Beautiful dreams? Healthy ways to put pudding back on the menu | Chefs

I eat healthily, however My meals are never complete without dessert. Set aside yogurt and cooked fruits Do you have any suggestions for What’s going to hit the spot without getting too close to the unhealthy?
Wendy, By email
The truth is, you can’t often have your cake and eat it — or not eat a big piece of it, anyway. “My main, and perhaps unwelcome, piece of advice is to stick to small portions,” says Brian Levy, author of The New York Times. Good and sweetHis recipes do not contain added sugar. “My grandmother would keep a lot of chocolate bars and only have one, but that never worked for me.”

“It’s stewed fruit season, but have you tried it?” Banana slices by Melissa Hemsley Sandwiched with peanut butter, half dipped in melted chocolate and placed in the freezer? (FYI, the same tactic also works like dreaming with dates.) “You can’t beat frozen grapes, either,” says baker Lily Jones, who’s behind London by Lily Vanilli Afternoon Tea at Four Seasons Tower Bridge. To “flatten them a little,” she sprinkles them with chili flakes, salt, or freeze-dried sour cherries.

Equally cool will be Jones’ frozen peanut butter bites, which also happen to be gluten-free: “It’s peanut butter, maple syrup, oat milk and sea salt frozen in bite-sized bars.” They are then dipped in dark chocolate before being returned to the fridge, and are “the perfect dessert that’s really satisfying, and also contains healthy fats and protein.”

Otherwise, try a combination of Caramelized Levi’s Apple: “It’s rich, delicious, chewy, and buttery caramel sweetened with just the fruit [apple juice and dates]Plus a little miso.” It’s helpful to rely on unrefined sugars, like honey and maple syrup, too, says Flora Shedden, author of “The Sweetheart.” Winter in the highlands: “I’m terrible, but I don’t want my kids to eat tons of refined sugar, even though they’re now addicted to dates and peaches — it’s like they have an 80-year-old’s palate.”

However, there are some cravings that can only be satisfied with cookies, and fortunately Shedden has a solution for such situations. “It’s quite a flexible recipe: mix oats, spelled flour or ground almonds, maybe some coconut, maybe a few nuts for natural sweetness, and then bind that with a mixture of tahini and maple syrup,” she says. “If your tahini is thick, it may need a little oil to loosen it. You’ll also need to add a little bicarb and some vanilla.” Shape the mixture into balls, flatten slightly, then arrange on trays lined with baking paper and bake at 180°C (160°C)/350°F/Gas 4, until golden brown and firm. Shedden says you can up the ante by mixing frozen bananas, Jamie Oliver style, with yogurt, maple syrup and a little cocoa powder into an “ice cream kind of thing,” and using that to sandwich two cookies together.

If all else fails, Levy’s advice would be to simply grab some dark chocolate (“70% cocoa or more”) and a cup of Bengali spice tea: “Spices can trick your taste buds and make you think you’re eating something sweeter than you actually are,” he explains. Now that would be really sweet.