Black Cake and Traditional Confectionaries for Diabetics  

This week, we showed you the step-by-step process of making traditional Belizean Christmas sweets that you can get ahead of this holiday season. It’s a picture-perfect Belizean Christmas, but not necessarily ideal for diabetics. That’s until Sabreena Daly went searching for someone who can put a unique spin on traditional Belizean sweets just for persons with dietary restrictions. This week’s Bright Side is for diabetics, but as she found out, even she could not tell the difference.

Sabreena Daly

“It definitely tastes like rum popo.”
Stephanie

“Would you know?”
Sabreena

“I would not. It’s not very sweet, but it’s also sweet. I would not know that it’s   Splenda, though. That’s the part right there. You would not know that it’s Splenda”

We went in search of options this holiday season for persons bound by dietary restrictions. Stephanie Crawford is a chef at the US Embassy and has challenged herself in the field over the years by offering unique spins on certain meals by substituting ingredients.

Stephanie Crawford

Stephanie Crawford, Chef
“These people need to have a life just like everybody else and they would always feel out of place because they do not have certain things. So, I made it an effort to educate myself, to do my research so that I would be able to perform these recipes at these resorts.”

Her latest cookbook, Keith Friendly, was named after Charge d’ Affairs Keith Gilges. The catchphrase used in the kitchen was brought about as a signal of freedom of consumption due to his dietary restriction.

Stephanie Crawford
“He was diabetic and I created more recipes with him. At the resorts I could have five or ten and I could rotate it because these people come and go but with him I can’t give him the same desert every day so I became more into it and he was accepting and he motivated me as well because he was willing to be what you would call my Guinee-Pig to try my new recipes. I made it known it was my first time when it was my first time and we did it together. Some of them were three, four times until I got it right. That’s how I made this book. Its called Keith Friendly because that was the slogan we used in the house when we had guests over. If I couldn’t get to see him, the waitress would let him know the desert is Keith-friendly and he knew he could have eaten it all. If we said it’s not Keith-friendly, he would have only taken two bites.”

Dietary plans made for others, are also something that Crawford later incorporated because of her own medical condition. In a little over a year, the results speak for themselves.

Stephanie Crawford
“I reached three hundred and thirty-four pounds which was scary for me. I got frightened. I even cried because had never had that weight even when I was pregnant. The doctor told me its not anything you’re doing, it’s the medication and the sickness but you need to go on low carb. So, I said I have to follow my own diet I’m making for others. I’m doing it for other so now I need to do it for myself. And from last year July to now, I lost a hundred and four pounds.”

Crawford encourages even non-diabetics to consider their sugar intake and include healthier portions and greens in their meals. Even if you are not diabetic, your choices where food consumption is concerned can save you later in life.

Stephanie Crawford
“My advice to anybody out there is do the diet. If you’re diabetic, if you’re not diabetic, if you want to lose weight, it will still work. if you have a family member who is diabetic like one of your parents, we would say it is in your genes, so there is a possibility at a certain age, you can have it. So its always best to start this diet before. When it comes to the sweets, its best you come off of the sugar because you know sugar is related to cancer; it spies a lot of different diseases besides diabetes. So, it’s a healthy way and it’s a way of looking at a better life, a healthier life for yourself and for your family because when one person is sick, it affects the entire family. So that’s my advice. I did it. I won’t come on here and say it was easy but it’s a life change.”

And for sweet lovers, who believe that taking on the diet change would be restricting of the sweets they’ve come to love and enjoy, Chef Crawford has proven us wrong; her take on the Belizean black fruit cake and white cake left us with our own share to take home. Looking on the Bright Side, I’m Sabreena Daly.