Talking Food: How To Prepare Healthy, Holiday Desserts

At this time of year it seems like suites are all around. It is really difficult to resist all the cookies and pies and chocolate and peppermint and eggnog flavored treats. They are all part of a holiday season many. Our guest says there are alternatives which are healthy and they are still sweet alternatives out there. Laura is a health and fitness expert and she has a new book with recipes to satisfy your sweet tooth without having into the sugar cravings. It is called sweets in the raw natural healthy desserts. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. What inspired you to write this cookbook of healthy dessert recipes. Kind of a combination. I had a personal struggle with sugar and I wanted to help people. Dessert is really hard to give up. I spent a lot of time that instead of seeing what we can have -- cannot have here is what we can. Believe many people in this nation are suffering from obesity. Your recipes are like a way of breaking that addiction? It is. I believe that sugar addiction in general is a tricky one. Depending on what -- who you talk to have people blink it is real and others believe it is lack of self-control. I can personally speak for myself and I know my father also goes through food or sugar addiction. I wanted to find that something that people can eat that still hits the craving but without sending you spiraling. Without sending you to eat the whole dozen donuts and something that can satisfy the sweet tooth but not ticket over the edge for your losing control. Whether or not you have a sugar addiction Mrs. a good way to go. Your desserts are all raw. No bake desserts. We went raw because it is easier and simpler. A lot of times people do not have time to make. I grew up playing in the kitchen. Some people are not very comfortable turning on the oven. Most of these desserts take less than five minutes to make. Some of them you will need to freeze. That was the easiest way to make a whole and clean. Can you give us some examples? We had everything from a gluten-free oatmeal raisin cookie to lemon cookies to chocolate truffles to peanut butter fudge How do you do a peanut butter fudge without bacon a. You we use organic peanut butter and dates. That's supersweet but I -- high in fiber. Not the blood sugar spike. No added sugar. What other natural sweeteners to use as a substitute. We end up using fruit whether it is date strawberries something that is very specific to what we do is something called Yukon syrup. That is something similar to molasses and if you tasted it is similar to but prebiotic and helps the gut flora in your tummy which is wonderful and it has a glycemic spike of one. We use that for our chocolate sauce so when we talk the troubles are the chocolate glaze that is what we are using. You can get it on Amazon or whole foods. It's a new superfood. Got brought up a couple years ago but it was one everybody was kind of questioning what he knew and what he did not know. I've done a lot of research on it and it is a superfood. How much fat and sugar are you actually cutting out? We focus more on the sugar so most people believe that that makes it that. Harvard has done a very good job and actually creates a blood sugar spike that's what creates the belly gain or fat game. What we are focusing on his natural types and most of this is made with nuts and they are healthy fats. They are great for the brain and the metabolism so we focus on cutting the sugar and I actually helps to keep the midline a little bit slimmer. You also have a recipe for sweet almond milk. Is a combination of almonds and water and a little bit of dates you blended and straining within that bag and -- if it is cashew so tedious blended and drinking as is and it is a lovely milkshake. For those who do not have experience making raw desserts Being able to watch it be done so what we focus on is showing you how simple it is. I would say get a good blender and get a good food processor. Those are the secret ingredients to doing it so that is it. What you give us your favorite is -- favorite dessert. The pumpkin she's pick -- pumpkin cheesecake's. They are delicious and the base is made with the pecan and date and cinnamon. The filling is made with pumpkin and cashews. A little bit of date is our sweetener and all the lovely holiday flavors and it is just rich and Smith and creamy and everybody loves them. Congratulations I should let you will -- the listeners know Thank you for having me. We should watch KPBS evening edition on KPBS television. You can see pictures of the research vessel from Sally ride. If you ever miss a show or want to hear the end of an interview for example. I Allison St. John thanks for listening.