Thanksgiving: Typical Desserts and Calories - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.

Thanksgiving - Typical Desserts and Calories: Nutrition

The high calorie Thanksgiving desserts are most of the traditional Thanksgiving desserts, like pumpkin pie, pecan pie. It's hard to get around that in the pecan pie. You could try to make some recipe substitutions, cut the amount of sugar by two thirds. But it's just, when you're using nuts, they're naturally high in calories, and the pie filling has a lot of calories in it, as well as the crust.

Pumpkin pie, though, you can make some adjustments in the recipe to make it pretty low in fat. The best way to do that is to make it crustless, because most of the calories in a pumpkin pie or any other pie, are in the crust. So you could do that with pumpkin pies or fruit pies.

Another high calorie versions of Thanksgiving desserts would be a pumpkin pie or a pumpkin cake roll, or a pumpkin cheesecake. So using some standard recipe modifications, you can use low fat ingredients, and make those a little healthier. Bread pudding has a lot of butter in it, so you could cut back on that, and some of the sugar to make that healthier. But some healthier ideas for Thanksgiving desserts, fruit salad is always one you can throw in there, and make it interesting with different fruits. And add, maybe, some canned fruit to make it bind together a little better. You can do a Jello Mold with the regular or sugar free Jello and fruit in it. Or just fruit pies, and you could even make a pumpkin pudding made from canned pumpkin and evaporated milk.