In the University of Idaho Vandalizing the Kitchen cooking class Feb. 26, UI Campus Dietitian Marissa Rudley talked about ways to make sweet treats healthier.
Rudley said some healthier options for baked treats are substituting flour with oatmeal, sugar with honey, and milk with coconut milk.
In the cooking class, Rudley demonstrated how to make oatmeal banana cupcakes, chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough bites and strawberry milkshakes.
“We are going to make oatmeal cupcakes — that’s made with oatmeal and banana,” Rudley said. “You can put add-ins, whatever you want. We’re going to add in chocolate chips and some Craisins.”
Rudley said light coconut milk is good to bake with and is better for you, because it has less saturated fat compared to regular coconut milk.
“It actually makes it really creamy tasting, even though we’re not actually using any dairy,” she said. “That’s another thing, exception with the chocolate chips, everything that (we’re making is) dairy-free.”
Rudley said by making these recipes dairy-free, it will fit vegetarians and people who are lactose intolerant. It can also be gluten-free, if people use gluten-free oats.
To make the baking process of oatmeal banana cupcakes a little easier, she shared some tips like mashing bananas before peeling them and using warm water to help cook the oatmeal.
Each chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough bite contains only 62 calories, while one serving of strawberry milkshake contains 163 calories, Rudley said.
She said there are other tricks to make homemade food healthier including using half of the measurement or substituting regular ingredients with healthier items like whole wheat or fat-free ingredients.
Rudley said she got the recipes from “Chocolate Covered Katie” — a blog focused on making healthier desserts.
“It’s a really neat blog that I am learning about,” she said. “It has been really fun — I even made one-minute lava cake in the microwave.”
She said the recipes in the blog are easy to make and only use limited cooking equipment.
“You don’t have to be a chef to make these things,” Rudley said.
UI student Liz Becker said the cooking class was fun and interesting. She said she learned new things about cooking and baking.
“I learned a bunch of different alternatives to substitute sweets, because I always heard trans fats are the bad sugar,” Becker said. “This is all good stuff. I would make the peanut butter one, for sure.”