Ditch the sugar, not the cake. Sugar free sweets.

You can still enjoy a sweet hit, without the sugar.

IMG_Chocolate Coconut and Raspberry Gateaux

Sugar-free cake recipes. Bondi Beauty talks to sugar-free pioneer Carolyn Hartz.

While we recognise the benefits of cutting sugar out of our diets, the biggest problem we’ve had at Bondi Beauty is actually removing sugary treats from our lives. Who doesn’t love a slice of banana bread with coffee, or a creamy dessert after dinner?

Carolyn Hartz didn’t have a choice about cutting sugar out of her life. Diagnosed with pre-diabetes and gluten-intolerance 28 years ago, she had to quickly curb her sweet-tooth for her own health and wellbeing.

Her new cookbook, Sugar Free Baking, is all about her road to discovering how to make fantastic sweet treats without sugar.

Sugar, Carolyn explains, has been linked to childhood and adult obesity, can exacerbate arthritis, and prematurely age the skin. It’s hard to quit, because there are so many hidden sugar’s in processed products.

Even some ‘sugar-free’ recipe’s use ingredients like honey, rice malt syrup, and agave, all of which contain high levels of sugar.

“Xylitol is a natural sugar-free sweetener that tastes and looks like sugar,” says Carolyn, “but it has none of sugar’s harmful effects on the body, and it has 33% less calories than table sugar. ” Discovering she could still eat sweet foods by using xylitol was a revelation, she says.

Using xylitol doesn’t always produce the same results as sugar though. Carolyn explains that the xylitol she uses, Perfect Sweet, doesn’t caramelize, so can’t be used to make toffee or caramel sauces. But her recipe book only includes sweet treats that can be made with Perfect Sweet xylitol, so you won’t run into any problems there.
Overall, Carolyn says, her cookbook has “allowed me to advise others about the easy changes they can make to their diet, without sacrificing the sweet tastes they love.” She describes the feeling of being able to help others achieve their healthy eating goals as “a huge privilege”.
Replacing sugar with xylitol isn’t as hard as it seems and the health benefits are enormous. Carolyn’s recipes include Chocolate, Coconut, and Raspberry Gateaux, Ice Cream Cake, and Baked Lime Cheesecake  and look easy and delicious; simple baking is often the best kind.

So take the plunge today and ditch the sugar.

Ally Bodnaruk

Ally enjoys long books and large coffees. She spends most of her time daydreaming about new places to travel instead of writing, and the rest of it daydreaming about all the things she’d like to write.

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