The Joys of Substituting

Substituting is one of the joys of cooking. It's where you get creative -- either because you're missing one essential ingredient in the recipe you want to cook right now or because you have special needs or particular desires.

I am sensitive to dairy. I can eat cheese or sour cream or heavy whipping cream occassionally but certainly not all three on the same day. If I am going to indulge in cheese, I want to really savor that moment. I'll have a very flavorful cheese on a cracker, not melted and insignificant in soup or in a casserole. Or heavy whipping cream, whipped with a tad of maple syrup and piled just so on a pumpkin pie (made with coconut milk instead of more whipping cream).

In order to compensate for my special needs, I've developed recipes for creamy soups, spreads and dessert toppings. I've even created a mock "sour cream" to use on tacos instead of sour cream. In some cases, these creations are just as good, as in the case of Smoked Cream of Potato Soup. In other cases, as in the case of the mock sour cream, they hold the place until another day. One postive benefit to these non dairy creations is that they are lighter, less rich and more energizing.

Here are a few of the substitutions that I make for dairy:

In soups and sauces, I use nut milks and nut or seed butters to provide creaminess and rich mouth feel. The easiest nut milk to make is cashew milk. Simply grind about 1/2 cup of cashews in a blender with 1 cup water. Cashew milk has a sweeter taste to it than cow's milk, sometimes I add a sour ingredient like lemon juice or vinegar to balance the flavor. To read about the advantages of eating nuts and seeds, click here.

For baking, I use soymilk cup for cup for milk. If the recipe ccalls for buttermilk, I sour the soymilk with about one tbsp of apple cider vinegar per cup. I use soured soymilk as a substitute for yogurt as well.

Tofu can be used to create creamy ranch dressings and a sweet non-dairy dessert topping.

But substituting goes beyond special needs and allergy control. Very few recipes are created with optimum health in mind. I don't know why this is the case. Tradition, perhaps? Open any cookbook to the sweet section and you will find recipes that include white flour and white sugar. Sometimes you may see recipes that call for the flour to be half whole grain and half white. Which means it will take you more time to make the recipe and that you will be short changing yourself and your family on half of the nutrients availble in whole grain flour. Something has happened to whole grain flour production that you should know about. In every natural food store, you can now find whole wheat PASTRY flour.

Whole wheat pastry flour is made from soft wheat berries and ground fine to produce cakes, cookies and muffins with a light texture. No, you will not have the experience of biting into sweet air, but if that is what you desire, you are heading for Atkins faster than a speeding bullet and I can't help you. Eat your grains and sugars in their WHOLE form and you will not put your body into a blood sugar roller coaster and you will provide yourself with a steady stream of energy.

White sugar contains nothing but calories. This is bad news for adults who are looking for something sweet to eat after dinner. If an adult chooses to eat a white sugar-sweetened piece of cake, they will be consuming more sugar than they are likely to burn off in a day, much less in the 3 or less hours left before bedtime. Sugar that is not converted into energy gets detoured into the liver where it is then unhappily transformed into fat. I'm writing this to convince you to eat whole grains. But if you read between the lines, you may find a hint: eat your sweets earlier in the day and exercise!

The story of whtie sugar is worse for children. Those parents who have fed their child a cookie in the afternoon before dinner know all to well: give a child a cookie, they will not eat their dinner. Children do tend to run around (like chickens) more so than adults and so the sugar ingested may in fact be completely converted to energy. However, a body expects and requires more than just calories. CALORIES ARE ALL THAT WHITE SUGAR PROVIDES. Missing from white sugar-sweetened treats is calcium, magnesium, B vitamins, iron and scores of other nutrients that nature wisely included in sugar cane, as well as in whole grains.

OK, are you reading carefully? Let's think about a cookie for a minute, how about, everyone's favorite: chocolate chip. A typical chocolate chip cookie contains white flour, white sugar, with any luck it will contain butter and not hydrogenated oils, eggs, and chocolate chips. The white flour is enriched so it will contain some magnesium, some B vitamins, but don't get comfortable, it does not contain the diverse nutrients that nature in her wisdom provides. Furthermore, we don't even know the extent that added nutrients are absorbed by the body. And finally, we don't know anything about the quality of these "enrichments" they are just more white powders added to the flour as if it the manufacturers where mixing chemicals, not making food. (I'm ranting, I know, bear with me). So, you've got stripped down processed flour "enriched" by stripped down processed nutrients. You add stripped down processed sugar, (100% sucrose)You balance it with butter and eggs which will at least provide some fat that can slow down the sugar metabolism. The chocolate chips, while they may provide some antioxidants, are more sugar than chocolate, kind of tipping scale, or rather weighting down the scale that's already tipped far over to the side of the sugar.

Sounds dismal, doesn't it? But let's get back to the subject at hand: substituting. With a little finesse and some substituting, we can take that chocolate chip cookie and bring the scale back into balance. In fact, I'm going to pack that cookie so full of nutrients that the scale is going to go the other way: back to nutrient providing instead of nutrient depriving.

First, substitute whole wheat pastry flour cup for cup for white flour works in just about every recipe,especially in cookies. If you are making cake and you feel like you want it to be a little lighter, you can take your one cup measure and add 3 tbsp of arrowroot then fill it the rest of the way with whole wheat pastry flour, then sift. Stir the bran which sifts out back into the flour mix.

Don't use white sugar. There are 3 or 4 good quailty "whole" brown sugars in health food stores today. Look for Sucanat, Rapadura, and Muscavado sugar. Substitute these cup for cup for white sugar and then pour about a quarter of the cup back into the bag. Recipes for cookies, cakes and muffins are generally always too sweet. These brown sugars are minimally processed, they contain B vitamins, magnesium, calcium and other micro nutrients. I have never had a bad experience with these sugars. They produce cakes, cookies, muffins and pies that have a complex flavor, sweet and rich with a molasses undertone.

Finally, for every chocolate chip a nut and a raisin. Add dried fruits, add more nuts, add shredded carrots, add coconut flakes. Scan the aisles at the health food store for nuts you haven't put in cookies before: sunflower seeds or brazil nuts; dried cherries or dried bananas. Don't be afraid to do something you haven't done before. Trust me, if you're baking for kids, they won't complain if they're under 12. If they're over 12, they were going to complain anyway!

I also love to use maple syrup and other liquid whole sweeteners instead of white sugar. Substituting wet ingredients for dry is a bit more complex, but can be done with a bit of patience and willingness. Basically, you will need to increase the dry ingredients, but not by much. If the cookie crumbles too easiy, who's complaining -- it's a cookie!

There's no end to what is achievable with substitutions: dairy free stroganoff, dairy free artichoke heart dip, nutrient rich chocolate chip cookies . . . The trick is to be daring. Get to know the ingredients that you love and be willing to use them in unlikely combinations. Let the boundaries of ethnic cuisines dissolve as you add coconut milk to pumpkin pie and cashew milk to potato soup. Substituting really is about enjoying. You can enjoy a cookie without feeling guilty. We don't have to ignore our body's special needs when we sit down to our slice of pie!

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