#5-Spicing Up Your Holiday Spirt
Cheers to the holidays, a time filled with fun, laughter, and desserts! Desserts contain so many delicious ingredients. Usually, we don't think about each one that goes into our desserts unless maybe we are making the recipe from scratch.
One of the ingredients I pay attention to is salt. Being a dietitian and knowing the effects salt has on blood pressure and the heart, it's one ingredient I frequently reduce or eliminate depending on the recipe.
How does this work with baked goods?
Salt, like sugar, impacts the flavor and coloring of our favorite dessert. It also gives gluten strength in dough recipes and controls fermentation in yeast recipes. That is why it is so important in bread recipes.
While there is no definitive baking rule for decreasing salt in dessert recipes, that doesn't mean you can't try reducing salt from desserts. However, keep in mind the final baked goods may be altered if you do. Also, while you won't be able to remove all salt from the rest of the ingredients (some have naturally occurring salt), you'll be able to reduce the overall total sodium of the baked good. While cutting back on salt, you can add some holiday spices to give them more flavor.
Try adding or increasing one of these in place of using salt.
Cinnamon is an earthy and sweet spice used in many desserts, such as cinnamon rolls to various cookies. It's also one of the most popular and my favorite!
Ginger - another sweet spice with a hint of lemon flavor found in cakes, cookies, and gingerbread recipes.
Nutmeg - it's a nutty flavor spice found in recipes from spice cake to custard.
Vanilla bean paste or extract - gives a rich flavor to cupcakes, sugar cookies, and buttercream frosting. The lovely thing about the extract is it delivers the same flavoring without the bean specks.
Cloves - delivers a warm and bold flavor when added to applesauce cake, gingerbread, cookies, plum pudding, and some dessert sauces.
Need a recipe that has more spice? Bake these Ultimate Chocolate Chip Bars!
Photo credit: Media from Unsplash/Megumi Nachev