The Story behind these Recipes

I love a great dessert. I love to make a great dessert. My mother was an excellent cook and I grew up with homemade chocolate éclairs and coconut cream pie. Fudge and English Toffee were made from scratch at Christmas. An incredible Banana Cream Cake was the standard Birthday cake.

Dessert was my favorite dish to order out--preferably something decadent and chocolate--and I was picky!!!!

Fast forward into my Forties and I, too, was a great cook. And also Fat! And Sugar addicted!

At age 48 or so I discovered the Low-Carb movement ( thank you to the Drs. Eades of Protein Power fame) and lost my extra 40 or so pounds. And also discovered very quickly that losing the extra weight wasn't the hardest part--maintaining was!

I had to make controlled carb eating a permanent part of my Way of Life, but I wasn't about to give up dessert forever! And while a nice bowl of berries with some splenda sweetened whipped cream on it is fabulous--it wasn't always enough for holidays or parties or other special occasions.

I needed celebration food--both to eat and to make. Making special food is part of a festive holiday for me, and while I can make a killer Turkey, that isn't what I'm talking about!

At the time ( this was the height of the low carb craze in the media) there were lots of people out there inventing recipes and writing low carb cookbooks; and there was lots of information on the web--but most of the recipes left me unhappy. Many were good, some very good, but for the most part they just weren't good enough. Good enough that I would never need to eat the "real thing" again. Good enough to serve someone who didn't eat low carb and have them never suspect that this dessert was "healthy" or sugarfree ( or wheat free!)

So I started creating. I have been working on these recipes for about 7 years. In the beginning I threw out a lot of really horrible ( and really expensive!) food. Slowly I found my way and found combinations of ingredients that--at least in my opinion-- really work for both texture and taste.
And I have decided that the time has come to share what I created

I give huge thanks to the Eadses' and to their cookbooks and to Laura Dolson at about.com and to many anonymous cooks out in the web community whose recipes were often the starting point for mine. And also the wonderful work done by America's Test Kitchen (I thought I knew how to cook until I began reading Cook's Illustrated.) Often, their recipes would point me in a direction that I hadn't considered.

I hope you enjoy these recipes.