and pages about different sweeteners, flours, leavening agents, oils, salt, fruit, seasonings, edible flowers, appliances, cookware, supplies, etc...The dessert sections are: Fresh Fruit Desserts; Sorbets; Pies & Tarts; Crisps & Cobblers; Cakes, Tea Breads, & Muffins; Cookies; Puddings; Nut Milks, Pastes, & Creams. Ms. McCarty is obviously fond of using brown rice malt syrup or other malted grains as a sweetener, as they metabolize more slowly. But she also incorporates FruitSource, pure maple syrup, fruit juice concentrates, etc. This book is not just for those who want to use more natural sweeteners or who have problems with sugar, nor is this book just for those who want dairy-free desserts. It's for anyone who loves to bake/cook and loves to eat! All the recipes I have tried thus far have been delectable. I just made the Cranberry Nut Bread and it is fantastic! The book does feature a few color photos of some of the finished desserts. All in all a fabulous addition to any cook's kitchen, but especially those who are health-conscious and/or vegan.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wheat-Free and tons of other variations!, December 22, 2000

By	"vegangirl" (tucson, az) - See all my reviews

I neglected to mention in my previous review that this book features many wheat-free variations of the desserts, plus other types of variations that seem to go on and on...you will not be bored with this cookbook. Almost every recipe can be made wheat-free, and almost every recipe has 5 or 6 variations that could easily qualify as independent recipes in their own right--making the grand total of recipes *many* more than 120.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sweet good and great..., July 8, 2000

By	"thebakerman" (New York City , N.Y. United States) - See all my reviews

great book.. I loved it I fooled everyone with these desserts.. nobody knew....I would recommend this book even if you done't have a sugar problem...