Hello! Sending a late holiday dispatch from Brooklyn. The scene last week: White linen apron smudged with streaks of bittersweet chocolate. (I love the optimism of white clothing, especially aprons.) Faux-granite counter covered in powdered sugar. Plates of flaky sour cream biscuits, apricot jam. An aged KitchenAid furiously whips Italian buttercream. Dishes pile in the sink while the oven preheats. It’s Christmas, and I am capital-H Happy for the first time in forever. Not because it’s Christmas, but because I am covered in flour, baking at home.
Coming up on the first anniversary of my illness—insert something clever about year one/type 1—I’ve been thinking a lot about baking. Baking has always been therapeutic. There’s something about the structure of recipes, the focus and precision, that helps me center when I feel off. I’m definitely not a precise baker—you won’t find a pastry ruler in my kitchen—but I like the parameters, the clearly defined rules. Long before seeing the wholesome opening credits of The Great British Bake Off (“Skip Intro?” Never!), I felt at home with a bowl of flour and a cake pan. Baking’s filled with foundational tools and techniques, and once you have those, there’s plenty of room to play and make adjustments. And oh, I’ve been making adjustments—more on that later. Best of all, it’s so satisfying to pull baked goods from the oven: You made that! Even when they’re imperfect—overbaked, underbaked, overproofed, bien cuit or just plain burnt—there’s something magical about baked goods.
Then came diabetes. I was told to avoid sugar at all costs, with the threat of inevitable decline (or worse) if I bake a tin of brownies. Talking with friends and family, certain common misconceptions about type 1 diabetes and sugar came up from time to time. The big one? Sugar causes diabetes. As we know, it is not caused by sugar consumption; T1D is an autoimmune disease and, while it’s often genetic, the cause is unknown. (My family has no history of the condition.) While there are lots of good reasons to eat less sugar, being diabetic is not one of them. The key thing is to take the right amount of insulin for the amount of sugar I’ll be consuming. But how much should I have? That’s a sticky question.
As I mentioned in my last note, I’m no stranger to research. But this is on a whole different level. It quickly became clear that sugar is complicated, caught up in complex conversations about health and wellness, ethics, culture, history, and more. Sugar is, in short, a moral problem. Sugar farming and processing as we know it has its roots in slavery; this powerful piece by Khalil Gibran Muhammad unpacks “The Barbaric History of Sugar in America.” Kara Walker’s installation “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby,” a temporary installation at the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn in 2014, spoke to this legacy. Modern sugar consumption, rising astronomically in the West over the past 50 years, is equally troubling, with issues from child labor and lack of transparent pricing to environmental degradation and poor farming practices by agribusiness corporations. At this point, we all take it as a known fact: Sugar is bad.
It’s also one of the body’s preferred forms of fuel. Also: joy-inducing. Also: potentially harmful. It’s all this and more. How do we square these things?
Swaps and substitutions are one way out. My dietician encouraged me to embrace the brave new world of alternative sweeteners, designed to replace sugar and add sweetness without spiking glucose levels. Thankfully, my partner Jon worked for a “good for you” ice cream company at the time, so he’s well-versed in sugar substitutes. With it came a procession of new terms, from sugar alcohols to novel sweeteners. We went down the list, a seemingly endless alphabet: allulose, erythritol, maltitol, monk fruit, stevia, xylitol. Certain sweeteners were already familiar, like aspartame (Equal) and stevia, and I knew their strong aftertaste didn’t appeal to me. Erithyrtol tastes like chewing on aluminum-flavored bubblegum. Others, like monk fruit and allulose, were completely new. These products aim to impart sweetness on different parts of the tongue, often in combination, e.g. a mix of stevia and erythritol. Allulose, a “rare sugar monosaccharide” or naturally occurring sugar, became my favorite for its neutral flavor; it can be substituted 1:1 for white sugar in many recipes, though the result will be dramatically less sweet.
When I started incorporating these products into my baking, I had a naive optimism—I hate overly sweet baked goods! We’ll just dial back the sugar and plug in some alternative sweeteners to fill the void. How hard can it be?
Turns out, it’s pretty hard. As any classically trained pastry chef can tell you, sugar brings two things to the party: flavor and texture. With flavor, sugar not only brings sweetness, but also amplifies the flavors of the other ingredients. Ever had macerated strawberries? IKYK. Then there’s texture. Before diabetes, I had no idea that sugar was so integral to the consistency of baked goods. I’d experimented with dialing back sugar in recipes, and the end result always seemed a little off—the pastry had an odd texture or the cake crumb wasn’t light. That’s because sugar plays a key role in producing the textures we know and love in baked goods—the crunch of a muffin top, tender crumb of an olive oil cake, or the luxurious swoosh of buttercream frosting.
