Friday 13 March 2015

Can we go Sugar Free?

With all of the news full of how the experts got it wrong all those years ago, making us eat low fat diets, but not worrying about how much sugar was in food; which has now made us all sugar addicts and caused huge implications on the health of our population, I've been wondering if it is possible to go sugar free?  I kept seeing everyone trying out recipes from Davina McCall's new book Davina's 5 Weeks to Sugar-Free and thought I'd order a copy. 

I was up late reading it, thinking, 'Oooh that sounds good' and 'I could do that.' 

So today I've placed my Tesco shopping order, I've ordered brown rice, and flour instead of white, and will do the same when I need to buy pasta (obviously for the rest of the tribe as R and I have to have GF, is GF more beneficial than white flour/pasta etc?) and wholemeal bread (Who thinks L will actually eat it?)

Here's the most exciting bit though, I'm making Fruit Leather from the book! 


Will mine look as good as that? Probably not, but I'm hoping they'll taste as good as they look. 

The recipe was well written out, easy to follow, and looks amazing.  The only thing I would add is that after you have puréed your fruit and put it through the sieve, put the sieved fruit through again, and always do it in small amounts, you'll be amazed at how much more puréed fruit comes through on that second go.  I have done slightly more fruit than Davina suggested, purely because 3 apples and the pear I had (which was going a bit soft) came to slightly more than 300g, apart from that I stuck to the recipe and it is in the oven as I type, should be ready between 5.30pm and 6.30pm, so make sure you make this recipe on a day when you don't need to use the oven at all, as it's only on it's lowest setting 'S' in my case, or you could leave them overnight?







The book has lots of fab ideas in, some of which, like me, you probably already do, but others like making your own granola, which I'd never thought of doing, the ingredients for this has also gone onto the shopping order as both J and C love it.  I got  the book from Amazon and it arrived the next day as I have Prime.

I'm not sure whether we'll ever go completely sugar free, but I'm certainly going to try and cut it down a lot, trying the tips from this book, and other recipes I've found online for sugar free cooking.  I'm going to keep updating on how we're managing, what the children think to the brown rice, pasta and bread, we're trying the brown rice tonight as I'm making Chinese Chicken balls with egg fried rice for dinner.

Do you think you could go sugar free?

Lupin Girl x

**UPDATE**

I think the tray I used was too big for the amount of fruit puree I had. Luckily I had a sneak peak at the fruit leather with 2 1/2 hours left and it was done. A little too well done around the edge and the very centre was still slightly gooey. I've managed to cut them and roll them up, although I have got one strip where I can't tell if the paper is still stuck on the back or not!





C, L and R have tried them and liked them, they said they were chewy, and L said they were a little sour but I should make them again. I'll either double the fruit or use a smaller tray next time. I'm also considering getting a dehydrater which I think will make things easier, does anyone have one? What are they like? 

Lupin Girl x 


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