Product review: Sans Sucre sugar-free mousse and brownies

Baking is not usually my thing, I find it a bit too scientific a process as compared to cooking which allows for more freedom to depart from recipes and become artistic. So most of the recipes you’ll find on this blog are for cooking main courses and side dishes rather than desserts.

That said, I love to eat baked goods such as cakes and doughnuts, items I really should try  to avoid on my heart-healthy diet because of sugar and fat they contain.

So when I was approached by a public relations person for a brand called Sans Sucre which makes sugar-free and gluten-free baking mixes, I was intrigued enough by the prospect of guilt-free items that I asked for samples to try to make. (The brand name means without sugar in French, by the way.)

I’ve since tried the sugar-free, low-fat Chocolate Mousse Mix and the sugar-free chocolate fudge brownie mix. Of the two, I enjoyed the mousse more and found it relatively simple to make, even for a baking-challenged cook like me.

You simply pour an envelope of the mix into six ounces of skim milk (I used 2% because that’s what we had in the house) and mix it with an electric mixer for five minutes, then pour it into pudding dishes and let it cool in the refrigerator for a minimum of two hours.

It tasted chocolately, always important for anything calling itself chocolate. I thought I detected a bit of a powdery after-taste but that could have been the sucralose as well.

The ingredients label might worry some, it has a lot of those long ingredient names people generally don’t understand. But if you’re fine with the list, I think it’s an acceptable dessert for someone trying to avoid high-sugar chocolate products.

It also seemed to keep well in the frig; one of my pudding bowls somehow got pushed to the back and I forgot it was there for a few days. But when I eventually ate it, the taste was still pleasing for me.

The brownie mix uses sorbitol, a sugar alcohol, as a sweetener and that always spells problems for my stomach. If you know that’s an issue for you, avoid these. If you don’t have that somewhat common reaction to sorbitol, you might find these tasty.

The pan I made was fairly flat but it could be I did something wrong in trying to follow the recipe. The chocolate flavor was there as was the mouth feel of a baked good.

Both fo these items also is low in sodium, again rare for a baked good, so they have that going for them as well.

You can find a list of where to buy these items on the company website, just click here.

The mousse is on Amazon for $5.95 a box and the brownie mix is there for $8.25. I’d look for them cheaper at a local store first.