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Sugar can be one of the most difficult habits to break; but it’s an important one to ease out of your life if you really want more beautiful skin. Eating too much sugar not only damages your health and can put the weight on, but is also detrimental to your skin. Consuming sugar causes a process called glycation which causes the proteins (collagen and elastin) within the skin to mutate resulting in new harmful molecules called AGEs (Advanced Glycation End products.) These AGEs then accumulate causing even more damage to your collagen and elastin. Basically over time your collagen and elastin (the primary building blocks of your skin) become brittle resulting in lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin.

Quitting sugar can seem like a monumental task but Sarah Wilson has written a number of books making it less daunting and giving you what you need to enjoy deliciously sweet treats without the danger from sugar.

You can see the list of books here.

She has now come out with a real gem that makes eliminating sugar a breeze because you won’t feel deprived and you won’t have those haunting chocolate demons nagging at your mind all day. This book is loaded with 74 sugar free CHOCOLATE recipes! Yes…I said chocolate! See, now it doesn’t seem so hard does it?

I Quit Sugar: The Chocolate Cookbook is packed with mouthwatering recipes that actually give you permission to indulge in luxuriously decadent chocolaty treats without compromising your health, weight, or skin.

Sarah explains that real chocolate (cocao or cocoa) contains less than 1% sugar, and is richly nutritious. In this cookbook you’ll discover how to make sugar-free real chocolate scrumptious recipes for brownies, truffles, mousses, chocolate ice cream, and more.

Just look at this yummy recipe straight out of I Quit Sugar: The Chocolate Cookbook

Chocolate Nut Butter Cups

MAKES 20-25

* 1⁄2 cup coconut oil, melted

* 1⁄2 cup raw cacao powder

* 1 tablespoon rice malt syrup

* 2 tablespoons coconut cream

* 1⁄4 cup peanut, macadamia or almond spread

* large pinch sea salt

Arrange small chocolate papers on a tray. Combine the coconut oil and cacao powder until smooth, then stir in the syrup and coconut cream. Pour a thin layer into the bottom of the chocolate papers. Freeze for 5 minutes, then remove from the freezer and spoon 1⁄3 teaspoon nut butter into each one. Pour the remaining cacao mixture on top and scatter sea salt over. Refrigerate for 30 minutes until set (or, if you’re short of time, freeze them). Eat straight from the fridge – these will melt at room temperature.

The coconut cream in this recipe makes the “chocolate” smoother. Interestingly, I find the more coconut cream you use, the harder the chocolate texture.

Variations:

1. Coconut Butter Cups: Make a coconut version by using a small ball of coconut butter instead of the nut spread.

2. Peppermint Patties: Make peppermint patties by adding a few drops of peppermint oil (to taste) to small balls of coconut butter instead of the nut spread.

3. Pumpkin Protein Cups: Mix together the 1/4 cup each of Pumpkin Puree, almond butter and vanilla protein powder, with 2 teaspoons coconut oil and 1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon and all spice. Put mixture in the freezer for a couple hours. Once mixture is hard enough to handle, roll into1/3 teaspoon balls, and use instead of the nut spread.