Nothing says yummy like Tom Selleck’s chest hair!Coffee cake is one of life’s nicest niceties. Not only does it have crunchy brown sugar streusel layered with moist cake and topped with icing but it also evokes images of tea parties and twee hats and gloves and dresses with nipped-in waists and Peter-Pan collars. Fun. So when Gym Buddy Lisseth waxed rhapsodic about the best coffee cake ever, which she had made the night before and eaten for breakfast this morning, you will understand why my mouth began to water.
The Gym Buddies and I have an interesting post-workout tradition. After we get good and sweaty together and bounce some iron around (and grunt and scratch ourselves), we sit on the stretching mats… and talk about food. No matter how hard we try, every post-workout conversation eventually comes back to food. What new restaurant Krista tried, the new recipe Megan found, the number of chicken wings Allison can eat in one sitting (her record thus far – with husband – 120. Girlfriend is having a serious pregnancy craving!) – it’s all fair game. By the end, each of us is drooling, starving and usually armed with a resolution to cook something when we get home.
This day it was coffee cake, courtesy of Lisseth. While I didn’t have her recipe, I do have a perfectly wonderful Betty Crocker cookbook that has served me well many a time and so I hauled that out. Turning the oven on to preheat, I checked to make sure I had all the ingredients. For something so tasty, coffee cake is amazingly simple. And also amazingly bad for you! How have I never known what is in coffee cake?! My heart pounded a little faster as I looked at the white flour, oil, butter, salt and all that sugar. I knew I couldn’t make it. What would be the point of that grueling workout I just finished if I were to eat half a coffee cake afterward?
Sighing, I started to put the book away. But then a thought came to my mind – I could healthify it! Happily, I got out my mixer and bowl and set about substituting every ingredient. I used whole wheat flour for the white flour, replaced the fat with a banana, the sugar with applesauce and so forth. Excitedly I poured the batter into a casserole dish (like I own a bundt pan – please, you’re talking to the girl who only owns one grown-up sharp knife). The kitchen filled with yummy smells and 60 minutes later I had… banana bread. And not even good banana bread! Healthified banana bread. That was most definitely not what I was craving. In fact it was so nasty that it sat on our kitchen counter for a week until my husband finally threw it away.
This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, you could say I have a reputation for ruining perfectly good food. The ingredients all start out fine but in the process of trying to healthify the recipe, I usually ruin it. It’s gotten to the point where my cooking has become a punchline among our friends. (“We’re picking up the rocks to landscape our yard this weekend.” “Oh, so you got invited to dinner at Charlotte’s too?” Ha ha ha.)
The problem stems from having my cake and wanting to eat it too. Some healthy living ascetics can give up sugar, fat and every other vice with nary a backward glance (I’m looking at you, Dr. J!). But for me a life without brownies is just too depressing to contemplate. My compromise is to make substitutions.
There is also the other end of the spectrum: the just-eat-the-cake-already people like Bethenney Frankel and all the Intuitive Eaters. If you want coffee cake, the reasoning goes, eat a little of the best coffee cake you can find, don’t deprive yourself and you’ll be sated. However, I have a rather addictive personality or perhaps my tastebuds are just slow to catch on but if I eat only three bites of a really yummy dessert I’m going to feel deprived. I will want more than three bites and telling me to stop there will only make me want to eat more. So we’re back to the substitutions.
Lest you think I’m brilliant – I hate to disillusion you but really you should know better by now – I am not the first person to come up with this idea. There are whole books and websites dedicated to making healthy, yummy food. They also happen to be run by people who are much better cooks than I am. Now the key for me is to hone my mad kitch skillz to the point that I don’t wreck their recipes. It might also help if I got some real cooking equipment.
What’s your food philosophy: have a little bit of what you really crave or focus on healthifying the decadent recipes? Any other chronic food ruiners in the house? Anyone else still cooking with the utensils they got at the thrift store in college?
