I hope you enjoy Starting from Scratch, my second book, published each week online, one chapter at a time. Before the book’s final publication, I hope to sprinkle readers’ thoughts, opinions and advice throughout. After all, you each have helpful systems and solutions in the kitchen worth sharing. By making a contribution, your comments will be printed, crediting you and/or your blog, and you’ll get free copies of the book. In addition, for each section, I’m consulting an expert – for this excerpt, it’s Aimée Wimbush-Bourque, writer and editor for Simple Bites.

As much as meal-time brings a family together, nothing puts the icing on the cake like dessert. Though I realize sweets aren’t the healthiest part of the day, nutritionally speaking, it’s a dependable way to ensure that everyone LOVES the chef. This is when you can get everyone’s attention, complaint-free, even if you burn the cookies. And if you just spent an hour forcing your child to eat his vegetables, miraculously he will down dessert in seconds.

There are healthier and lower calorie alternatives to cakes, cookies and pies, even ways to slim down a fattening recipe. Cooking Light and Weight Watchers started this trend years ago with low-fat alternatives to family favorites (some which had plenty of sugar!). Now there are brownies and cookies sweetened with applesauce and other fruits.  Aimee even makes desserts where the main ingredient is a vegetable – such as chocolate beet cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting, zucchini bread, pumpkin cheesecake and my personal favorite, carrot cake.

Other healthy alternatives are sorbet and fresh fruit. When berries are in season, a little whipped cream makes this dessert look and taste like it’s fit for a king! Other less sugary-and buttery dessert alternatives include biscotti or even fruit cobblers, if you can exhibit willpower and avoid the scoop of ice-cream.

I simply cannot deny my little Luke the love he has for the mixer, even if we do fight over batter on the beaters.  Nor can I deny a sweet tooth that has a rich tradition in Southern heritage.

Again, life is about moderation, not deprivation. So treat yourself to a sweet – at least on occasion.

About Aimée Wimbush-Bourque

Aimée Wimbush-Bourque is the editor and writer for SimpleBites.net, a family-oriented community dedicated to all things food and drink. She believes in the importance of bringing the whole family together around the table on a daily basis, sharing her experiences of cooking for a close-knit family of four.

After attending culinary school, Aimée spent nearly 10 years in the professional cooking industry in Quebec. She then fell in love with motherhood and wanted to stay at home with her babies, trading her tongs and chef whites for cloth diapers and a laptop, thus marrying her two passions as a food/mommy blogger.

Photo courtesy of Aimée.

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