I wish such a beast existed. There is a recipe in the Low Carb Comfort Foods cookbook by the Eades that uses pureed black soy beans for the "fudgy quality", but I've never been able to create - or seen any other recipe - that can replicate the qualities in baked goods that sugar does. You may want to fool around with maltitol sweetened chocolate - you can get a lot of mileage out of it - but then again, maybe you don't want to go there.

Some people have recommended these books by Jennifer Eloff and Dana Carpenders 500 Low Carb Recipes has some good baking recipes.

What I've found that works the best for me is to start with a recipe and tweak it until I like it. The most success I've had is with creamy desserts - no brainer there! - and sweet breads/muffin type things. You need fat - in the form of butter/cream cheese/sour cream - to reproduce the smooth mouth feel of sugar, gluten to form structure, and fiber - nut meals/flax meal, whey and soy isolates, bran - to mimic the bulk of flour.

I've tried to create a baking mix with oat fiber, inulin, soy isolate, flax meal, stabilized wheat bran and a bunch of other stuff. I worked well for some things - like the breads above - but not with thing like pastry or cookies.

There is not one book that I've seen that has what you're looking for to explain the properties/reactions etc, but if you want to make yourself crazy here's a link to books on food chemistry

http://www.preparedfoods.com/FILES/...1,7095,,00.html

Sorry I couldn't help you much, but I hope I helped you some!

Karen