Day 22: Healthy Dessert Recipes

coconut milk fruit 300x225 Day 22: Healthy Dessert Recipes Welcome to week 4 of the Challenge! How’s it going for you all? From the comments and people I know, there are some baggy pants after only 3 weeks. It impresses me how quickly people see improvements when they start eating real food with a bit of extra sleep.

Phase 1 was the major elimination. And then Phase 2, we started reintroducing some things and working to create a solid base for you all to live with after the end of the week. I really hope that all of you have no use for a Challenge or resolution at the beginning of 2011 because this one set you up for a healthy lifestyle that you can continue rocking all year.

Today, I want to talk briefly about dessert and give you a few ideas for healthy dessert recipes.

Healthy Dessert Recipes

Let’s get real…we’re all going to want something sweet now and then. While I agree with Dr. Harris at PaNu about regularly making “Paleo-pancakes” and “Paleo muffins” and Paleo-everything else as a substitute for the sugary, glutinous real deal, I don’t think that necessarily means you can’t dress up fruit and nuts with a little something to make some killer desserts.

How To Make A Healthy Dessert

The key to healthy dessert is making sure the ingredients are high-quality and healthy to begin with. When I make a dessert, the base is basically one or more of the following:

Fruit
Nuts
Coconut Flakes (unsweetened, of course)
Coconut Cream/Milk
Coconut Oil

Other than the fruit, these ingredients pack lots of good healthy fat (which helps shut down your appetite for more dessert). The coconut also adds a little sweetness and a flair that says “dessert” to me, when mixed with fruit. That’s enough to take care my sweet tooth.

For sweetness, I add small amounts of chocolate, honey, dried fruit (mainly dates or raisins), and/or 100% fruit juice. You really only need small quantities of these last 3. Once you’ve been eating real foods for a little while, your taste buds reset such that fruit alone is often sweet enough.

Quantity Still Matters

I think the place most people go off the rails with healthy eating is relying too much on fruit (particularly dried fruit) and nuts as snacks and desserts. Yes, honey is natural and is fine in moderation for a sweet fix. There’s nothing wrong with apples and bananas. But you do have to watch how much of them you eat, particularly if you’re trying to drop some fat.

Modern fruits are quite sugary. Dried fruit is even more so and is way too easy to overeat. And as I’ve discussed several times, honey is nutritionally nearly identical to high-fructose corn syrup…it may be healthier in other respects, but it’s not something to eat constantly because it will still pack on the fat.

So how often do I eat dessert? Not even weekly. I might grab a square or two of really dark chocolate (85% or higher) once or twice a week, but I don’t actually put together something sweet all that often. Maybe twice a month, at most.

FREE Dessert Recipe

bananas 300x193 Day 22: Healthy Dessert Recipes As a bit of shameless self-promotion, I’m including a recipe for chocolate-covered fried bananas that will be in a cookbook that I’ve been working on for about a year, tinkering and tweaking to come up with lots of great real food recipes.

I won’t call it Paleo, because it’s not strictly Paleo. It’s basically just lots of delicious real food: beef, lamb, poultry, pork, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruits, soups, salads, and yes, even a few desserts. I have a few more odds and ends to finish up, then it’s ready for release, likely in about two weeks. Stay tuned!

So check out my Chocolate-covered Fried Bananas and let me know what you think.

What do you turn to when you need a sweet fix? Have you found your sugar cravings dying off over the course of the Challenge?

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17 Reader Comments

Dan on

Great work with the site, only discovered it recently and I’m having a blast wading through all the past blogs.

I’m currently in India, and they have this dessert called Gajjar Halwa. It is carrot based, and in my opinion delicious! Anyway, if you are interested http://www.indianfoodforever.com/desserts/gajjar-ka-halwa.html is a simple recipe, which I’m sure could be modified to use coconut milk instead of the dairy.

keep up the great work, it is a pleasure to read!

