THERE ARE always at least two desserts on the Feury family holiday table. That's not because chefs Terrence and Patrick Feury and their families are mad for sweets - if anything, the two brothers - who are on the verge of opening Maia, a restaurant, market and cafe in Villanova - prefer their desserts on the savory side.
But their mother, Frances, who lives in North Jersey, has Type One diabetes and can't eat regular desserts. So for her they make a sugar-free dessert, usually something featuring seasonal fruit.
"She loves dessert - why shouldn't she be able to have it?" said Patrick Feury, also chef/owner of Nectar, in Berwyn.
This month, designated American Diabetes Month by the American Diabetes Association, is an especially good time to think about how much sugar we eat every day. For people with diabetes, as well as the rest of us who are trying to watch our weight, overdosing on sugar is a big problem.
For non-diabetics, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends no more than 10 teaspoons of added sugar a day - the equivalent of a single Starbucks grande Caramel Mocha. Most of us munch without being mindful that a 2-ounce Snickers has nearly 6 teaspoons of sugar, a Cinnabon a whopping 11 teaspoons and the same for a single can of Coke. These are empty calories that can really pile on the pounds.
For people with diabetes, sugar, or foods that turn quickly into sugar, can be downright dangerous. Because a diabetic's body either doesn't produce or properly use insulin, the hormone needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy, ingesting sugar can cause the blood sugar to spike. This throws off the body's chemistry and triggers all kinds of health problems.
"The reality is, give a person with diabetes the choice of an apple or a slice of apple pie for dessert, chances are they'll take the apple pie," said registered dietitian Marlene Koch.
Koch, also a nutrition educator, started researching sugar substitutes when her stepdaughter was diagnosed with diabetes. The result is "Marlene Koch's 375 Sensational Splenda Recipes" (Evans, $30), a cookbook that gives diabetics the chance to eat dessert with the rest of the family.
Although she isn't paid to endorse Splenda, in doing her research Koch found that it shared the most properties with sugar as an ingredient in cooking and baking.
"Sugar imparts more than sweetness to a dessert," she said. "It adds volume, texture, mouth feel. We did a lot of testing to get the recipes as close to the original as possible. In some cases we had to add more leavening, reduce the pan size, adjust baking time. It's not quite as simple as just substituting one to one for sugar."
She took a measured approach to adapting the recipes in the book, sometimes leaving in a few spoons of sugar when the taste demanded it. "The no fat, no flavor route doesn't work either," Koch said. "People just don't eat it."
Her carrot-cake recipe has plenty of flavor and heft, but at 22 grams of carbohydrates instead of the usual 75 grams, it's a dessert that a person with diabetes can really enjoy.
Linda Hinton Brown, who owns Brown Betty Desserts, in Northern Liberties, with her daughter Norrinda Brown, has been playing with a sugar-free pound cake recipe since the summer.
"I had customers coming in asking for sugar-free cakes," said Brown, who is also an elementary school teacher in the Philadelphia school district. Brown Betty - named for home baker Elizabeth "Betty" Hinton, Linda's mother and Norrinda's grandmother - is known for its sumptuous cakes and desserts.
"I didn't want to put something on the shelf that wasn't really good," Linda Brown said. Initially, as a substitute she used Xylitol - a sugar alcohol available at Whole Foods and health-food stores. With further experimentation, she settled on all-natural fruit juice in place of refined sugar.
"I though Splenda had too much of an aftertaste in a cake but worked really well in pies," she said. Brown is debuting her sugar-free cake for the holidays, a recipe she's keeping proprietary - "I'm still playing with it a bit."
It might be sugar-free, but Brown's pound cake is still a rich dessert, made with eggs and butter. "I only use natural ingredients," she said.
When Nectar pastry chef Emily Landis took a shot at concocting a sugar-free dessert, she tried making a pumpkin flan with a variety of sugar substitutes and found that a combination of Stevia - a natural sweetener that is widely used, but not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - and Splenda worked best. Again, she didn't cut the fat from the usual recipe, just the sugar.
"It took a bit of experimenting to get the right flavor and texture for the custard," she said. Landis' grandmother was diabetic, and a friend in her immediate circle was recently diagnosed with the disease. "It seems like everybody knows somebody who has it."
Patrick Feury doesn't like to cook with sugar substitutes. He prefers making a puree of fresh seasonal fruit and then reducing it to a syrup consistency and adding it to a recipe for sweetness.
"You'd be surprised how sweet it can be," he said. "But you have to play around with the recipe."
For Halloween, when his mother visited to take the kids trick-or-treating, he made an apple strudel with apples picked from a tree in his backyard.
"A small piece of strudel with a slice of cheese is satisfying," he said. "And that's the key to food in general. You don't need to eat a lot, but you need to feel satisfied." *
For more information about diabetes and diet, visit www.diabetes.org.