The Secret To Making Healthy Desserts

Fruit is loaded with tons of vitamins and minerals.  Take the lowly grape for example.  One cup of grapes, which really isn’t very many grapes, has potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, selenium, folate, and vitamins A, C, B and B6.  Fruit also has lots of fiber and antioxidants.

So no wonder my doctor keeps pestering me to eat lots of fresh fruit.  Sure, I knew that all kinds of fruit are great for your health, but now I’m really starting to get the picture.  If one cup of fruit has so much nutritional value, then if I really ate it three times a day, would I be super woman?  Aaahh c’mon…I need to be superwoman with two young boys that run me ragged with their energy.

Everyone loves sweets.  Well, almost everyone.  I have a brother-in-law who never eats dessert.  I’m not sure how my sister found this freak of nature, but he even passes up his own birthday cake.  We buy the gluten free cake with icing for the rest of us to eat.  But if you are like me then you do like sweets.   That doesn’t change just because you have been diagnosed with gluten intolerance or Celiac disease.

So here’s what I finally figured out.  I can turn fruit into a dessert and get a double whammy benefit.  I get the tons of nutrition found in just a cup of fruit, and my sweet tooth is satisfied.  This is a great deal any way you look at it.  I do this by adding gluten free sauces, dips or creams to my fruit.  For example, chocolate sauce and strawberries make a fantastic dessert.  Or you can whip up a sweet cream sauce and mix it with fruit.

One of my favorite things to do now is to top my fruit off with yogurt.  I like to buy blueberry yogurt and spoon it over orange and cantaloupe slices and strawberries.  When I can afford it, I will buy kiwi fruit which is one of my favorite fruits.

Another great ingredient for your fruit is pudding.  I mix gluten free vanilla pudding filling (or homemade Chocolate Pudding) with blueberries or bananas, pour it into a cooked pie crust, and topped it all off with sliced bananas and homemade dairy-free chocolate or vanilla ‘whip cream’.

I guess it’s obvious I eat a lot of fruit now since I discovered how to make fruit desserts.  Of course, I’m not promoting always eating fruit like a dessert.  But if you’re trying to find ways to make sure you eat more fruit and are missing dessert, then this is a great compromise.

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Here are some delicious fruity desserts for you try:

• Spiked Watermelon Salad
• Grilled Grapefruit
• Chocolate Covered Strawberries