[Reply]
skustes Reply:
Dan, thanks for the kudos and that recipe! Going to have to take a look at that and see if I can come up with something similar.

Cheers
Scott

[Reply]
Jenn on

great post – since changing my wayward eating…I’ve found that I don’t really care for sweets, or have the need for dessert – but I have to admit, the fried banana recipe looks pretty yummy.

I enjoy fruit almost daily – as much for the extra carbs as the sweetness – and I’ll indulge in a couple squares of dark chocolate, but it’s pretty much hit or miss (I haven’t even opened the chocolate I got for Christmas yet) -

[Reply]
skustes Reply:
Jenn, I got a ton of chocolate for Xmas. Haven’t opened a lick of it. I have two 85% Lindt’s and three 99%. Oh well…it’ll keep and will get consumed over the next few months.

I eat a lot of fruit seasonally. Basically just apples now as the lone remaining farmer has them.

Cheers
Scott

[Reply]
Melody on

I’ve always been frustrated by the Big Food insistance on adding sugar to things which are sweet by themselves (canned corn, apple sauce, etc). While I enjoyed brownies, I felt like apple sauce should be just pureed apples.

I typically eat one piece of fruit in a day, but I have to admit that I’ve indulged in fruity deserts several times over the last few weeks. In a 9×9 baking dish, I pour out some coconut milk (half a can) slice up two or three bananas and layer then at the base, then add blueberries, blackberries, apple slices or peaches. I bake it at like 400 degrees for half an hour. Yes, the entire dish is like 700-800 calories, but it’s desert for 4 nights or so. Tasty, incredibly sweet and filling and simple. I add cocoa powder or cinnamon or vanilla as the mood strikes.
(Note: if I know I’m going to be eating something like that, I typically have a somewhat smaller dinner. Also, this only works health-wise, if you can eat only 10-20% of a dish and refrigerate the rest for later in the week.)

I can’t click on your recipe. I don’t know what’s wrong.

[Reply]
skustes Reply:
Oh, that sounds yummy! Might have to try that sometime.

[Reply]
Melody on

BTW – I got the link to work, now. It was just down for a few minutes or something.

Question: For dinner tonight, I was going to stuff a bell pepper with …something and then bake it. Ideas for stuffing it? I have some thawed grass-fed ground beef, which will be the base, but I’m at a loss for what else to put in there.

[Reply]
lel Reply:
@Melody – You could give your pepper a southwestern flavor by browning your beef with some chopped onions and garlic and then add a little tomato paste, chopped tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, corn, black beans, and cilantro.

[Reply]
Jenn Reply:
um – can I just say yum?

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Karen@Cook4Seasons on

I am a dessert devotee! So this has been a challenge in itself, but YES this program has helped curb the cravings. I’ve been making a chia pudding – chia seeds with homemade almond milk, vanilla and stevia, topped with fruit. Sometimes I’ll use coconut milk and mango.
Thanks for all the great tips and resources!

[Reply]
Aimee on

Does anyone have a good recipe for pancakes using coconut flour?

[Reply]
Rodney Reply:
Aimee,

Two recipes I copied from Mark’s Daily Apple.

1 can (15oz) coconut milk
3/4 cup shredded coconut
2/3 cup almond meal
1 or 2 eggs (one is plenty for waffles, you may want to go to two for pancakes, or if you like ‘em eggy)
tiny bit of salt
tiny bit of baking powder
and, if you’re doing them, vanilla and coconut extracts (1/2 tsp and 4-6 drops, respectively)

This one uses coconut flour:

Ingredients:
4 eggs
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 pinch nutmeg
1 pinch cinnamon
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup coconut milk (full fat)

Method:
Mix these ingredients and let them sit for five minutes. Oil or grease up your pan and heat over medium heat. Pour about a 1/4 cup of batter for each crepe, allowing each side to brown before flipping it.