I have a mix of cheap stuff and nicer stuff (MIL cooks, so Xmas gifts or hand me downs). But, I'm only now getting into cooking. I have yet to find a good balance.
Allowing myself just a little turns into fast food every meal. lol. I like the idea of periodic indulging or healthifying, but I have yet to master either. So, I guess I'll get back to you when I figure life out!
I too often make substitution. such as apple sauce in the cake instead of oil. Splenda in the cookies (but I know how you feel about that particular evil). I've actually succeeded in making cookies with whole wheat flour and everyone loved the taste and texture!
I'm actually in-between the intuitive eaters and the substitutions. I'm often satisfied with a little of my craving food. But I feel better by making it "healthy."
Sorry for your lack of baking skills…it really works better if you only sub one or two ingredients at a time, lol.
I go both ways. I do try to "healthify" on occasion, but I've got to have the real deal from time to time.
Try only making ONE healthy substitution. The more things you substitute, the more you screw with the basic food chemistry in every recipe. Not that I know much about chemistry, much less food chemistry. But the basic ingredients of each recipe are in there for a reason, and if you change them too much, you end up with…a new recipe! Or do half white, half-wheat flour. Compromise.
Banaa bread sounds good right about now. Ever had zucchini bread? Tastes the same, yum…
OH, and you laugh at the Tom Selleck chest hair pic, but my MIL is in love with him still (even after happily being married for 29 years) and would adore the cake! I may steal the cake idea for her birthday 🙂 lol.
usually, a tiny bit of the really rich stuff (but well-made rich, not fast-food-style rich) is so much more satisfying than a lot of the healthier modification, and leaves me much happier. usually i'll try the modification once, and if it tastes just as good or better, i'll stick with it, but if it's noticeably worse or different, i'll go back to the regular stuff.
i've found that eating healthier modifications usually leaves me consuming just as many calories in the end, if not more. my brain knows i'm eating something "healthy" and thus allows my mouth to eat more of it before the guilt kicks in.
"What's your food philosophy: have a little bit of what you really crave or focus on healthifying the decadent recipes?"
Balance and moderation. 🙂 Some things I "healthify" and some things are just worth being decadent. I try not to go to extremes with either, because once I get into the all-or-nothing mindset, I crash and burn.
I'm with you.
If I make something I'm going to eat a lot of it. So I might as well "healthify" it. 3 bites of something decadent is not as good as a whole plate of something healthy. For me 🙂 But I get that other people are different.
In my opinion there is a lot of light cooking you can do. I will saute in non-stick spray, grill and do things with veggies.
However if I am breaking out the kitchen aid and bakeware (I am almost embarrassed to admit how much I have)I will only use real eggs, butter, flour, sugar and chocolate.
Then I bring the leftovers to work and put them in an office on another floor.
I LOVE COFFEE CAKE!!!!!!!!!!! My mouth was watering just reading that! I have certain things I splurge on & plan for & with those, I eat the whole thing! Otherwise, I can do the bite or two thing & be fine.
I am a horrible cook so unless I have a recipe in front of me, I don't try to healthify it! I have found a couple ones I am happy with & one is an oatmeal raisin cookie that is pretty good. I jus don't do a ton of cooking and baking since I am such a so-so cook so I pick & chose what I try.
I can't tell you how many times I have done the same thing, trying to make something healthy and waste all those ingredients by throwing it out. Know what, I just don't do it anymore, not worth it. Once a week, I'm allowed to cheat (according to my personal trainer Josh) and I think really hard about what I want (and not in gargantuan amounts). So, if I want a piece of coffee cake, I go to the bakery and get one piece only, not the whole thing to call my name in the night (which it would definitely do.) But, cudos for trying. Linda
ooh! I actually did a pretty good job of healthy-fiying a blackberry crumble the other day. (Of course, I poured cream on top of it in celebration, but I did sneak oats,whole wheat flour, and flax into my topping!)