So I went back to the drawing board. Normally a “by the book” baker, my illness encouraged me to experiment, take liberties with recipes I’d usually follow to a T. I’ve found a middle ground in unrefined sugars, with maple syrup, coconut sugar, and date syrup taking pride of place on my baking shelf. These are sugars, sure, but in moderation they don’t spike my blood sugar the way refined cane sugar does. Have there been failures? Oh yes! There have been failures, both with traditional recipes (grainy Italian buttercream, oh my!) and experiments. We won’t speak of the Yule log, whose grainy frosting couldn’t be saved despite every hack known to Google.
Julia Child called her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking because it suggests a work in progress; as cooks we are always learning. Fun aside: Julia pitched a boatload of other potential titles to her editor Judith Jones, with the eventual winner penciled in at the bottom of the letter. As I try on this new way of baking (and being), I keep coming back to this idea of mastering. In my baking, and in my writing, I’m trying not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. Failure is hard but worth it. Baking a tray of dry cookies or writing a clunky paragraph is better than the alternative, doing nothing out of fear. And when victory comes, like the perfect title or turn of phrase, it tastes all the sweeter.
Which brings me to biscotti: These cookies were a clear victory. I made two swaps here: 1) substituting in a half cup of buckwheat flour, which is lower on the glycemic index and adds an earthy flavor, and 2) replacing a quarter cup of white sugar with maple sugar. The buckwheat enhances the nuttiness of the hazelnut, while the maple sugar dials back the sweetness just a bit. Are these low sugar? No! Are they delicious? Yes! These biscotti, the last thing I baked before being hospitalized in 2022, are a little bit different now—but so am I. They’re a way to say I’m still here. Sweetness is still possible. I hope you try them.
Anniversary Biscotti
(adapted from Carla Lalli Music)
1/2 cup (67 g) hazelnuts
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons (16 g) instant coffee or espresso
1 1/2 cups (180 g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (70 g) buckwheat flour
1/4 cup (20 g) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 teaspoons (10 g) baking powder
1 teaspoon (3 g) kosher salt
8 tablespoons (4 ounces/ 112 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (55 g) maple sugar
2 teaspoons (10 ml) pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup (90 g) semisweet chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Place hazelnuts on a small rimmed baking sheet and toast until darkened and fragrant, 10 to 12 minutes. Wrap in a clean kitchen towel to trap steam and let cool, 10 minutes. Using towel, vigorously rub hazelnuts to remove skins (it’s okay if not all of them release); roughly chop nuts and set aside. Reduce oven temperature to 325°F.
Separate 1 egg, placing white and yolk in separate small bowls. Cover egg white; set aside. Crack remaining 2 eggs into the bowl with egg yolk. Add the instant coffee to the whole egg mixture and beat to combine. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugars on medium speed until creamy, 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl, then add the egg mixture and vanilla and beat on medium until combined, 1 minute. Scrape again and beat until creamy. Add the flour mixture and mix on low until combined, 20 seconds; scrape the bowl. Add the nuts and chocolate chips; mix on low to combine.
Scrape dough out onto one prepared baking sheet. With damp hands, press dough into a loaf about 14 inches long, 4 inches across, and 1 inch thick. Beat egg white until foamy, then brush it over the top and sides of the dough. Sprinkle an even, generous layer of sugar over top.
Bake until the loaf is firm in the center when pressed and starting to crisp around the edges, 35 to 40 minutes, rotating pan halfway through (it will spread as it bakes). Remove from the oven; let cool 15 minutes (longer is okay, but it needs at least this much time to firm up a bit). Carefully transfer loaf to a cutting board, then use a serrated knife to cut it crosswise into ½-inch-thick pieces. Using both prepared baking sheets this time, lay slices on a cut side and bake until the surfaces feel dry and crisp, 35 minutes.
Let biscotti cool completely before eating. Store airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Note: This recipe is a modified version of Carla Lalli Music’s Mocha Hazelnut Biscotti from That Sounds So Good. I highly recommend Carla’s cookbooks and her YouTube channel, which features great fashion (Sandy Liang sweaters! Cute nail art!) and easy, versatile recipes.