Without accounting for toppings or cooking fat, FitDay says the whole batch amounts to:

37.2 g fat (20.9 g saturated)
42.2 g carbs (19.4 g fiber)
30.6 g protein

I still try not to make healthier versions of junk food, cookies, pancakes etc., so I haven’t tried either yet, but probably will some day.

I hope they are good!

[Reply]
Jean on

http://www.elanaspantry.com/about/

The above website is about glutten free, but has some great recipes that are Paleo without the title. You might have to do some of your own tweating but the banana carrot muffins are awesome and use dates as a sweetner.

[Reply]
Thania on

I read the article from PaNu too, but I am not willing that my family go with out a birthday cake or some traditional festive days dessert. I do the paleo primal version of them and the family prefers it now. Modesty apart I make them real delish! Any way is 4-5 times / year.

I am not a sweet tooth person, even the fruits I like them sour. I prefer salty food and unfortunately there is no artificial salt subs. that taste good.

The challenge is going well, eventhough I was eating almost paleo, gave me opportunity to eliminate cold meats and dairy, something I wanted to do for some time and go 100% paleo.

I am glad my clothes are getting bigger , but not very happy about my rings falling off

@Jean , elenaspantry is a great site and got many ideas from there.

[Reply]
skustes Reply:
Thania, I think there’s a big difference in having occasional Paleo-style treats modeled off the regular version and using the “Paleo-” modifier to justify having them all the time. I assume that’s also Dr. Harris’ point, though I’m just guessing.

Glad to hear things are still progressing! Sorry about those rings.

Cheers
Scott

[Reply]
Karen@Cook4Seasons on

Melody – I use quinoa or brown rice to stuff veggies.

Aimee – Elana’s website is great! Here’s another good one with pancake recipe…

http://www.cheeseslave.com/2008/10/17/coconut-flour-pancakes/

[Reply]
Jen-JensFitnessTips on

Love the post Melody! The ingredients for healthy dessert are still so yummi! You can still satisfy your sweet tooth in a healthy way! Thanks for sharing

Jen

[Reply]
01/26/10 – V-ups are back! on

[...] Desserts can healthy, but quantity still matters [...]
Thania on

This the one I made in christmas http://twitpic.com/whxnc with almond,eggs,cocoa, flax seed , cream , olive oil and home made sour cherry sauce, dark chocolate shaving. Mmm.

[Reply]
Mike on

Scott,

I really like the balance in this post.

I myself have been experimenting with a no diary diet. It works great for deserts since 80% are made from milk and hence I can’t consume. Thank goodness for dark chocolate though. It’s been my sweet tooth saviour:)

Mike

[Reply]
samantha on

i love dark chocolate but the higher the percentage of cocoa, the more bitter it is to me. what’s a safe bet with this lifestyle change? or maybe it was just the brand i had??

[Reply]
skustes Reply:
Samantha, darker chocolate tends to be more bitter. What brand did you have? I find that Lindt and Dagoba have the best cross of slight sweetness and bitterness. I enjoy the bitterness though.

Cheers
Scott

[Reply]
Jenn Reply:
it does take some getting used to – but yes, you do learn to enjoy the bitterness….I worked my way up on the cocoa scale – maybe start with 60%, then move to 70%?

haven’t tried Dagoba, but I enjoy Lindt and Green & Black’s -

[Reply]
Day 22: Healthy Dessert Recipes – Fitness Spotlight : Fitness … | Recipe Blog on

[...] admin wrote a very interesting post today. Here’s a quick excerpt:coconut milk fruit 300×225 Day 22: Healthy Dessert Recipes Welcome to week 4 of the Challenge! How’s it going for you all? From the comments and people I know, there are some baggy pants after only 3 weeks. It impresses me how quickly … [...]
Richard on

We al have our own definitions of healthy but those pictures make me want to go cook\ some great food. Thanks guys.

[Reply]
CrossFit Ireland » Sat, Feb 27th on

[...] Healthy Dessert Recipes target=”_blank” – Fitness Spotlight Paleo Challenge Articles – Courtesy of Diablo CrossFit [...]

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