Pancakes and Toppings

I made some pancakes this morning. And, my quest for toppings continued.

But first, a word on sugar-reduced foods. Generally called “lite”, these foods have about half as many (or fewer) calories than their full-calorie couterparts. Simply, there’s less sugar.The problem that I’ve noticed is not so much that they’re less sweet, but that sugar acts as a thickening agent. So, without the full sugar compliment, sugar-reduced foods aren’t as thick or solid as “regular” foods. For instance:

• Chocolate Sauce: Yes, Hershey’s makes Lite Chocolate Syrup. And, I’ve tried it. However, it’s gross — whereas regular chocolate syrup has a pleasing almost-melted-chocolate-like mouth-feel, the Lite syrup is just watery.
• Pancake Syrup: Yup, there’s Lite pancake syrup as well. Regular syrup has about 200 calories per 1/4 cup serving, but Lite syrup has 100. “So,”, you’re thinking, “maybe this won’t be so bad, since it’s only a half-as-much reduction in calories.“ Well, not exactly. I bought some Lite pancake syrup (Target brand). and, actually, it’s not all bad. Unlike the Lite chocolate syrup, I wasn’t thinking to myself “Man, I can’t wait until this if finished”. And, being that it’s a lite product, I’ normally exect it to be thinner in viscosity than ordinary syrup. Surprisingly, it wasn’t — but only because it had gums and thickening agents added to the syrup to compensate. But, it was just overcompensation: the Lite syrup ends up with a gummy texture, somewhat reminiscent of caramel.

So, I was all ready to give up on Lite syrup for my pancake needs. But then, I read Josh’s comment to my pancake entry. There, he recommends jam. So, on my next trip to Target, I checked out their jams.

Always the optimist, I checked out the Lite jams (from Smucker’s). I read on their label that they had 25 calories per 1 TBsp serving. Now, my mind was trying to work out how 1 TBsp related to 1/4 cup (the serving size of the Lite syrup). Then, I gathered some sense and whipped out my Pilot, which did the calculation for me: 1/4 cup = 4 TBsp.

So, that meant that the 25 calories per 1 TBsp of Lite jam had 100 calories per 1/4 cup — the same calorie-count as the Lite syrup. At this point, I was a skeptic of the jam suggestion in general (since I was really a syrup-fan at heart). And, my primary motivation for considering jam in the first place was that it might have fewer calories than the (Lite) syrup. And, seeing that Lite jam and Lite syrup had the same amount of calories was a bit disappointing.

But, “sugar-free” jam to the rescue — after doing the math on the Lite jam, I then saw that Smucker’s also had Sugar Free jam (sweetened with aspartame). I somewhat suspected that it might actually be “no sugar added” jam (as opposed to “sugar free”) since fruit intrinsically had sugar. But, even if that was the case, I wasn’t deterred. The Nutra-Sweetening concerned me a bit, since I’m all too aware of the nasty aftertaste that NutraSweet can bring to diet sodas.

I checked out its nutrition label and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it had only 10 calories per 1 TBsp. That meant that it was only 40 calories per 1/4 cup (compared with 100 calories per 1/4 cup of even the Lite syrup). So, I bought some.

After taking it home, I didn’t even wait to make pancakes before trying some (the concern of NutraSweet was still on my mind). So, I took out a spoon and tasted a small bit. And, actually, it was quite tasty! And, it didn’t have any of that NutraSweet-aftertaste.

Of course, with no sugar at all (other than any remaining fruit-sugars), its consistency wasn’t all that close to that of regular jam — whereas ordinary jam can be somewhat jelly-like, this was less so. That is, it seemed to have a “softer” jelliness than regular jam. But, that’s not even the best part — with all the sugar “missing”, the raspberry flavor really shined through, almost with a slight tartness.

So, as I mentioned, I made pancakes this morning, and I made use of the Sugar Free raspberry jam. And, it was mega-tasty. Mmm. Between platesful of pancakes, I even switched over to Lite syrup for a couple pancakes (just to directly compare the Lite syrup with the taste of the sugar-free jam). And, though syrup has its place, I think jam wins (at least among the reduced-calorie versions of the respective toppings).