"Sweet! From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener" by Mani Niall (Da Capo, $18.95).

Do you stumble through the holiday season in a sugar haze? With cookie exchanges (where typically hundreds of batches of treats get swapped), one wrapped box of truffles after another and pans of fresh baked goods popping up at party after party, it's hard to duck the sugar rush.

If you want to get away from highly processed sugar, Mani Niall has a special hiding place for you. No, it's not the famous Los Angeles and Santa Monica, Calif., healthy bakeries he founded, although they are to die for and proved the man was the gold standard for creative whole-food baking long before he wrote his first cookbooks. This holiday season, his new book "Sweet!" is the spot to hang for treats without the sugar hangover.

Recipes feature natural sweeteners, including agave, turbinado, muscovado, molasses and treacle. Niall also scours the globe for interesting choices, such as Chinese rock sugar, panela (a first-stage sugar often made on family farms in Mexico and South America) and jaggery (a traditional Indian cane sugar boiled in large open-air vats).

The book serves as a highly valuable source of understanding the important flavor differences between natural sugars. Of muscovado moist brown sugar, for instance, he writes:

"Rich, dark and aromatic, muscovado sugar is available in both light and dark varieties. This moist flavorful sugar has a hint of butterscotch. It is also known as Barbados sugar and dark molasses sugar. Use muscovado sugar whenever you want to upgrade your recipes that call for standard light or dark brown sugar — try it on your morning oatmeal and you may never use anything else. It is incomparable in gingerbread."

As usual, most of Niall's recipes are simply incomparable as well. His Banana Upside-Down Muffins flavored with lots of that wonderful musovado brown sugar are a great place to start. It's a treat that the book features sugars, but, as always, Niall's recipes are symphonies of healthful, whole ingredients. Featured in many recipes, the whole grains themselves are good barriers to avoid getting jolted by even a mild sugar rush.

Whole-wheat pastry flour and old-fashioned oats are the foundation for amazing sunflower seed and fresh berry muffins. A cranberry gingerbread is also built upon whole-wheat pastry flour.

The book also serves as a natural baking and cooking class, with many textured, sophisticated recipes that utilize valuable baking techniques. For a Mint Julep Cake with Bourbon Buttercream, you learn to prepare genoise, syrup, buttercream and a tricked-out fresh mint, egg white garnish.

Additionally, there are so many unique dazzlers shown off in color photographs — like a smoky (from smoked paprika or chile powder) raw green pumpkin seed brittle — that it almost made me wish this was an ordering catalog where I could just pick up the phone or click online to have a box delivered. But then, I remember what it was like to hang with Mani (now executive chef for Just Desserts, an acclaimed San Francisco bakery) at the original Mani's Bakeries and feast on not-too-sweet gems that he packed for you himself. Recipients of your works from his outstanding new book will undoubtedly feel the same thrill.

MAPLE-PINE NUT SHORTBREAD

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, preferably organic

3/4 cup, plus 3 tablespoons, maple sugar

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 cup pine nuts

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, plus more for the pans

Yields 16 wedges.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Lightly butter 2 (8-inch) cake pans or pie pans.

Combine the flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and 1/2 cup of the pine nuts in the bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. At low speed, mix briefly to combine. Add the butter and blend with the mixer at medium speed until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs with some pea-size pieces of butter and holds together when a handful is squeezed about 2 minutes.

Place half of the dough in each pan, and press firmly and evenly in the pans. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the remaining pine nuts and 1 1/2 tablespoons of the remaining sugar over each, and score each into eight equal wedges.

Bake until the tops are golden brown, rotating the pans halfway through baking, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer to a wire cake rack and cool for 5 minutes. Cut through the previously scored lines, and cool completely. Remove from the pans. The shortbread can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

SUNFLOWER AND FRESH BERRY WHOLE-GRAIN MUFFINS

Nonstick cooking spray, for the pan

2 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1/4 cup wheat germ

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 large eggs

1 cup fresh apple cider or apple juice

2/3 cup Sucanat

1/2 cup canola oil

1 1/2 cups berries, such as blueberries, cranberries, raspberries or a combination

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Yields 12 muffins.

Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375 F. Lightly spray a 12-cup muffin pan with the cooking spray.

Whisk together the whole-wheat pastry flour, rolled oats, wheat germ, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. In another separate bowl, lightly whisk the eggs, then whisk in the apple cider, Sucanat and oil. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour in the egg mixture and stir just until combined. Fold in the berries and sunflower seeds.

Divide the batter among the cups, filling them about three-fourths full. Bake until the tops spring back when pressed with a finger that's in an oven mitt, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Remove the muffins from the cups. Serve warm or cool to room temperature. The muffins can be cooled and stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the author of seven food books, including "Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook" and "The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook." She also writes the Creators News Service "After-Work Gourmet" column. To find out more about Lisa Messinger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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