For the month of July, diabetics and weight watchers have a reason to rejoice. The Westin Philippine Plaza at the CCP Complex has a special sugar-free spread of desserts concocted by pastry chef Rolando Macatangay at the Café Plaza Too. The dessert spread comes with the special crab buffet cooked up by Westin’s new Cantonese sous chef Siu Man Yeung
Chef Mac and his pastry team – composed of Erick Reyes and Marco Abrio, pastry sous chef Rodel Galvez, Joel Mendoza and Emil Racal – give diabetics a chance to enjoy desserts without guilt. Of course, we still need to watch the amount of sweets we eat even if they’re sugar-free, but now we can have some fondue courtesy of the chocolate fountain waiting to cover your fruit skewer, which includes pineapple, melon, dragon fruit and strawberry. Or we can enjoy fresh mango cheesecake, dark chocolate almond, black forest, cashew nut cluster, fresh fruit jello in aloe vera syrup, cherry white forest cake, tiramisu and mixed berries panacotta. There are also sugar-free ice creams in mixed berries, café latte, vanilla, chocolate, cappuccino and green tea.
Before I met chef Mac, I had already tasted some of his pastry specialties. (His chocolate-chip cookie from the Westin’s bakery is the best – but it’s not sugar-free, so a ton of willpower – which I sadly lack – is required of diabetics to keep from reaching for a second and third cookie.)
"Customers who are into weight-management programs often skip dessert when they’re having buffet. With these sugar-free desserts, they can still enjoy dessert even if they’re counting their calories." From sugar alone, it’s almost zero calorie, but of course, that’s not counting the other ingredients like cream and milk.
My favorites include the cashew nut cluster, which is fast becoming a signature dessert of chef Mac. The almonds are covered in chocolate and eating it is like going back to one’s childhood when everything, including cereal flakes, is dipped in chocolate and you don’t worry about calories. Also, the black forest is wonderful with its extra serving of chocolate cream on top and cherry inside. As for the chocolate fountain, well, take it as a mini chocolate factory experience but, again, without the horrific calories. There’s something very decadent about covering your fruit skewer in chocolate, especially when the chocolate doesn’t have the aftertaste of a sweetener.
The cheesecakes are great, too, but if you’re particular about your sponge-cake base, you will notice the difference between the chef’s using table sugar and a sugar alternative, as the cake is not as spongy. But, really, for people who can’t have regular desserts, that’s a little price to pay for enjoying them.
Chef Mac says all the sugar-free chocolate he’s using comes from Belgium. He also experimented with different types of sweeteners and found that Splenda works best. "It doesn’t have the bitter aftertaste of other sugar alternatives," he says. Splenda, whose sweetening ingredient is sucralose, tastes like sugar but without the calories. "It passes through the body without being broken down for energy, so the body does not recognize it as a carbohydrate."
So if you can make desserts without sugar, why not just use it all the time? "With sugar-free ingredients, you are limited on what you can do. Though you just have to rewrite the recipes, the taste and texture come out different. For instance, for a recipe that calls for 300 grams of refined sugar, you’re going to use only 70 to 80 grams of sweetener because it’s stronger."
Apart from that, there’s the cost. Imported ordinary dark chocolate is the least expensive of all regular chocolates, says chef Mac. "The sugar-free version is double the most expensive of the regular chocolate and you don’t get as much yield from the regular one. The volume and texture are different, it’s just the taste that remains the same." Sweeteners like Splenda are also expensive. "Since we have the same price for the buffet, it’s not very cost effective. Besides, some people like their desserts the way they’ve always had them, with sugar."
The sugar-free offerings are slated only for the month of July, but chef Mac says that they’re thinking of incorporating some of them into the regular buffet desserts even after July.
That’s sweet news indeed.