I posted the recipe on my blog if you are interested. 🙂
http://thedecayedgentlewoman.blogspot.com/2009/06/relatively-healthy-dessert.html
But usually, if I want to make a dessert recipe, I do it properly, eat a big slice that day, then take the rest to work to get it out of the house. Best of both worlds.
Okay Charlotte… I could very well be wrong here (I'm not much of a cook either), but I thought you were supposed to substitute applesauce for butter/oil, not a banana (and not use applesauce as a sugar substitute). For sugar I usually use Stevia and/or cinnamon since I don't eat chemical sweeteners (and you do usually need a little less if you use the applesauce… or maybe that's just my taste, as I tend to not like super sweet things.)
I'm constantly altering recipes to make them vegan and healthier. But I tend to dislike really sweet/greasy/heavy foods anyway, so if they taste a little healthier, I like that better anyway. But that might be your first mistake… and next time use a berry instead of a banana for coffee cake. (Think about it – you see blueberry and strawberry coffee cakes all the time, right? So adding in some of that fruit would fit the recipe better.)
I love to mix healthifying and indulging.
What's interesting is that a few years ago I was a baking maniac. I baked ALL THE TIME, and brought the results with me to rehearsals, work, etc. And making them was more fun than eating them.
I also cooked all the time. New things, different recipes. I still cook, but I'm in a rut. My kids are very picky and I don't want to make 4 different things at every meal. And I weigh more now.
I think I may need to bust out the ol' cookbooks.
And fix the oven.
My take on this is nearly identical to yours, and this is how I like to analogize it (courtesey of Women's Health mag I think, believe it or not): You wouldn't tell a crack addict to have "just a little crack" would you? No one is telling the crack addict to just have one snort of the best crack he can fine and be satisfied.
Okay, fine, I'm a bit prone to hyperbole, but this is how I feel about that two bites of a yummy dessert nonsense.
That being said, I have the best coffee cake recipe ever. It's from allrecipes.com and it's a sour cream coffee cake, and if you sub egg whites, a-sauce for the oil, half (only half!) of the flour for whole wheat, and here's the real zinger, FF sour cream for the full-fat kind, it actually turns out AMAZING. My boyfriend hasn't the foggiest that it's not artery clogging and he hates my healthified bakery creations vehemently. Now truly it's not really "healthy" in my book because nutrient wise it's rather void, and it's a volumetric dissapointment, but hey it's got some fiber, a bit of simple carb for maybe a pre-workout snack, it's extremely low in unhealthy fats, and, well, when I eat it I feel like Jesus is tap-dancing on my tongue.
Im the "rather have the real than make it healthy" one but only when it comes to sweet stuff!
I have a sad little PROCESSED sweet tooth (love the c heap birthday cake from the grocery over gourmet somethin'somethin') & just eat the real thing infrequently rather than (*gasp*) attempt to bake my own more healthily 🙂
yeah.
As I type this comment Im realizing it is more out of "eh, why try when I can buy' than anything else 🙂
not necessarily a good thing.
I'm definitely more of a eat the real thing kinda girl. Maybe it's also from bad baking experiences I've had in the past but I find I prefer the real thing in smaller quantities than piles and piles of a healthified option.
A few scoops of ice-cream or a chocolate cookie from the freezer and I'm happy!
I just wish I knew about that cake SOONER my birthday is Sunday!
Charlotte, when you make substitutions, you need to think about how it will change the texture of the recipe. Swapping white for whole wheat flour (in my opinion) weighs down the recipe, so you'll need to substitute a "heavier" ingredient for a lighter one.
And bananas should only be used in recipes with stronger flavors than the banana.
I think there are some things that are not meant to be "healthified". Which translates into my rarely baking at all. When I was growing up I loved to bake – but then I had a whole family to share with plus my youthful metabolism.
Most of the "healthy" versions of recipes I've tried have not tasted all that great or else they are still not really that healthy. If you can show me a healthy brownie that actually tastes like a brownie should, then I'll be all over it. Otherwise, what's the point?
