Year of No Sugar (22 page)

God help me if it turned out awful. I knew Dad wouldn't mind, but
I'd
feel terrible.

But you know what? It didn't turn out awful. Dad loved it. Everybody loved it. I was astounded. No one even
asked
if there was sugar in it! Afterward, I told everyone that there was, technically speaking, no fructose/added sugar in the cake at all, and it was Dad's turn to be astounded. My seventeen-year-old brother's reaction was along the lines of “uh, yeah, whatever.”
He
didn't care. Does it taste like cake? Must be cake. What I cared about was that he had eaten the whole piece—everyone had.

Now, truthfully, the cake wasn't quite as “floofy” (that's a technical term) as usual, and while we're being picky, the cream cheese frosting seemed, if anything, a bit
too
sweet to me.
⁵¹
All in all, though, I was deeply relieved and counted it a certifiable success.

And of course, the next night we had cake—
again!
Except this time it was the real-sucrose-deal. We picked up the gorgeous confection from the nearby Riviera Bakery where they are famous for fun things like Dr. Seuss–inspired shapes, edible candles, and cakes that look like giant hamburgers.
⁵²
If you die and go to Bakery Heaven, you will likely find yourself at the Riviera—it smells like every wonderful, sweet thing you've ever eaten all at once. John's New Orleans–themed cake was a vision in purple, green, and gold, complete with
white chocolate Mardi Gras masks and fleur-de-lis. Inside, three thin chocolate layers were interspersed with cookies-and-cream filling. It was quite literally a work of edible art.

Perhaps predictably, it seemed overwhelmingly sweet to me. I wasn't too surprised to find that I couldn't finish my slice, and then I noticed that neither could the girls. It was
very
good, but good in the way candy is good—you only need a few bites and it's…enough.

So in the end, we were able to participate fully in both birthdays, apples
and
oranges. And we certainly got our fair share of cake. Thank goodness.

September was my husband's birthday month, and he had a special request. Ever since tasting it at one of Emeril's restaurants years ago, I had promised to attempt making the celebrity chef's signature dessert: banana cream pie. Steve seized this unique opportunity to bring up my long-unfulfilled commitment: I had been intimidated by the complex recipe, but how could I say no to attempting it as one of our twelve special monthly desserts? I accepted the challenge.

So Steve's birthday afternoon, I set out on my quest to conquer the banana cream pie. In Emeril's version, you first make and bake the graham cracker and mashed banana crust; then you make the pastry cream, which has to chill for two hours; after that, you place alternate layers of sliced bananas
with
pastry cream
in
the crust, then chill another two hours. Before serving, you concoct a caramel sauce of sugar, water, and heavy cream on the stove, and whip the heavy cream with vanilla and shave the chocolate,
each
of which gets ladled or dolloped or sprinkled on top just before serving.

Are you getting all of this?

In between steps, I made our actual dinner, which seemed incidental. Finally, after we had eaten dinner, opened presents, boiled the caramel, whipped the cream, and sprinkled the chocolate, we sang the birthday song, and it was time to try the pie.

Oh. My. God. Was it
SWEEEEEEEET
. It actually made my teeth hurt. I mean, go figure, right? There was only sugar in every one of those—what?—
four
separate recipes that were concocted and combined, from crust to cream filling to whipped cream to caramel drizzle. It's a wonder we didn't all pass out from Complete Sugar Shock.

Actually, I almost did. I felt
awful
. A few bites in and my head began pounding in earnest—as if it were being squeezed in a vice. The pie didn't taste right either…it was just not right at
all
. In addition to being heart-stoppingly sweet, the texture was too…
goopy
. After my entire afternoon's investment of time, I was deeply disappointed. Heartbroken. I couldn't finish my piece. Physically, I felt awful. I lay down on the couch and, exhausted, fell asleep.

It didn't help, as it turned out, that I was coming down with a cold. Still, I wondered, have I changed
so
much? I had
loved
that banana cream pie at Emeril's just as Steve had. What was happening to me? Contrary to what many had assumed, I was
not
trying to wipe desserts from the face of the earth, just making the argument that we need them to truly be special. Had I worked so hard avoiding sugar only to have my love for that occasional special dessert ruined? Is it really a case of
all
or
nothing
? I hated to admit it to myself, but lately I seemed to have become the kind of person who gets much more enjoyment out of a “dirt cookie” (as I called my bland,
dextrose-sweetened, oatmeal raisin cookies, that perhaps only our family could love) than a well-made piece of pie.

Then again, I thought, isn't that what this year was all about? Changing our taste buds? Realizing that we don't “need” nearly the amount of sugar we regularly consume? Did I expect to get through the year completely unchanged? And if I did, would that be a good thing?

Oh, but change is
hard
.

The next day, despite my memory of the sickly sweetness, I tried a bite of the leftover pie. I just couldn't accept that all that work had been for nothing. But wait a minute—it was…good! Whoa—
really
good! THIS actually reminded me of the pie we had had all those years ago at Emeril's. After the extra hours in the fridge, the correct texture had finally been reached, and the coldness had additionally softened the sweety sweetness. I was relieved: perhaps I
hadn't
lost my ability to enjoy a good sweet after all.

Later that night after dinner, I shared the last pie slice with my husband. I should've stuck with the one or two bites though. After that, it started seeming overly sweet again. Afterward, I had to go gargle just to get that overpowering taste out of my mouth. And, alas, the headache came back.

I wondered if the legacy of this No-Sugar Year for me would be a two-bite limit on all desserts. Although my body would surely thank me for it, I had to admit, I was more than a little ambivalent about that.

Ah, Thanksgiving. The mother of all quintessentially American holidays and—not coincidentally—the mother of all gluttonous holidays as well.

