New cookbook helps cut refined sugar, but not sweets and snacks

Quick look: Cut refined sugar from your diet – but not sweets and snacks – with more than 100 recipes that re-imagine classic desserts and other dishes using alternative sweeteners.

What’s inside: This new cookbook offers healthier versions of favorite recipes, such as strawberry scones, carrot cake and chocolate mousse, flavored with prunes and amaretto.

It opens with a general overview of the role of sugar in the diet as well as simple steps to sugar-free eating, such as minimizing alcohol consumption and avoiding sugary drinks and cereals. A chart near the front of the book helps locate recipes quickly. A glossary in the back explains ingredients with which some home cooks might not be familiar, such as agar, chestnut flour and raw lucuma powder.

Recipes are divided by type of treat: cake, ice cream, everyday snacks, party food, and muffins, cupcakes and cookies. There’s a chapter especially for children as well as another for sauces and spreads, such as chocolate-hazelnut and an eggless avocado “mayonnaise.”

Look also for Cinnamon Thins, Chocolate Tea Cake, Chestnut Tiramisu Cake, Fresh Fig Panna Cotta, Raw Gingerbread, Banana Bread and Pineapple Fritters. There’s butternut squash in the brownies and Spicy Ginger Cake with Apricot Topping. Rice milk, store-bought puff pastry, sunflower oil are other staple ingredients.

What’s not: Refined sugar is missing from the recipes in this cookbook. In most cases, it’s replaced with stevia or fruit (such as dates, prunes, figs or bananas), fruit juices, honey and small amounts of alcohol. Recipes rely largely on fruit, nuts and spices for flavor.

Note that many of them also feature white or whole-wheat flours, corn starch and dairy products, so if you’re following a diet that aims to curb carbs or dairy as well as sugar – such as Whole30 – you wouldn’t be able to use most of the recipes in this book.

Avocado Mayonnaise

From “Sensationally Sugar Free” by Susanna Booth

5 ounces avocado flesh (about 1 whole avocado)

Generous 1/3 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon corn starch

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 1/2 teaspoons garlic puree

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until thick and completely smooth, about 2 minutes. Let sit for a couple of minutes. Now blend again for another minute. This method helps the mayonnaise stay creamy and prevent it from separating.

Serve immediately or scrape everything into an airtight container and refrigerate until needed. Give it a quick stir before serving. It will keep up to 3 days without going brown.

Yield: about 2/3 cup