Slashing Spice Cake with Pear Sauce to Fit

After dinner Sunday, my kids asked for dessert.

I felt deflated and defeated. I was trying to go for three weeks without sugar. In fact, the night before, I had avoided four kinds of cookies, several kinds of pop, and birthday cake at a family party. I had been strong then, but, since then, I had been fasting, and I wasn't sure I could last in the face of temptation.

"We have lots of things to use for dessert," my husband said, encouragingly. I looked over to him, wondering what he was talking about. "Peaches, pears, strawberries. . ." he started to list.

I smiled to myself. This is another example of a major difference between Paul and me. My list of things to make dessert with would not be all fruit--it would be things like chocolate, caramel, whipped cream. . . .

It used to be that I made a spice cake with pear sauce for my family. I think it must have been two years ago--I don't think I made it at all last summer, when I was trying hard to lose weight until The Day I Got Old. My family started clamoring for spice cake with pear sauce. They weren't really clamoring, by any dictionary definition of the word, but they wanted it.

I went into my bedroom.

When I came out, I started to make spice cake with pear sauce. I asked Paul if he knew where the recipe for the spice cake I'd used was. He brought out a big green loose-leaf binder, full to the point of explosion with recipes. A couple of them are apparently mine. He helped me find the spice cake recipe I had used back in 2007 or 2008. "Did it have raisins?" I asked, surprised.

"I don't know. Don't think so."

I didn't, either, but I put raisins in, anyway. What i didn't put in was sugar. Or flour. I was brave. I was bold. I thought I should probably put in half sugar and half Splenda (which is basically sugar with no calories and doesn't usually bake as well as sugar does), so it would turn out all right--and half whole wheat and half white flour, but I didn't. I used only Splenda! I used only whole wheat flour! I wanted to be able to eat some when I was done and not just stare at it the way I had the cookies the night before.

I dug up the lemon sauce recipe I had modified for the pear sauce. "Did I double this?" I asked Paul.

"I don't know."

"Did I pare the pears? Or leave the skins on?"

"Don't remember."

"Did I use two, or three?"

"Dunno."

Clearly, I was on my own.

So while my son whose name starts with P made up "pare a pair of pears" jokes in the living room, I made that spice cake with pear sauce, and I made it good. I made it edible on my low-carb diet. I made the pear sauce with Splenda, too. And it was good. Paul said it was fine, but didn't eat any more than one serving. Although he did empty the cookie jars of the two kinds of cookies I had had to make for another family party on Monday. So sweet, that man.

After dessert, I picked up a reference book and figured out how many calories were in the two versions. Answer: 454 per serving with sugar and flour; 250 per serving with Splenda and whole wheat flour.

I felt omnipotent.