From Fiona Haynes,
Your Guide to Low Fat Cooking.
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The Cooking Light Holiday Cookbook encourages us to feel good about enjoying the holidays. Nothing is off-limits. Indulge in some of Cooking Light’s Classic Pecan Pie, since only 29% of its calories come from fat, or help yourself to some Maple-Bourbon Pumpkin Pie, with 30% of its calories from fat. These pies are much lower in calories and fat than the usual holiday dessert offerings, thanks to Cooking Light’s nifty ingredient substitutions, which compromise the flavor not one little bit.

Low Fat Secrets

These kinds of substitutions are key throughout the Holiday Cookbook. Creamy dips are made with low fat or non fat yogurt or sour cream as their base. Reduced fat (2%) milk or evaporated fat-free milk are often used as substitutes for cream in recipes such as quiche or crème brulée. Egg whites replace some of the whole eggs called for in many recipes, and reduced fat cheeses are frequently used instead of the whole milk variety. Some recipes involve a number of substitutions yet still taste amazingly good. Take Chocolate Decadence, for instance: 2% milk replaces cream, unsweetened cocoa powder replaces baking chocolate and an egg white is used in place of a whole egg, yet the result is, well, decadent. (See more below this box ...)

Menus For All

The Cooking Light Holiday Cookbook certainly showcases classic Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes and menus, yet its 500 recipes cater to many different tastes and traditions. You’ll find menus for a Thanksgiving Table for Two, a Vegetarian Hanukkah, a Kwanzaa Feast, and a Festive New Year’s Dinner. There are menus for seasonal breakfasts, brunches, suppers, plus casual and elegant parties, along with numerous tips and suggestions for hosting them. If you like to give gifts from your kitchen, there are all kinds of ideas—40 of them, in fact, for breads, cookies, candies and jams, plus tips on presentation. A Holiday Helpers section at the back of the book covers topics such as selecting wines, choosing seasonal produce, using leftovers, and the all-important ingredient substitutions.

As always, the recipes are well organized and clearly written. There are plenty of beautiful, enticing photographs, which almost bring the food to life. Cooking Light has outdone itself.

Published by Oxmoor House (ISBN 0-8487-3004-6)