Making sweets with fewer calories from traditional recipes is a way to eat healthier, since these fewer calories are due to the replacement of fats and sugars with healthier alternatives also from a nutritional point of view. In addition, with these six tricks you can adapt any sweet recipe and make a lighter one without searching the net for specific light recipes. They are very simple and low-cost tricks to make desserts with fewer calories.

Some tricks are adapted to specific recipes but not to others. So follow the usage tips to make no mistake.
In addition to these 6 tricks, if you love using pistachio, hazelnut and almond flour in the kitchen, check out my article on the new degreased seed flours. 

10 TRICKS TO MAKE SWEETS WITH LESS CALORIES

• Use mascarpone or UHT cooking cream in place of butter or oil in shortbread.

Both mascarpone and cream allow you to replace butter and oil in shortbreads without spending money on harmful margarines and saving more than 50 percent of the calories in a recipe. They also give the same “buttery” aroma to the pastry. Ideal for making shortbread and shortbread biscuits, muffins, brownies, they are substituted for the same weight of butter or oil.

In this case, it is best to use only the yolk instead of the whole egg. Or if your recipe calls, as in the case of biscuits, also liquids such as milk, reduce the milk a little. Or, leave the doses unchanged, but use wholemeal flour instead of the normal one.

This is because mascarpone or cream will give more moisture to the dough.

As with butter, mascarpone and cream can be used to make a quick puff pastry with less (half) calories. For 250 grams of flour, use 225 grams of cream or mascarpone cold from the fridge + a pinch of salt, make a ball, roll it out like a thick rectangle and keep it in the fridge for one day.
The next day they do the creases. This preparation can be used to make puff pastry pies and puff pastry cakes. If you want to make croissants, add half a sachet of dry yeast to the flour before mixing it with the cream or mascarpone. Proceed to the dough and then always in the fridge.

• Use whole Greek yogurt for shortbread.

  Another trick for the shortbreads with which we will make pies and biscuits is to use whole white Greek yogurt instead of butter. However, it should be noted that compared to the trick seen in point one, the shortcrust pastry with Greek yogurt is less crumbly, so I recommend using a weak flour and adding half a sachet of baking powder.

• And UHT cream instead of butter in sweet leavened products

In sweet leavened products where melted butter is used, you can use UHT cream or unsweetened liquid cream for desserts.
I use cooking cream (it has no added salt) because it has fewer calories than liquid unsweetened whipping cream.
I use it to make danubi, stuffed brioches and brioche braids.

• Use apple puree for cake and donut dough.

Apple puree is sold in aluminum trays, it is usually in every supermarket and can be found near the fruit and vegetable department, often next to bags of dried fruit. It is truly an excellent ally in the kitchen, if you want to make cakes and donuts, just replace it with butter or oil for the same weight. In this case you will save over 90% of the calories and also some money. A tub of apple puree costs around 35-40 cents.

• How to make a light tiramisu cream.

In this case, however, we will save calories on mascarpone.
I offer you two alternatives.

The first is : for 200 grams of mascarpone, replace it with 100 grams of ricotta + 100 grams of skimmed quark or skimmed Greek yogurt instead of quark. So for every 100 grams of mascarpone, 50% will be ricotta and 50% quark or Greek yogurt.
200 grams of mascarpone are about 800 calories. With this variant, the calories for the same weight are 200-220.
Tiramisu generally includes 500 grams of mascarpone!
Once you have our fake tiramisu, proceed as per the recipe, with eggs and sugar.

The second variant is even lighter and in this case you will get a ready-made cream for your tiramisu with reduced calories and cholesterol.
That is, instead of 500 grams of mascarpone, 4 eggs and about 50 grams of sugar, you will use 250 grams of skimmed white Greek yogurt, 100 grams of classic robiola or philadelphia, 250 grams of pasteurized liquid egg white, 50 grams of sugar and a sachet of “ Pannafix “. You will need to mix yogurt, robiola and sugar well. Then whip the pasteurized egg whites with the pannafix and add them to the cream trying to obtain a homogeneous mixture.

Then just dip the ladyfingers in the coffee syrup, make the layers with the cream, sprinkle with bitter cocoa and keep in the fridge.

• How to make a light custard.

Making a light custard is very simple, just substitute skim milk for regular one. So half a liter of skimmed milk, three egg yolks, 60 grams of sugar and 40 grams of corn starch. Using the yolks, the cream comes perfect all the same. And we save around 150 calories.