Breakfast sugar battle

I felt guilty when I saw that I haven't written a post for 3 weeks. January was unusually busy for me, and now we're in February, I know I can't put off writing anymore.

A friend asked me recently how I am keeping my New Year's resolution to eat less sugar. Do you want to know too?

While overall I've succeeded in having just one BIG dessert each week, I found it's difficult to eliminate sugar completely from other meals, especially breakfast.

Since coming to the U.S., I've grown used to eating something just a bit sweet in the morning. Fruits containing natural sugars are okay. What I've been trying is to avoid added sugars in breakfast foods.

Believe it or not, many kinds of breads in the market contain added sugars, be them honey, molasses, or plain white sugar. French or Italian breads tend not to have them, but sandwich bread and other eggy breads such as challah usually do.

I typically don't eat muffins or pancakes for breakfast either because they are too sweet for my palate in the morning.

But there are times when sweet cravings strike. So my strategy of dealing with them? I make my healthier version of sweet baked goods.

Previously I only did so over weekends when I had more time. I've since found easier recipes that I can make on weeknights, so I can have homemade baked goods in the morning. Weird as it sounds, baking at night is also a stress reliever after a long day.

The recipes are mostly quick bread recipes that keep well in the fridge so I can eat them over the week. Not only did I cut down the amount of sugar in the recipes significantly, but I also used applesauce to substitute for the eggs and most of the oil, and white whole wheat flour to increase fiber content.

Here are two recipes I felt were superb: cranberry tea bread adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe, and gingerbread cake adapted from a New York Times recipe.

Vegan cranberry tea bread featuring fresh cranberries sitting in my freezer

 

Incredibly moist vegan gingerbread (applesauce) cake

The secret ingredients were the orange or lemon zests in the batter. They lifted the quick breads by giving them a fresh and fragrant flavor. Thanks to the applesauce, the quick breads were wonderfully moist. You wouldn't know they are vegan and contain no eggs.

So things are going alright. There were days I felt so tired after returning home from work that I slipped and stuffed myself with less than healthy food. Getting enough sleep every day is key for me going forward so I'll have the willpower to stick to my regimen and win the sugar battle.

In fact, I am even snoozing when writing this post...

 

What is this? Yeah, the panettone I shouldn't have eaten 

for dinner and breakfast, but it was delicious...