It's kind of amazing all the different foods that we're supposed to concoct in order to have a “real” or “traditional” Thanksgiving. It's daunting. In fact, I have a dear friend whose family bags the whole thing and makes a large Thanksgiving pizza.

As we all know, the beleaguered turkey-day host isn't responsible for
just
turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes—oh no!—but cranberries, gravy, and whatever other sides you grew up eating
with
them: maybe peas, corn, applesauce; maybe green bean casserole with the crunchy canned onions on top or strawberry Jell-O with little banana UFOs floating inside, or perhaps yam casserole drenched in brown sugar, butter, and tiny marshmallows…No matter what, everyone seems to have a food it Just Wouldn't Be Thanksgiving Without. (Guilty! For me it is my mom's oyster stuffing. It. Is. So. Good.)

So once you get through making all the mandatory foods, the “it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without” foods, and anything special or new that you decided to throw in this year, you've got yerself a fairly serious Mount Everest of
food
.

However, despite the fact that it was a ridiculous starch fest (more stuffing with your mashed potatoes, my dear?) and the fact that many of those “traditional” dishes can practically cause instant diabetes (Mini marshmallows? Did the pilgrims have those?), despite
all that
, our family hosted (read: not just us palate-altered folks, but
normal
people too!) and got through the entire meal No-Sugar style.
⁵³
Yes! Really! Well, how the heck did we do that?

First of all, gravy is always a prime suspect for hiding sugar—but my mom bought it at Whole Foods and checked the ingredients, so we were safe on that account. She also made that green bean casserole with the crunchy onions on top, and I was amazed to find only dextrose(!), not sugar or any icky variant thereof, in the ingredient list. Well, yay! Not that this was health food you understand, but still.

My proudest achievement of the day, however, was my no-added-sugar cranberry sauce, which I had practiced earlier in the week just to be
sure
they would meet everyone's Official Turkey Day Fruit expectations. I mean, these might be the only cranberries some of our guests would eat all year! In the making, I was amazed on many counts:

So, right around this time, I had gone in search of another non-fructose sweetener:
glucose syrup
. David Gillespie had used it in one of the recipes on his website that I wanted to
make. I know what you're thinking.
Glucose syrup?
It sounded scary, like an ingredient for a science experiment involving frogs and tweezers. And it sounded even
less
appetizing than dextrose, if that was possible. Hmm. But I
really
wanted to make the granola bar recipe, and my previous attempt to do without had resulted in granola bar confetti. It was delicious, but it just didn't hold together at all.

So, as with dextrose powder, I found it online. I purchased a tiny tub of the mysterious stuff, which arrived looking more like something for my car engine than food. Glucose syrup is clear, gooey, and tarlike in consistency, and it gets absolutely
everywhere
when you try to measure it.
Yuck
—I thought—
this is
not
the kind of ingredient anyone was going to want to lick the spoon of
. Then again, I reasoned, Gillespie had never steered us wrong yet.

And of course, he was right: glucose syrup is the perfect solution for anything that needs not only sweetening, but also the viscous thickening that many traditional sweeteners provide, like molasses or honey, for example. More and more lately, I'd been using dextrose powder, to the point where I would actually almost forget that I was making any modification. If the recipe called for half a cup of sugar, I read “three-quarter cup dextrose.” But there are situations where dextrose alone just isn't going to create that thick texture you need. Enter: glucose syrup. Wearing a white hat. The cranberries are
saved
!

Most significantly, our sugar dessert for the month was to be our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. But because, as I described, I had gotten so
used
to my big orange container, I completely forgot at first and used dextrose in the crust rather than actual sugar. When I got around to mixing the
pumpkin with the spices, I had to remind myself—
go get the
actual
sugar, Eve.

The pie was delicious, as pumpkin pie always is. It only takes three-quarters of a cup of sugar in the entire recipe, so compared to many desserts, the sweetness is fairly mild and not likely to cause us all banana-cream-pie-style headaches. Actually, our monthly dessert passed with such little fanfare that it made me wonder—have we entered a new stage here, where sugar just didn't
matter
so much anymore? Could it be, after eleven months of diligence, and with the help of magical ingredients such as dextrose and glucose syrup, that we had gotten to a place where we were conditioned to be perfectly happy with a vastly reduced level of sweet? Had we really, at last, shunned sugar?

And I couldn't help but also wonder: if I
had
used dextrose in the pie filling too, would anyone have noticed?

 

⁴⁸
Well, almost. Once again, it wouldn't be until later that we'd find out balsamic vinegar is not a vinegar in the traditional sense, but rather an aged syrup made from grapes. Fruit juice! Gak!

⁴⁹
To our knowledge.

⁵⁰
When we did get to enjoy it a few days hence, the chocolate mousse was fluffy and delicious and disappeared quickly. Phew.

⁵¹
For the modified poppy seed cake, I used dextrose in both the cake and the frosting—see the recipe section at the end of this book.

⁵²
As it turns out, I discovered that the mastermind behind the genius desserts at Riviera Bakehouse—and the Whimsical Bakehouse cookbooks which have sprung from it—is none other than a dear old roommate of mine from Cornell University art school—Liv Hansen. How much sense it made that Liv would combine her passion for food with her irrepressible creativity to create clever, beautiful cakes that make one feel as if you might just be consuming a masterpiece.

⁵³
That is, soup to nuts, but not dessert—Thanksgiving dessert would be our November sugar-containing dessert.

“Crap!” I banged the steering wheel with my palm. “Rats!”

It was mid-October and I was driving back to Vermont after meeting with one of the sources of great inspiration for this project: David Gillespie.