The Diabetic Goodie Cookbook

Amazing cookbook! There are all the recipes that I wanted to learn plus a lot more. It's a beautiful book, the photos are nice and I can't wait to start making these recipes. There are recipes for cakes, cookies, pies, bars, cheesecakes, scones, muffins, pudding and breads! Basically everything!! I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

Very good book, with some nice recipes that I will be trying in the near future. This will be a highly recommend book for any at home diabetic cook and a library that wants to help a family member feed someone who needs to watch their sugar intake.

4.5 stars
Netgalley ARC provided

This is a surprisingly comprehensive book with extremely good cooking tips combined with very tasty recipes. It feels like it was written perhaps 16+ years ago, when we knew less about sugar but worried about the artificial sweeteners of the time. As such, keep this in mind because most recipes are up there for carbs due to flour and sugar. Whole grain options keep the spikes low but of course, you know best how your diabetes is affected by the carbs.

That said, the recipes are fantastic in the taste department and I doubt you or your family will even know you are eating diabetic friendly foods. Each recipe comes with prep time, bake time, ingredients, short numbered steps, variation options/tips/suggestions, serving size, and nutrition info: calories, carbs, protein, fat, cholesterol, sodium, fiber, etc. About every fourth recipe or so has a photograph of the finished product. The book is printed in three colors (black, brown, blue).

The recipes are variations of these goodies: cookies and bars, cakes, cheesecakes, coffee cakes and scones, fruit desserts, muffins, pies/tarts/cobblers, puddings, quick breads. Examples include: easy apple bars, raspberry angel food cake, blueberry topping, pineapple cheesecake squares, apple crumb coffee cake, ginger scones, microwave applesauce, pineapple sherbet, frozen yogurt pops, pumpkin muffins, apple tart, flaky pie crust, tart shell, banana nut bread, whole wheat raisin bread. There are a LOT of recipes here.

Most recipes seem to nearly completely mirror a non-diabetic version, just with whole grain flour mixed with regular flour as well as fruit mixed with sugar for sweetening. A good example of the book's recipes is a very tasty chocolate chip cookie. The recipe calls for 1/4 cub flour, 3/4 whole wheat flour, 1/4 oats, 1/4 brown sugar, 2 tablespoons sugar as carbs (as well as chocolate, vanilla, baking soda, etc.). The serving size is 2 cookies (the recipe makes 4 dozen cookies) and is 98 calories, 12g carbs, 2g protein, 5g fat, 17mg cholesterol, 60mg sodium, 1g fiber. This should give you an idea of the carb load and serving size for those carbs.

The recipes are cleanly laid out and very easy to follow. Each one I made was excellent and as long as I followed the serving size, I did not have issues with blood sugar spikes. But what makes this a fanstastic cookbok even for non diabetics is the whole chapter dedicated to baking tips. There was some excellent information here I haven't seen in other cookbooks; most particularly, explanations of why your recipe failed and how to fix it. As an example, explanations on what went wrong with your chocolate chip cookies if: irregular in size and shape, dark and crusty edges, dry and hard, doughy, and excessive spreading. Issues could be overbaking, too large a baking sheet, dough too warm when put in oven, dry ingredients undermeasured, etc. Even making sure that your baking soda is still efficacious and how to test to make sure in advance.

Other information includes substitutions (e.g., milk and lemon for buttermilk), food equivalents for easier measuring (eg., 4 large eggs equal 1 cup or 200 grams), carbohydrate calculator, and much more. Note that a lot of the baseline carb or diabetes information comes from 2008 American Diabetic Association - which admittedly feels very outdated with all we know about Diabetes even in the last 15 years.

In all, although the book feels out of date in terms of the diabetes information, the recipes are as good as promised and none contain any artificial sweeteners (which, again, I do not feel is problematic now with e.g., Stevia or Xylitol). Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NG for a copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

I am approaching this book as someone who is diabetic and likes to cook/bake! I thought this book provided a lot of great examples, high quality food photographs, straight forward instructions, and a range of recipes that would be suitable for any skills sets. Importantly, there is appropriate information about the nutritional factors that go into these dishes. I would suggest this to others who are either looking to cook different versions of their baked/goodies or have similar health needs.

Even if you're not diabetic, this is a great cookbook to have sweets without a ton of sugar. I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be baking out of it.