Quiz: Do You Know How to Do Dessert Damage Control?

Apple pie starts with a healthy ingredient. But add sugar and two buttery piecrusts, and an average piece has about the same calories as a piece of chocolate cake with frosting.

Eat a sliver of pie and skip the crust. Or, for less than half the calories, core an apple and fill with a mixture of 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 1 teaspoon nutmeg. Microwave in a covered casserole dish for about four minutes, until tender.  

Girl Scout cookies get a merit badge for having no trans fats. But the most popular, Thin Mints and Tagalongs, are among the least healthy. Tagalong peanut butter patties have the most total fat -- 9 grams for two cookies. And despite their name, a serving of Thin Mints (four cookies) adds up to 8 grams of fat.

Try the Do-si-dos peanut butter crèmes instead. One serving (two cookies) is the lowest in calories (110) and unhealthy saturated fat (1.5 grams).

This deep-fried disaster has about 825 calories -- and that's without toppings. Plan on walking more than three hours to work it off -- or walk right past the funnel cake stand instead.

If you're at an amusement park, fair, or festival, and have no healthy choices, eat a candy apple. It has fiber, no fat, and you can walk it off in 50 minutes. Cotton candy has fewer calories, but it's nothing but sugar. It will still take you nearly half an hour to walk it off.

Who would think fudge could be the best choice? A 1-inch-square of homemade fudge has about 70 calories, while a standard slice of angel food cake with a handful of strawberries is about 100 calories, and lemon meringue pie tips the scales at 300 calories or more.

A tip: Eat slowly and savor the flavor. Put your fork down between bites so you don't hurry. The first two bites of any dessert will seem the tastiest.

Splitting desserts can be a good way to please your sweet tooth and cut calories. But a banana split with the works -- three scoops of ice cream with whipped cream, nuts, and cherries -- can add up to about 1,010 calories. That's more than half the calories that most adult women need in an entire day.

Better choice: One scoop of your favorite low-fat or fat-free frozen yogurt with one topping -- and hold the whipped cream. You won't even have to share.

Coffee drinks can be an alternative to desserts. Just watch large flavored coffees.

A "grande" 16-ounce coffee with steamed whole milk and mocha syrup can be 330 calories. Even a "skinny" version with nonfat milk and no whipped cream can be 140 calories. The bottom line: Skip supersized portions of everything -- including coffee drinks.

Stick to one of these 8-ounce, 40-calorie drinks: A nonfat cappuccino, coffee with 2 tablespoons of half-and-half, or coffee with 2 tablespoons of whole milk and a teaspoon of sugar.

Baked Alaska is a concoction of sponge cake and ice cream under a meringue dome. The meringue keeps the ice cream from melting when it's baked quickly in a very hot oven. The dessert was called various names until 1876, when Delmonico's restaurant in New York renamed it in honor of the newly acquired U.S. territory of Alaska.

The American Heart Association recommends that women eat no more than 100 calories (6 teaspoons) and men no more than 150 calories (9 teaspoons) of sugar a day. Yet most Americans get about 350 daily calories from sugar -- enough to gain almost 40 pounds a year. 

Most of it comes from sodas and other sweetened drinks. But a gourmet ice cream can give you three times your recommended daily sugar limit in one large scoop. When you’re craving something sweet, try fruit or fat-free, no-sugar-added yogurt.

For fewer calories with close to the same yummy taste, swap all or some of the oil or butter in a brownie recipe with unsweetened applesauce. For a sweet and slightly fruitier flavor, switch oil or butter with mashed banana, pureed raspberries, or other fruit.

While they are mostly empty calories, many alcoholic "after dinner" drinks aren't as decadent as you may think. A standard shot (1.5 ounces) of chocolate-infused liqueur from one gourmet chocolatier is less than 100 calories. So is crème de cacao.

Another decadently sweet treat is strawberries dipped in chocolate, which average about 40 calories each. Dip two strawberries in warm, dark chocolate instead of dipping into a molten chocolate cake and you'll save anywhere from 200 to 1,000 calories.

Twenty years ago, the average chocolate chip cookie was about 55 calories, and you could fit two side-by-side in the palm of your hand. Now just one is the size of your palm and has a whopping 275 calories!

If you make your cookies matchbook-sized, then two cookies with a glass of nonfat milk is a reasonable 200 calories.

A tennis-ball-sized serving of regular ice cream has the most calories and fat. The same scoop of slow-churned ice cream has the creamy, rich flavor of ice cream for about half the calories and fat. But most people don't eat just one scoop.

The winner in the chocolaty frozen desserts category is the slim fudge bar. It has the most calcium (150 mg) and least fat (2 grams) for just 100 calories.