Low Cholesterol Desserts

Take any five women, and each one will have a slightly different approach to healthful eating. Some women try to maintain a generally balanced diet, while others focus on eliminating specific categories of foods from their diets. One of the most common areas of focus is cholesterol, since having too much LDL or “bad” cholesterol in your blood can increase your risk of having a heart attack. Here are some low cholesterol food choices that I love.

If your physician has told you to reduce the amount of bad cholesterol in your diet, then you are probably saying goodbye to some of your favorite buttery, eggy baked goods. This can be frustrating for many reasons, especially because dessert has a way of bringing the family together. Fortunately for you, there are still a number of low cholesterol and cholesterol-free desserts available that you can enjoy with your family from time to time. Run the following list of desserts by your physician, and then indulge once you have been given the all-clear.

Just Cookies
Cookies are a classic dessert, but most recipes are dependent on eggs and butter to achieve their celebrated flavor and consistency. If you have already sampled some cholesterol-free versions, then you have probably found that these alternatives tend to fall flat.

Fortunately, the food gurus at Hamptoncreek have figured out how to make scrumptious cookies without using eggs or butter—which means they have no cholesterol. The key ingredient in these cookies is sorghum flour, a mildly sweet ancient grain that proudly steps into the binding role normally fulfilled by eggs. The cookies are available in chocolate chip, sugar, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter flavors, as well as a chocolate chip cookie dough.

Popsicles
When you are in the mood for a fruitier treat, popsicles are the way to go. Most popsicles are naturally made without cholesterol heavy-hitters like eggs and butter. That makes them naturally low cholesterol and even cholesterol-free in many cases.
Popsicles come in countless flavor varieties, and they are also easy to make on your own. Most department stores carry a few varieties of DIY popsicle molds, but you can also use ice trays or small plastic cups as makeshift molds. To sneak in a serving of fruit with your dessert, try tossing a few berries into the mixture before you stick the molds in the freezer.

Veggie Swap
If you like to bake your own desserts, then it is time to shake things up a bit. One way to decrease the amount of cholesterol of some of your favorite recipes is to use vegetable purees instead of oil or butter. Depending on the recipe, you can replace the oil either partially or entirely with the puree of your choice. This will cut out some unhealthy fats while adding some desirable vitamins and moistness.

Ice Cream Alternatives
As amazing as ice cream is, it is often off-limits to people who are reducing their cholesterol intake. While there are some fat-free and low-cholesterol dairy ice creams available, you should consider looking into alternatives that do not rely on the mangling of traditional recipes.

For example, you can make “ice cream” by freezing banana slices and then blending them until they reach a creamy texture identical to that of soft-serve ice cream. This method does not require you to make subpar substitutions, and you end up downing a serving of fruit so delicious that you will feel like you took a diet cheat day.

Baked and Grilled Fruits
Crunchy, juicy fruit can be quite enjoyable to eat, but warm fruit is on another level entirely. Warming fruit by baking or grilling it causes the existing flavors to deepen and improve dramatically. You can further boost the impact of this method by topping the fruit with a small sprinkling of brown sugar and oats. Oats are heart-healthy, and their chewy, absorbent texture combines nicely with the syrups that naturally occur when fruit is warmed.

Low-Cholesterol Living
You have to keep yourself healthy both for your own good and for the sake of your family. Once you notice how good you feel after making some lifestyle changes, you will be even more motivated to continue with them. It may seem like a bummer at first not to be able to enjoy some of your go-to desserts in the same way, but have fun with it. By sampling some dishes that you otherwise would never have tried, you just might discover some sweet new favorites.

Enjoy!