Baking books!

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No, I'm not actually baking the books themselves, but they *do* happen to be books about baking! By now, most of you know how much I love to bake. I love making delicious, healthy treats that I can enjoy - yet still lose weight.

So imagine my delight when I found "Healthful Quantity Baking" by Maureen Egan and Susan Davis Allen in my local library.


Here's an excerpt from the very first page:

"The purpose of this book is to promote healthy and delicious alternatives to traditional 'made-from-scratch' baked products without utilizing expensive fat and sugar substitutes or other artificial ingredients."

Holy crap. Yes!

Maureen! Susan! Be my friends!

I'm looking through this - we've got Sponge Cake, Chocolate Pudding Cake, Chocolate Chiffon Pie, Cherry Turnovers, Peach Cobbler, Gingersnaps, Pound Cake, and that's just the beginning. And the ingredients! There's no "granulated Sweet n Low" or "fat-free egg substitute" or any crap like that. The only offending ingredient I see in these recipes is margarine, which I could probably replace with a mix of applesauce and butter in most cases. Seeing as how this was written in 1992, it makes sense - information about trans fats didn't become mainstream until later on. In '92, margarine was a godsend. It was much lower in fat and tasted fairly similar to butter. Now, though, we've learned that the trans fats in margarine are actually worse for you than butter itself. I know that personally, I'd rather have a very small pat of real butter than a slathering of trans-fatty margarine on my bread.

In addition to this book, I also found "Understanding Baking" by Joseph Amendola, which is a really great starter's book.


It explains the differences between various flours, sugars, chocolates, etc, and methods of storage, and how temperature is important, and how all of these things play a different role in baking. The information is juuuust borderline too-complicated for me, but I think I'll be able to get through it. I'm excited!