Good & Sweet

Groundbreaking recipes for cakes, cookies, crumbles, and frozen treats sweetened entirely by fruit-fresh, dried, and juiced-from a pastry cook who's worked at New York's best restaurants


Brian Levy spent years making pastries the traditional way, with loads of refined sugar and white flour, at the best restaurants in the world. But baking, to him, is most joyous when it feels like magic; finding alternative routes to long-established recipes with new ingredients and techniques is the kitchen epiphany he lives for. So when Brian succeeded in making a perfect mango custard harnessing only the natural sweetness of fruit with no added sugar-no honey, no maple syrup, no stevia-it was a breakthrough that inspired years of experimentation converting other desserts into nutritious foods.

In Good & Sweet, Levy stretches this experiment across 100 recipes that ingeniously deploy dried, juiced, and fresh fruit to create sweet treats whose flavor is enriched by whole-food, feel-good ingredients. Every recipe offers substitutions for dietary restrictions and includes a clever sweetener that exceeds the "real thing," from banana powder to freeze-dried sweet corn to pear juice. A Pistachio-Studded Peach Galette gets its wings from fresh fruit, dried apricots, and orange juice; chestnuts, golden raisins, and dried apples perform a pas de trois in Chestnut Ricotta Ice Cream; and dates, milk powder, and just a touch of miso paste make for a dense, caramel-y Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake. With sweets like these-ones that nudge you towards mindful eating but don't compromise flavor-you'll never have to give up dessert.