Bantam USA Good & Sweet: A New Way to Bake with Naturally Sweet Ingredients

I bought this book after reading a recipe from it in a newspaper, and caught the enthusiasm of the journalist for this "new approach" to sweet foods using fruits and other plants. There are some very good recipes, where the use of fruits and/or unusual grains produces really superb flavours - I can particularly recommend the pear and almond frangipane tarte. However, for the most part the approach is to substitute large quantities of very sugary, often dried, fruits such as dates, prunes and raisins, for refined sugar. Whilst this is often very tasty, I'm not sure it's that much healthier, especially when the recipes are still laden with saturated fat and all purpose white flour. To be fair, the author makes little claim to healthiness - these are mostly still American desserts, when all is said and done - and my expectations were possibly unreasonable.

I've had this book for a while and made a few of the recipes. The book is beautiful, and I loved the concept of eating less sugar while still having dessert. I enjoyed the recipes I made. The recipes, writing, and quality all deserve 5 stars. But here's what I wish I had known before purchase: 1. You will need to buy expensive and unusual ingredients, many by mail order because you cannot find them in stores 2. No one will eat these desserts with you because when one's palette is used to sugar, these will not satisfy 3. You will have too many desserts around that no one else wants to eat 4. Recipes full of white flour, dried fruits, and butter are not healthy, even though they do not contain "sugar" I will continue to use the book, but in all honesty, will probably put a 1/2 cup or so of sugar in the next recipe so that others will eat them instead of just drying out in my freezer. And since these recipes contain other ingredients that the body reads as "sugar" (white flour, dried fruit, etc), this is a reasonable addition. The recipes are still beautiful, the writing is well done, and I will enjoy the book.

Thia cookbook has a great selection of recipes using Natural Sugars that are lower on the glycemic index. I am really enjoying it!!

I enjoyed reading the cookbook. The recipes sound great. I’m putting together a shopping list to try a few of the recipes. A lot of the ingredients aren’t things I routinely keep in my pantry. The introduction to one of the recipes, the Date, Rye & Olive Oil Brownies, mentions Teff flour and how it complements the other ingredients …but the recipe calls for dark rye flour not Teff. I’m assuming it should be rye since it’s in the recipe’s name. Finding the mistake dampened my enthusiasm for the cookbook. I have to wonder if a typo like that went thru the editing, are there others in the recipes? Are the amounts correct? Are all the ingredients listed? The recipes aren’t cheap to make. I’d hate to have a failure due to a mistake in the cookbook.

My daughter and I randomly found this book at our library and picked it up. PROS: 1. We picked up this book along with America's Test Kitchen "Naturally Sweet" which we also like but tweak a lot. We find Levy's recipes much more to what we were looking for -- no added sugar of any kind (including honey, maple syrup, etc. which ATK's book does use). 2. I've been baking with monk fruit for years now, but with the recent research (published by the NIH) that shows that monk fruit may cause blood clots, I knew I needed to find a different way. Levy found THAT way! Primarily by using freeze dried fruits pulverized into a powder (kind of like date sugar except with apples, bananas, etc.). That's why my daughter and I said, "This guy is a genius." 3. Some of our favorites are his banana bread, fruit crisps, and granola. NOTE: if you buy Costco's Seven Sundays Rise and Shine Granola Mix with freeze dried strawberries/bananas, you'll like this recipe. Levy's granola is healthier since it uses EVOO instead of coconut oil and is a fraction of the cost. It also tastes better, and is incredibly fast to get into the oven. 4. We borrowed this library book over and over again until we finally bought it on Amazon to support this guy. He deserves it. CONS: 1. The one recipe we couldn't figure out was the cream cheese frosting. I think it's because we tried to halve the recipe or something? Or, perhaps, because my daughter and I ate too many red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting in our lives that the typical super sweet frosting just can't compare to Levy's. But, aside from this recipe, 100% of the other recipes we tried were spot on. Can't wait to buy your next book Brian. And, if you can find a way to bake without refined flour, you would be a genius and a saint!