Sugar and a Recipe!

I thought I'd talk about sugar today. I am the first to admit that I have a massive sweet tooth. I can't remember the last day I didn't eat something sweet..... I do prefer homemade sweets though so I try and have something in the house most of the time. I'll even admit that I got desperate the other night when I didn't have anything made up so I whipped up a batch of thermo caramel sauce and made a banana split!

When I bought my thermomix one of the things they sell you on is that you can make your own caster and icing sugars out of raw sugar and stop using white sugar because it's so highly refined it does nothing for you. So I stopped using white sugar and just bought raw but after doing a bit of research I found out raw sugar was still refined and not that much better for you nutritionally however is is less refined so I'm happy with that. I now use rapadura, raw honey, molasses, dates, maple syrup and I do still use raw sugar because everything else is so much more expensive! So what is the difference between all the sugars you can buy? Jo from Quirky Cooking has one of the best explanations I've seen on all the different types of sweeteners so I would encourage all of you to go and read about it here. Her blog is AMAZING and she has so many recipes that I want to try. She is one creative lady!
Obviously the best idea is to cut down on sugar as much as possible and I am really trying to do that but in the meantime I am trying to make healthier choices. The best sweeteners to use are the natural ones like dates, raw honey and pure maple syrup and I'm going to make an effort to try recipes with these in them (which I will share of course) but for now here is a fave thermo recipe of mine which uses rapadura.  I'm sure those with more kitchen ability than me can convert it from the thermomix to a standard recipe. It's not totally healthy as it's got the naughty white choc chips in it but they make it sooooo yum! This recipe is from DelighfulDen of www.forumthermomix.com.

White Chocolate, Sesame and Sunflower Seed Biscuits

Ingredients:
125g Unsalted Butter
80g Rapadura Sugar
1 egg
200g Self Raising Wholemeal flour
20g Sesame Seeds
20g Sunflower seeds
100g White Chocolate bits

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 120 degrees fan forced. Line baking sheets with grease proof or baking paper.

Place softened butter and rapadura in themomix and cream together 20 seconds speed 4-5. Scrape down bowl and cream a further 5-10 seconds if needed. Add egg and mix 10 seconds speed 4.  Place all remaining ingredients into the rmomixand mix 20 seconds on reverse and speed 4.

Place tablespoon sized balls of mixture onto baking sheets and flatten with a dampened fork.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until they just begin to change colour. Cool for 5-10 minutes before transferring to  wire cooling rack to cool completely.
Here are mine - sorry for the crappy picture but my camera is useless!

Yummo! I think it's time for a couple of these with a cuppa while the kiddos are asleep. Have a fantastic day :)