Splenda Recipes

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups Splenda
1 1/2 teaspoons dark molasses
2 large eggs
2 1/4 cups whole grain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate bar
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper (spray a little non-stick spray directly onto the pan to hold the paper in place) or, even better, a silicon baking mat.

Start by creaming the butter in your electric mixer.  Creaming the butter entails mixing the butter ONLY on low speed until the stick has turned completely to fluff.  When the butter is creamed, slowly pour in the Splenda, then continue beating until it is mixed in thoroughly.  Once the Splenda is mixed in, add each egg, one at a time, waiting until the first egg is beaten in completely.  Once the second egg is beaten, add the molasses.

That finishes up the wet ingredients.  Set the mixer down to low, and add the flour slowly.  You need to be careful to not send the flour flying into the air as you add it.  Now add the salt and baking soda.  Continue mixing for a few seconds to ensure the flour is wet, then increase the speed to  medium until the dough is thick and gooey.  

To add the chips and, if desired, nuts, you can either turn the mixer back to low and add slowly, or you can take the mixing bowl off the mixer, pour then in all at once, and fold them into the dough with a spatula.  Folding is more work, but you are going to get a better distribution of the chunky ingredients.

To form the cookies, place one tablespoon of dough, formed into a ball, on the cookie sheet.  Make sure you have a few inches between each ball so the cookies can flatten without running together.  If you have one, an ice cream scoopis the best way to get uniform cookie sizes, which not only look better but will cook more evenly.

Bake for about ten minutes, or until the center of the cookie has turned light golden brown.  If the edges of the cookies look completely done in the oven, you have overcooked them.  If in doubt, take them out.  Most people prefer slightly gooey cookies rather than dry crispy cookies.

After removing the pan from the oven, take the cookies off the pan and place them on a wire rack so they cool evenly.  Leaving them on the pan to cool will cause the bottom to continue cooking, resulting in dry, burned cookies.

As with any baking, you may need to adjust cooking times and temperatures if you live at a high altitude.  Over 5000 feet, use only 2.5 tsp of baking powder, and heat the often to 400°F.  You should also add either 1/4 of a stick of butter extra, or 1/4 cup of milk to maintain moistness.  

Best Tasting Recipes offers an excellent dessert cookbook.  Most of these recipes can be adapted to Splenda instead of sugar and will still taste great!

Chocolate Gravy with Biscuits

It’s early Sunday morning as I write this.  Even though I am 35 now and would rather drink two cups of vegetable juice for breakfast, weekends still make me think of chocolate gravy.

I think this is one of those insanely unhealthy breakfast foods with which Southerners like to fatten up their kids.  I’m quite certain that chocolate gravy once or twice every weekend was the #2 reason (#1 being that I drank soda instead of water) I went from being skinny at the age of five to fat at the age of nine.  Thanks for the gravy, mom!

This version is still not particularly healthy, but it’s much less dangerous than the one I gre up with:

• 1/2 cup of Splenda
• 4 tablespoons of Hershey’s cocoa powder (or other unsweeted Dutch Process chocolate powder)
• 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
• 1.5  cups of milk
• 3/4 stick of butter, cut into quarters

Before starting your gravy, pre-heat your oven for the biscuits.  Personally, I prefer buying biscuits in a tube, like Pilsbury Grands, but if you want to make your own, let me suggest Alton Brown’s Southern Biscuits.  Pop the biscuits into the oven at the same time you start cooking the gravy.

Start the gravy by cooking a roux.  This is when you melt fat in a saucepan, then cook white flour into it.  This accomplishes two things:  it mixes the flour into the fat so it won’t clump when you add liquid, and it cooks the flour to remove the raw flour taste from your dish.

Melt 1/4 of the stick of butter over low heat in your saucepan.  As soon as the butter starts to bubble, slowly add the flour, one tablespoon at a time, then whisk it into the butter it’s mixed.  This part might seen slow and tedious, but it really helps both the flavor and consistency of the gravy.  Continue to cook the roux over medium-low heat until it turns medium brown, about the color of a brown paper bag.  You can cook it a little darker to add more flavor if you like.

Once the roux has reached a color you like, remove it from the heat.  Off the heat, mix in the Splenda, cocoa powder, and 1/2 cup of milk.  Place back onto medium heat and whisk slowly until all solids begin to dissolve.  You should have a pretty thick paste starting to form.  Add another half cup of milk and another quarter stick of butter, then stir until you have a thick gravy consistency.  

As the mixture heats, add the rest of the milk just a little at a time, stirring it in thoroughly after each addition.  At this stage you are controlling the thickness of the gravy to your taste. Once you have achieved the thickness you like, cook until it you see the first bubble.

Remove from the heat, and serve over the fresh-basked biscuits.  Cut the remaining butter into tabs and place them on top of the gravy for a nice buttery garnish.

I hope you’ll one of my favorite Splenda recipes! 

For more great cooking lessons, take a look at The Cooking Experience, cooking lessons for the non-chef.

 In 1976, food scientists at Tate & Lyle discovered Sucralose, an artificial sweetener that is 600 times as sweet as the sucrose (table sugar) from which it is derived.  In 1991, Tate & Lyle started selling Splenda in Canada, then New Zealand and Australia.  It was first sold in the US in 1998.  Today, it is sold in over sixt countries world-wide.

Splenda is NOT zero calories, although some marketing materials say it is.  The packets actually contain slightly more calories than the same amount of sugar.  The caloric content comes not from the sucralose, however, but from the dextrose or maltodextrin filler.  Because it is so incredibly sweet, Splenda would be unmarketable and, frankly, unusable in its raw form.  Only industrial food makers use enough to justify the addition of straight sucralose to their products.  Therefore commercial products which are sweetened with Splenda may indeed be much lower in calories than sugar-sweetened products.

Splenda, in my opinion, tastes much better than aspartame or sacchrarin.  It’s easier to mix into cold drinks than real sugar or other artifical sweeters.  Although it doesn’t caramelize like real sugar, it makes a great substitute for most cooking applications.  You’d never think of cooking a homemade barbeque sauce with Equal, would you?  Does ice cream with Sweet’n'Low sound good to you?

Splenda is splendid.  My diabetes-prone family has switched to it for nearly all our sweetening needs.  This blog is all about cooking with Splenda so you can enjoy the sweetest things in life… without sending your blood sugar into the triple digits.

I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to share your Splenda recipes!