Ulcerative Colitis Desserts: Chocolate

When dealing with ulcerative colitis, you have to come up with very creative ways to enjoy the foods that you love, especially if these foods trigger an ulcerative colitis flare-up. I happen to love chocolate cheesecake, but chocolate is one of my ulcerative colitis trigger foods.

With the help of some other ulcerative colitis sufferers, we have figured out a couple of ways to dodge the bullet, so to speak, when we want to eat chocolate. Just grabbing a Hershey bar is usually out of the question for me unless I want to deal with the horror of having an ulcerative colitis flare-up.

I can drink hot chocolate if it is Swiss Miss and I make it using boiled water. Swiss Miss has some milk powder in the mix but, for some reason, milk powder does not cause me to have an ulcerative colitis flare up.

I can make recipes that use cocoa powder. If the recipe calls for milk, I will use a lactose free milk. I have also mixed powdered milk with water and have gotten good results. Most of the time, when I make chocolate foods using these alternatives, people never know the difference.

If you use powdered milk, use ¾ of the water called for on the box. This will make the milk a little thicker and the food you are making will have a better consistency.

As I said before, I love chocolate cheesecake. I have a wonderful recipe that is healthy and in my case, ulcerative colitis friendly. I take one container of Ricotta cheese. Ricotta cheese usually comes in 8 to 16 ounce containers. You can use any amount to make this recipe.

Mix four packets of Splenda sweetener, 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and ½ a teaspoon on vanilla into the Ricotta cheese. Mix it up well. This makes a mock chocolate cheesecake filling.

You can serve this by pouring it into a graham cracker crust before letting it chill. You can also let it chill and then serve it with graham crackers or you can just eat the filling. It needs to chill about an hour before you eat it.

That recipe is by far my favorite ulcerative colitis friendly chocolate recipe. I must stress the importance of trying a small amount of this to make sure that it does not cause an ulcerative colitis flare up for you. Artificial sweeteners or the Ricotta cheese may cause a flare up in some people. This is a recipe that works for me and most of the people that I know who have ulcerative colitis.

I hope that everyone with ulcerative colitis can find ways to be able to enjoy their favorite foods without fearing the horror of an ulcerative colitis flare up. It is a very liberating experience to be able to overcome the dietary restrictions of this disease.