I'm one who can't just stop at 3 bites. And I'm totally against making substitutions to dessert recipes to make them healthier. It's dessert, for crying out loud! (JavaChick said it right.) So basically I just rarely eat the sweet stuff–maybe once or twice a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. And I tend to eat a lot of it when I do. Next day, it's back to normal. I'd rather make dessert a rare treat instead of eating a crappy imitation everyday.
I have ruined many recipes trying to healthify them!
But I also have some that work pretty well–it's a process of trial and error and adaptation.
Seems to be very personal though. One persons "Mmm, just like the real thing!" is another persons "Acck, that's inedible!"
Good luck with the substitutions!
I'd have to go with the intuitive eaters. I try not to encourage a sweet tooth by regularly keeping/eating that stuff, but if I've got to have a brownie or cake, it's going to be good, but it doesn't come to the house. I'm all for making things healthier, but I think it's more complicated than simple substitution, as you've discovered. As a rule, I don't bake, as I don't want to encourage junk food eating.
Both – for some things I just splurge – for most I healthify. I find it tough to substitute all but have gotten fairly good and swapping out 1/2. So 1/2 white flour and 1/2 ww or more likely, I use some ww, lots of oat flour and a little white (just love oat flour). Same with sugar. You need some real sugar but I use maybe 1/4-1/3 of what is called for and then sugar subs for the rest (and I combine several which helps mitigate the fake taste). One thing I typically do is make just 1/2 recipe when I am trying something new that I think might not work out. This way there is less to throw away if it is really nasty.
As for kitchen stuff – I love to cook and bake so I have it all and add to and replace on whim.
So far I've made three attempts to turn a low-carb coconut flour pancake recipe into a carrot cake.
Yuck.
But I refuse to give up. Someday I will try again. It took Edison hundreds of tries to create a working light-bulb, right?
I guess my approach to healthy baking would be to throw in so much fiber that I couldn't eat a lot of the cake without getting too full.
I think it was in Dean Ornish's book "Eat More, Weigh Less" that a chef talks about healthy substitutions that still make the food taste good. One of his books, anyway.
While I might healthify my cooking, baking is a science – and too much tinkering with it leaves you with a completely altered product -like bad banana bread.
If something is in the house, I cannot stop eating it, especially if you tell me (or I tell myself) to only eat one piece. So I prefer to go out and buy one piece of what I crave, eat it away from the house and totally enjoy it. Coffeecake, for example, would be purchased and consumed at my favorite coffee house.
That lets me have the piece I crave, but keeps me from baking it and wanting to eat the whole thing.
Definitely NOT a healthifyer. If I have a craving, substitutions don't work and only make me eat more of everything in the house just to quiet that craving. The craving never dies though and I grow more and more impatient, the life is sucked out of me and I become a real pain… The only times I am legitimately bitchy is when I can't indulge in a craving and if I can't indulge because of YOU… well, watch out! If I wait too long to indulge, I binge. I can no longer have a few satisfying bites, I go all out and order the menu. Don't trick me or deprive me.
That being said, I hate how cravings are basically addictions and how I can't control my emotions or impulses around them. IF I can abstain for long enough (no substitutions, no indulging in the craving whatsoever), reoccurence of said craving tends to diminish. The trick is staying away from it long enough (like 12mos or more and NEVER going back – like smoking). Did that with Pepsi and I couldn't be prouder (ex.: 4 can a day'er).
This website is great for telling you what substitutions can be made AND how they'll change the flavour/texture of the final product! I've used it many a time!!
http://www.foodsubs.com/
I love to bake, and I pretty much never substitute, because when I do, I eat a MILLION times more of it, because I can convince myself that it's 'healthy'. I'm much better off making it bad for me, but taste way better, then I'll guilt myself into only having one piece! And I have a disgusting amount of bakeware- when I moved across the country for school, I paid for an entire extra suitcase, just full of cookbooks and baking equipment- though I did have my mom ship the KitchenAid Mixer after I got there, who knows what the baggage handlers would have done to it!
