Embracing the sugar-rush : You’ve yelled at three people, made the trainee cry, stomped on your smarmy rival’s lucky bamboo plant in a rage, not to mention delivering a three-minute monologue on your hatred of office coffee and it’s not even lunchtime! A sugar-free diet may seem like a smart way of keeping those kilos down, but cutting out sugar can make you seriously snarky.
Fortunately, the days of the size-zero femme fatale are over.
Even hard-dieting women are now relaxing their rules in favour of a new “diet-life” balance. Turning down birthday cake, sweets or Christmas puddings because of those forbidden calories? So yesterday! Go on and have a small portion of whatever sweet thing is being offered around. Be part of the revelry, because those are the sort of memories that last a lifetime.
Sugar baddie: Sugar...love it, hate it, can’t live without it. How did the simple pleasures of our sweet-toothed Indian ancestors turn into the bane of our existence, you ask? The answer lies in the cocktail of chemicals that go into processed and packaged desserts. That mono-sodium poly-whatever-that-means on the label spells doom for your diet! Dessert buffet staples like sticky ice creams with synthetic syrups, gooey
Puddings that taste of nothing at all and stodgy brownies from last week are bad news.
You don’t need a dietician to tell you that you really shouldn’t be eating that. The same goes for Indian sweets made from reconsituted milk powder and hydrogenated vegetable oil, gently decaying in refrigerated compartments in sweet-shops for weeks on end. Another big no-no is an excess of sugar. There is simply no need to double the sugar in any dessert recipe. Puddings are supposed to have their own distinctive flavours. If a sweet treat delivers nothing more than a hit of pure sugar, then you can be sure that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong.
The dessert revolution: With a radical shift in dessert philosophy the world over, chefs are reinventing sweet treats to fit the new “eat everything, but in moderation” mantra. The best chefs and pastry chefs around the world are switching to a more organic approach to sweets, with puddings made with fresh fruit, organic artisan desserts and baked goodies straight from the oven. Hand-crafted desserts are indeed, the haute new entrant on the Bengaluru culinary scene. Gelatos and plum cakes with home-made candied orange peel, mousse with real chocolate and fresh sliced strawberries, fresh kiwi slices on cheesecake....it is all happening now. So when you are eating out, think real Italian gelato with fresh strawberry coulis, a light lemon mousse or semifreddo.
Another big trend is mini-desserts. Bite-sized macarons, cupcakes, tartelettes or parfaits allow you to enjoy a full range of sweet delights - without busting your calorie-budget for the whole week in a single evening. Let 2016 be the year of sweetness - Bon Appétit!
