Butter, Sugar, and Fruit Desserts

I love this time of year because there is so much good fruit that is in season, and usually on sale. This is a great time to make fruit cobblers, fruit crisp, or even pie (although I don’t personally make my own pies). I’ve decided to combine a few different topics in this post, so first we will talk about butter, then sugar, and end with a few great recipes for fruit desserts.

Now for butter. When I stopped eating milk products it took me a while to figure what to use instead of butter. Margarine is the easy and readily available substitute (although many margarines still have some milk in them, just much less than real butter). But I am super picky about the foods that I eat, particularly, I must know what the ingredients are and I’m pretty obsessed with avoiding artificially created ingredients. I do plan to eventually write a post all about what is and isn’t food, you will find that my definition of food does not include a lot of packaged items found at grocery stores.

Back to butter, after much searching I finally found a company that makes an excellent vegan “butter.” It has an ingredients list that makes me happy, meaning there are no weird additives that I don’t know what they are. So the company is called Earth Balance and I buy the vegan buttery sticks. I use this “butter” for everything that I would use real butter for. To find out where you can buy vegan buttery sticks, check www.earthbalancenatural.com

Now, another substitute for butter, and a less processed one, is applesauce. I haven’t experimented a ton with using applesauce instead of butter, but I have done one part vegan butter and 3 parts applesauce to replace butter or shortening (which is something that I do not consider food and do not knowingly eat).

Moving on to sugar. If you want to make a sweet dessert, sugar is just about a necessity. I have not experimented a lot with natural sugar substitutes, and here is why. Sugar, although usually refined, does come from a plant that grows in the ground, and that is something I’m totally ok with. What I am not ok with: artificial sweeteners. It may be tempting to get your cookies, soda, or anything else to be “calorie free,” but this is weirdly unnatural. Any food that you eat should have calories, the important thing is to eat all foods in moderation. In my food choices I try very hard to avoid high fructose corn syrup, sucralose, and other artificial sweeteners. If you want to know more about why you don’t want to eat artificially created sweeteners, you can do an simple google search and get tons of info on what these sweeteners do to your body. That being said, as far as I am concerned sugar or cane sugar is perfectly ok to eat, in moderation.

Now to get to the fun part, super tasty summer recipes!


Blueberry Crisp

Ingredients

6 cups blueberries (about two pints)
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup walnuts
8 Tbsp butter (Or a butter substitute. Unfortunately for this recipe applesauce won’t work very well, because we want the butter to be chilled to make crumbs later.)

What to do

Wash the blueberries and pat dry. I usually put a towel out flat on the counter and spread the blueberries out. Pick over the berries to make sure there are no stems, moldy berries, or such that would not be yummy to eat.

Mix Blueberries, 1 Tbsp sugar, and cornstarch in a bowl. Pour into a 10 in pie plate or other baking dish.

If you have a food processor, pulse flour, 3/4 cup sugar, and walnuts until nuts are just chopped. Add cold butter (cut into pieces) and pulse chop until course crumbs form.

If you don’t have a food processor (I don’t), chop your walnuts the old fashioned way, with a knife on a cutting board. Gently mix chopped walnuts, flour, 3/4 cup sugar, and butter (cut into pieces) in a bowl. Use a pastry blender (or you can chop with a knife, but this is much more difficult) to chop your butter into the dry ingredients. Again you want to stop when you have course crumbs.

Pour walnut/butter mix over blueberries.

Bake at 400 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

Enjoy warm or cold!


Easy Peach Cobbler

I got this recipe from a website so I will send you there to find it. I do use a butter substitute, as well as soy milk when I make this cobbler.
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/easy-peach-cobbler-10000000257827/