Yeah, ever since I saw Ghandi there was no turning back 🙂
Actually. I do either healthify food, or even better, once I broke my learned addition to the tastes most people assume are "normal," I can eat so called healthy versions with enjoyment, and no feelings of deprivation.
I also know people who are very successful at balancing over indulgence with under, and their system seems fine to me also, just I can't do it that way as easily.
Thank you for your confession. I have tried the morsel diet myself, and I find that I feel more deprived with one little bite than I would had I not had any. So glad I'm not the only one with this problem. How do I deal with it? I eat the whole piece of pie.
Charlotte I feel your pain. I just ended up with a concrete brick, or was it cardboard? Anyway, it was supposed to be healthified granola bars. Anonymous has a point that it's easier to make the substitutions if you are more familiar with the correct way (applesauce for fat etc). Obviously I need to buy the books and check the blogs rather than try to healthify things myself 🙂
1. Get thee a copy of The Denim Diet
2. Turn to the back of the book where there's recipes.
3. Follow the directions for making the coffee spice cake. It's healthy. It's delicious. I made it for my soccer team and nearly the entire thing got gobbled up immediately. SERIOUSLY. Do it! 🙂
You know me, I like to healthify just about everything. I'm convinced that most things can be healthified and still taste great if we just figure out the right combinations and all. But some things- like cheesecake from my favorite dessert cafe- cannot be replaced.
That is the greatest cake art I have ever seen! And if given the chance, I would totally eat every bite of Tom Selleck's chest hair, but that's just me!
I do a little bit of both. For meals, I'm constantly healthifying by throwing insane amounts of veggies in things like pasta, stew, shepard's pie, so I eat a little bit of the calorific stuff with lots of fiber/volume to fill me up. I try to use light margarine, low fat (not fat free though) cheese and cream cheese, and try to talk the fiance into brown rice whenever I can instead of the white rice he loves.
Sweets though – if fruit wont do me, I'd rather have a little bit of something I really want rather than "healthy" treats. I keep bite size stuff around the house like hershey kisses, jelly beans, chocolate chips, atomic warheads, so when the craving arises, I can have a little something and keep my splurge around 50 calories.
Very, very occasionally I'll go out and have something super rich and deserty, but I prefer to splurge on the savory. I don't like baking much myself, and don't really like it around the house either…
Fat is actually good for you, provided it is natural (i.e. the product of plants and animals growing and not of weird modern chemical processes); it is the sugar that causes harm. I eat fat whenever I want, in large quantities, and find that it stops sugar cravings cold and keeps me thinner than I used to be back when I avoided it like the rest of my family. My favorite desserts are really dark chocolate ice cream (homemade with cocoa powder and whole milk) and any good cheesecake (with all the fat in a really good cheese).
How did you know my birthday was coming up?! You really shouldn't have, especially with that lovely picture of my husband on it too. You go too far, I'm so embarrassed. I'm eating the entire yummy thing!
I engage in both activities, I'm a bi-foodual. Healthy substitutions (please, please, please use others' recipes for this until you get the knack, or you'll get turd cookies and banana brick as you know), going for long periods of time not eating anything cheating, and then eating a little of the good stuff, and then bingeing. Back to square one. I guess that makes me a quad-foodual, as those are actually 4 categories. Check me out: hot husband AND I can do math. I can solve a Rubiks cube too. The 80's are back with nerdy puzzles, hairy chests, and mullets soon to follow. Are we still talking about food? Sorry.
Healthifier here. I feel deprived too when I only eat three bites – I rather don't eat it at all then…
That cake picture SLAYED me! Why is it so easy to make fun of Tom Selleck?? Haha…
Yeah, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of the spectrum – the whole 3 bites trick has only worked for me occasionally, and I don't bake enough to consider myself a healthifier. I think I just keep the offending items out of the house so that it's a bigger deal to have what I want in the first place. If I want it bad enough to get up and buy it, the craving was strong enough to be worth indulging!
