Are lower sugar desserts the wave of the future? According to an article that appeared yesterday on the Huffington Post, the answer for some prominent pastry chefs is an enthusiastic yes.

And they’re not doing it for health reasons, although that is a terrific benefit. Nope, they’re doing it because they are finding that desserts simply taste better with less sugar.

At this point, you may wondering how this could be possible. Isn’t sugar, in all of its sweet glory, added to foods to make them taste better? And if so, wouldn’t reducing their sugar content make them less appealing?

The answer is both yes and no. Sugar, it turns out, has the uncanny ability to mask other flavors that some people find unappealing. Food companies know this, since they use large quantities of sugar (often in the form of high fructose corn syrup) to mask the bitterness of caffeine in colas and the tartness of plain yogurt. Mary Poppins was definitely on to something when she extolled the merits of using sugar to make those spoonfuls of medicine more palatable.

By the same token, sugar’s masking effect means that other flavors you may actually want to taste can be hidden as well. I have found this to be especially true where multiple types of sweeteners are used in a single item. Food companies do this to avoid having to list sugar as one of the top ingredients on the food label (since ingredients must be listed in descending weight order), but the net effect of so many sweeteners is the intensification of an item’s sugariness at the expense of every other flavor.

A good example of this practice is Starbucks’ bakery items. I’ve already developed a lower-sugar version of its now extinct Chocolate Cinnamon Bread. A few weeks ago I set my sights on producing a less sugary version of its Michigan Cherry Oat Bar.

The genesis of my effort was a visit to a nearby Starbucks for a morning cappuccino break. Feeling a little hungry, I decided to deviate from my usual coffee-only routine and add a snack. After scanning the items in the display case, I settled on a Michigan Cherry Oat Bar, which I decided to try because it has two ingredients that I love, oats and cherries

Simply put, I was disappointed. Sure, eating it wasn’t an unpleasant experience, but it wasn’t the taste-worthy experience I expected either. Instead of the fruity succulence of the cherries and the earthiness of the oats, all I noticed was an overwhelming sweetness that blanketed those normally distinctive flavors and transformed them into muted, candy-like shadows of their usual selves.

Of course, none of this was surprising when I later checked the list of ingredients on Starbucks’ website and found that sweeteners appeared five times: sugar added to the cherries, sugar in corn flakes (the latter being a rather surprising ingredient), sugar by itself, brown sugar, and fructose. No other ingredient was listed more than once.

I resolved, then and there, to develop a recipe for my own version of cherry oat bars, and that’s what I’m sharing with you today. I think it outshines the Starbucks’ version in numerous ways. From a health standpoint, it uses significantly less sugar than Starbucks’ version — 1 teaspoon of added sugar per square to their 4 teaspoons, and it has more whole grains, due to my use of white whole wheat flour.

In terms of convenience, with one possible exception, all of the ingredients are widely available and, in the case of the frozen pitted cherries, tend to be less expensive but of higher quality than their fresh counterparts, plus they are available year round. The only ingredient that you might have trouble locating is white whole wheat flour. I urge you to seek it out, since it has a milder taste but all of the nutritional benefits of regular whole wheat flour. However, if you’re unable to find it, all purpose flour will do just fine.

Most importantly, in my version the distinctive flavors of cherries and oats are allowed to shine through unimpeded by the deluge of sugar characteristic of the Starbucks’ version. So, give it a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how using less sugar can result in better flavor.