Desserts That Prove Sugar Isn’t Everything

For those of us who’ve spent years politely pushing dessert menus aside, it may be time for a rethink. Not every after-dinner treat is built around sugar, and some of the best desserts are all the better for it.

For a lot of us, especially those of us who have, ahem, accumulated a few years under our belt, the word “dessert” doesn’t fill us with quite the same anticipation it once did. We’re liable to brush the waiter off with a polite “no, thank you” when he stops by with the dessert menu after a meal, or stroll past the ice cream cart without so much as a second glance.

But that’s only because we’ve come to associate sweet treats with sugar-laden, frosting-glazed confections that’ll have our pancreas working overtime. And that’s doing both ourselves and the concept of dessert a tremendous disservice because it encompasses far more than that. Here are a few after-dinner treats to reach for the next time you feel like ending a meal on a lighter note, but find that your sweet tooth isn’t quite what it used to be.

Tau Fu Fah

What better way to kick things off than with a local favourite? Tofu as a dessert might seem alien and incomprehensible to Western ears, but to those of us who grew up with it, it feels as natural as a plastic bag of iced Milo dangling from a motorcycle handlebar or getting a third-degree burn from your seatbelt buckle in the middle of July. When a dessert chooses not to lean too heavily on sweetness, it has to find some other way to make its case.

In the case of tau fu fah, that appeal lies squarely in its texture. Soft and silky smooth, each spoonful possesses an almost ephemeral delicateness. Traditionally served with a light drizzle of brown sugar syrup, it carries just enough sweetness to complement the tofu without ever threatening to overwhelm it. What you end up with is a comforting, understated dessert that is remarkably easy to keep eating. It’s also one of the few desserts you’ll regularly find grandparents enjoying alongside their grandkids, which feels like as good an endorsement as any.

Panna Cotta

Moving on to another white, jiggly dessert that isn’t overly sweet, we’re taking a trip to Italy for a little bowl of panna cotta. It’s a dessert that demonstrates rather nicely that richness and sweetness aren’t necessarily the same thing. Made primarily from cream, it’s lightly sweetened and often flavoured with vanilla before being set into its characteristic wobbling form.

The mark of a good panna cotta is that it trembles ever so slightly when nudged, a fairly reliable indicator that whoever made it knows what they’re doing. Its charm comes from its dairy richness rather than any great abundance of sugar, with most of the flavour deriving from the cream itself and the sweetness left firmly in the background to play what is very much a supporting role.

It’s also often served alongside berries or fruit compotes, which adds a nice acidity to proceedings and stops things from becoming too heavy. Far from being forcefully demanding of your attention, a good panna cotta takes a more gently persuasive route instead. 

Matcha Desserts

Most dessert ingredients bring sweetness to the table. Matcha is unusual in that it brings something else entirely, namely bitterness. That might seem like an odd quality to celebrate in a dessert, but it’s precisely what makes matcha so appealing to people who would normally eschew sweet things altogether.

Its earthy, slightly grassy character provides something for the sweetness to push against, with a well-made matcha dessert often possessing a complexity that develops in layers rather than arriving all at once. You get sweetness, certainly, but also a gentle bitterness that helps keep everything in check. There seems to be something of a matcha wave sweeping through cafés and bakeries at the moment, with the ingredient finding its way into just about everything. But that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as matcha is indeed a versatile and distinctive ingredient with a flavour profile that lends itself remarkably well to dessert.

Not every dessert benefits from becoming sweeter. Sometimes they do their best work when they allow other qualities to take centre stage. Whether it’s the silky simplicity of tau fu fah, the creamy restraint of panna cotta, or the balancing bitterness of matcha, these desserts succeed because they recognise that sugar is only one part of the equation. Flavour, texture, richness, and contrast all have a role to play too. And for those of us who have spent years politely pushing away dessert menus while muttering “that’s a bit sweet”, that’s very good news indeed.

Opening image: Orhan Pergel | Pexels