Real stuff, all the way. But if I bake, I either do it on Sunday and take it all into work the next day, or I cut it up into single-servings as soon as it cools off and freeze everything. That way I can pull something out of the freezer when I want it, but as long as it's in the freezer, it's usually out of sight, out of mind.
I agree! What a yummy cake 🙂
I stick to the theory that if you make something really unhealthy, you're obligated to give at least half of it away so you don't get the full burden of eating all of the calories (instead of eating the entire pie-I only ate half!). Lets face it, desserts are probably going to be unhealthy in large portions, so why not give part of it away? I love baking, but will inevitably eat everything I make, much more quickly than I should, unless I give some of it away. So find a friend or coworker who really likes coffee cake and make their day!
I'm a long time reader but seldom comment, but I thought I'd chime in this time.
I completely empathize with the mentality you so appropriately summed up with "wanting to have your cake and eat it too," and I think it's one that is almost inevitable when we approach our food, our diets with such scrutiny. Before I knew so much about nutrition, I never had doubts and frustrations around certain foods.
I do now. Mostly over baked goods, sweets, probably because I don't have them that much. I don't cook/bake, but when I get a craving, I'll buy a single serving of something decadent and luscious from some bakery, eat it there, and that usually keeps me happy for awhile! Or I'll get some dessert with lunch when I'm out. The bakery at our chain supermarket has FANTASTIC coffee cake that I sooooooo recommend 😉
I think having homemade coffee cake/brownies/cookies/name your treat is a whole heck of a lot better than snarfing down processed treats or random candy.
Give me the homemade goodies, every time. Also, I find that I can't really overeat homemade treats–they're just too filling.
Now, jellybeans on the other hand…there are reasons they don't come into my house! 🙂
I'm not talented enough to healthify anything, and every time I try (and fail), my husband wants to reward my efforts/salve the wound by buying me ice cream.
I've turned to http://www.eatingwell.com and using their recipes for my old favorites. It's got a much greater success rate and I don't end up eating a comfort Blizzard from Dairy Queen at the end of the night.
Like you, there's no way I am eating 3 bites of yummy dessert. SO I also try to healthify (and veganize) desserts so that I don't hate myself too much when I eat the whole damn thing. I also have ruined perfectly good food. But hey! It stops my from eating the whole thing!
Dreena over at Eat, Drink and Be Vegan had a healthy coffee cake recipe posted the other day. I haven't tried it, but she is a goddess in all other respects. http://vivelevegan.blogspot.com/2009/05/blueberry-coffee-cake.html
I just found your blog, because I made a recipe substitution and ruined what should have been a delicious pot of chicken in wine sauce and was looking for a "misery loves company" blog posting about ruining food through substitutions. Here's my story: Trying to accomodate a family member with a gluten allergy, I substituted oat flour for wheat flour in my "crockpot coq au vin". It was horrible – I had to throw the whole thing out and get take-out for my dinner party! I do regularly substitute "healthy" ingredients for white flour or sugar with some success, but this time I really blew it. The result was inedible. I felt terrible and wanted to see if anybody else ever ruined "perfectly good food," and I was relieved to find the answer: yes! Thanks for a comforting post!
That's what I'm here for M!! Glad we found each other:) So sorry about your ruined dinner!
I'm also a healthifier, i just feel so bad when i eat food that is just empty calories. For me i'll give up taste for healthfulness (but if you can find a good recipe you don't have to), especially when i can have a bunch of it because it's fat free and no sugar added AND has 4 grams of fiber and 6 grams of protein per serving (YES! i'm just drooling thinking about a dessert like that one) hahaha!
And i mean it! My friends are always like, "so what's your weakness" and i say things like Kashi Go Lean or Honey Bunches of Oats (although it's not the best thing in the world nutrition wise, at least it's not fruit loops.)
Healthy things make my body happy so they make me happy (no i'm serious, i'm SERIOUS!!!) I just hate it when people feel like they have to add fat and ridiculous amounts of sugar to food in order for it to taste good.