Christmas Baking Recipes for Diabetics

Traditionally, christmas baking has been full of sugar and fruit.

Here's some tips for making changes to your current recipes that will make them more suitable for diabetics:-

• replace half the flour with wholemeal (or wholewheat) flour
• cut the sugar to around 75% of what the recipe suggests
• replace butter with low-fat margarine

Christmas Cakes

Traditional cakes are full of fruit, nuts, butter and covered with icing or marzipan - high in calories, sugar and carbs!

However, at least the cakes will keep well so, if you've got the willpower, you can eat just one small slice each day to accompany your main meal.  Also, cut out the traditional icing or marzipan and replace with a light dusting of icing sugar for effect.

Mince Pies

The highest calories in a mince pie are in the pastry - even though most people might have thought it was the mincemeat.

Shop around - Alissa found a great low-sugar mincemeat in a health food shop which she teamed up with pastry (made with wholemeal) flour to make delicious mince pies!

Christmas Puddings

At least with puddings that you can buy in the stores you'll be able to check out their calorie and carbohydrate content and compare different varieties.  Don't be swayed by the pretty labelling - sometimes the "low calorie" is high in fat or the "healthy option" is only low in sugar, but high in white flour and carbs.  Learning to read the labels and compare can ensure that you don't miss out on your favorite festive foods.

Adapting your Favourite Recipes

This will be a bit trial and error, but we've had some great success in adapting our favourite recipes by making some or all of these changes.

If you're cooking for a diabetic, remember that even with these changes, it's better that they only have one portion - so please don't force them to accept second helpings!

By the way, the delicious looking food in the picture is an Italian Christmas tradition, the Panetonne!