Bantam USA Good & Sweet: A New Way to Bake with Naturally Sweet Ingredients

I bought this book after reading a recipe from it in a newspaper, and caught the enthusiasm of the journalist for this "new approach" to sweet foods using fruits and other plants. There are some very good recipes, where the use of fruits and/or unusual grains produces really superb flavours - I can particularly recommend the pear and almond frangipane tarte. However, for the most part the approach is to substitute large quantities of very sugary, often dried, fruits such as dates, prunes and raisins, for refined sugar. Whilst this is often very tasty, I'm not sure it's that much healthier, especially when the recipes are still laden with saturated fat and all purpose white flour. To be fair, the author makes little claim to healthiness - these are mostly still American desserts, when all is said and done - and my expectations were possibly unreasonable.

I've had this book for a while and made a few of the recipes. The book is beautiful, and I loved the concept of eating less sugar while still having dessert. I enjoyed the recipes I made. The recipes, writing, and quality all deserve 5 stars. But here's what I wish I had known before purchase: 1. You will need to buy expensive and unusual ingredients, many by mail order because you cannot find them in stores 2. No one will eat these desserts with you because when one's palette is used to sugar, these will not satisfy 3. You will have too many desserts around that no one else wants to eat 4. Recipes full of white flour, dried fruits, and butter are not healthy, even though they do not contain "sugar" I will continue to use the book, but in all honesty, will probably put a 1/2 cup or so of sugar in the next recipe so that others will eat them instead of just drying out in my freezer. And since these recipes contain other ingredients that the body reads as "sugar" (white flour, dried fruit, etc), this is a reasonable addition. The recipes are still beautiful, the writing is well done, and I will enjoy the book.

My daughter and I randomly found this book at our library and picked it up. PROS: 1. We picked up this book along with America's Test Kitchen "Naturally Sweet" which we also like but tweak a lot. We find Levy's recipes much more to what we were looking for -- no added sugar of any kind (including honey, maple syrup, etc. which ATK's book does use). 2. I've been baking with monk fruit for years now, but with the recent research (published by the NIH) that shows that monk fruit may cause blood clots, I knew I needed to find a different way. Levy found THAT way! Primarily by using freeze dried fruits pulverized into a powder (kind of like date sugar except with apples, bananas, etc.). That's why my daughter and I said, "This guy is a genius." 3. Some of our favorites are his banana bread, fruit crisps, and granola. NOTE: if you buy Costco's Seven Sundays Rise and Shine Granola Mix with freeze dried strawberries/bananas, you'll like this recipe. Levy's granola is healthier since it uses EVOO instead of coconut oil and is a fraction of the cost. It also tastes better, and is incredibly fast to get into the oven. 4. We borrowed this library book over and over again until we finally bought it on Amazon to support this guy. He deserves it. CONS: 1. The one recipe we couldn't figure out was the cream cheese frosting. I think it's because we tried to halve the recipe or something? Or, perhaps, because my daughter and I ate too many red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting in our lives that the typical super sweet frosting just can't compare to Levy's. But, aside from this recipe, 100% of the other recipes we tried were spot on. Can't wait to buy your next book Brian. And, if you can find a way to bake without refined flour, you would be a genius and a saint!

I like this cookbook in theory, but less in practice. The book itself has great photos and interesting recipes. I have no doubt the baked goods are quality and should turn out well for the right reader. However, I found the ingredients and approach to fruit-sweetened baking a bit inaccessible. Certain ingredients, such as teff flour or chestnut flour, seemed very niche. A majority of the recipes were also sweetened with golden raisins, which I cannot eat because of asthma. Unfortunately I will have to return the book as I don't foresee gravitating toward it in my baking.

This is a beautiful book and I look forward to trying the recipes. The desserts look wonderful. The author, who is a pastry chef, was looking for someway to come up with sweet and relatively healthy desserts. I say relatively healthy because although he does not use refined cane sugar (or honey, maple syrup, agave, fruit juice monk fruit, stevia etc.) the ingredients he does use are filled with fructose and may or may not be suitable for people. Diabetics especially may find this to be a problematic book. He uses date sugar in most places that would use cane sugar and makes use of several freeze dried fruits. He uses freeze dried sweet corn in pie crusts and does use corn and wheat flours. The whole impetus was to avoid refined sugar. What may also stop people from making use of the book is the price of the ingredients. Date sugar can run upwards of $10.00 a pound. The freeze dried fruits run anywhere from $ 10.00 to $25.00 a pound. This can add up fairly quickly. His explanations and directions are clear and to the point. And the book is laid out by type of sweet and covers the gamut from scones to pies to cookies to frozen desserts. The recipes also include some suitable for vegans. If you are willing to spend more for your desserts and don’t mind a little alteration in your cooking this book would be a nice addition to your library. If you don’t have the money or have problems with any type of sugar be it sucrose or fructose this is probably not the book for you.