[.ca] Secrets Of Fat Free Baking (ISBN 0895296306)

I've seen better:
Most of the recipes in this book turn out too grainy tasting. My muffins have turned out really tough. Other recipes (such as the white cake with strawberries) weren't even edible. These recipes call for a lot of odd ingredients, too. However, the tips in this book for reducing the fat in your own recipes work great. I've tried them several times with much success. If you buy this book, but it for the tips--not the recipes.

Didn't like it:
Fat free doesn't mean low calorie here. Nor does it mean cholesterol free. Which is an oxymoron in my mind, since cholesterol is animal fat. So how can you have fat free foods that aren't cholesterol free? I'm sure this book is helping others but for someone who was looking for low calorie, cholesterol free recipes, this wasn't the book for me.

Good recipes, nutrition information lacking:
I got this book at Easter and have made several of the recipes. All have been good, a few outstanding. (The "good" ones were tasty but identifiable as a low-fat product. The outstanding ones were as good as a full-fat counterpart.) However, I can't give this book 5 stars because the nutrition information given is lacking a key aspect: no carbohydrate information is provided. Fat, calories, protein, etc., are all listed, but no carbohydrate. That makes figuring American Diabetic Association or American Dietetic Association exchanges hard to do accurately. One can make a guess of the starch exchanges from the calories, but carbohydrate information would allow one to figure exchanges much more precisely. Since this IS a book of baked goods, not giving the carbohydrate information is like reviewing a new brand of gasoline and detailing all the ingredients EXCEPT the octane. Hard to believe, given that the author is a nutritionist, and makes you wonder if they are trying to downplay how much sugar and complex carbs are in the recipes. Since many "low-fat" products are unhealthy precisely because they use great amounts of sugars and starches to taste good despite the lack of fat, you have to wonder about these recipes, too.

Excellent recipes, although her larger cookbook is better:
This is an excellent cook book for those who need to cut out as much fat as possible (I make many of the dishes for those in my office who have had heart attacks) and with care the baked goods are great. For those who can afford a bit of fat I prefer the recipes in Sandra Woodruff's larger all-purpose Secrets of a Healthy Kitchen cookbook, which use a little bit of oil in the baked goods. Her quick breads are excellent and the muffins really hearty; a great way to start the morning. I own both this book and the larger green cookbook and bounce back and forth between the two, often combining recipe elements and experimenting.

Excellent Book:
My boyfriend was recently sentenced to a low fat diet and I thought my baking days were over. I picked up this book to see what I could do and I am most pleased! Everything has been tasty and there is a lot of useful information about replacing the fat in pre-existing recipes and measuring things. We cook at home more often now, so we are not only losing weight - we are saving all that money we spent on takeout! All the recipes I have tried are comparable in texture and flavor to the real thing. An added bonus is they are not only lower in fat but much higher in nutritional value!