Easy Tips Lightening Up Your Favorite Recipes

I think we all have some recipes that we have grown up with and love, but, in time, have come to realize aren't exactly forgiving to our waistlines. Such recipes as your grandmother's special brownies, cakes, pies, cookies, and whatnot. With a little bit of trying, though, one can cut calories and sugar without substituting flavor or texture in a large number of recipes.

Instead of using whole milk, use condensed (sometimes called evaporated) low-fat milk. The low-fat assures you it'll have lower calories per serving size, and the condensing of it assures you that it will likely be able to serve as a convincing, if not superior, substitute for milk. The richness of the condensed low-fat milk helps you still be satisfied.

Use dark chocolate whenever you can, instead of milk chocolate or baking chocolate. The darker the chocolate, the less it has had added to it, the more antioxidants and flavinoids are in it, and the fewer calories it has in it as compared to its milk chocolate counterpart. Also, dark chocolate can deliver flavor more potently than can milk chocolate, because it is more concentrated. Using dark chocolate can greatly reduce the calories and sugar in dishes such as brownies and many cakes.

When using cheese, use a flavorful cheese. Sharp cheddar, feta cheese, aged cheeses, and goat milk cheeses are excellent choices when determining a cheese that will deliver a large amount of flavor without many calories.

Finely chop or even puree high-flavor ingredients as often as you can; this disperses flavor more evenly, allowing you to use less and get the same amount of, or sometimes even more than, the flavor you would get without the increasing of the surface area. Things such as nuts, olives, dried fruits, and small bits of meat are good things to chop or puree to disperse flavor more evenly. Cured meats are often more flavorful than those that are baked. Hazelnuts, almonds, and walnuts tend to deliver more flavoring power per capita than most other nuts.

An adequate substitute for sour cream, often, is a low-fat plain yogurt. In sauces, it will often deliver similar or better effects taste-wise, and has more calcium in it than sour cream will. Note, however, that oftentimes yogurt will add a bit of a tang that some may not like when substituting for sour cream. If that's how you are, you may want to substitute half-and-half instead. Both yogurt and half-and-half work well as a sour cream substitute.

When following a reduced-calorie diet, it is important to add flavor where you take away calories. Spicy food is good for this; jalapenos, habaneros, and similar spices work wonderfully.