Midnight baking... and substitutes?

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loislane22
loislane22 Posts: 71
in Recipes
I just made Banana & Peanut chip cookies, the came to 45 calories per cookie. I didnt substitute anything.

I am not a good cook or a good baker, does anyone know what would be good substitutes for sugar and flour? I know you can use wholewheat flour and splenda but I dont like either, especially not splenda.

Suggestion's would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Replies

  • Lleldiranne
    Lleldiranne Posts: 5,516 Member
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    In most recipes, you can substitute banana and/or applesauce for some of the sugar, and decrease the oil as well. I'm sorry, I don't know the amounts really well, but maybe that can give you a bit of a springboard for an internet search?
  • cannonsky
    cannonsky Posts: 850 Member
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    The only thing you can really do is substitute in a different type of flour.. but they make that **** out of everything so you can probably find something pretty awesome if you have any health food stores around you
  • tigersword
    tigersword Posts: 8,059 Member
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    To be honest for baking, there are no real substitutes for sugar and flour, as they provide structure to baked goods.

    About the only thing you could bake without flour is a cookie. As for sugar, I can't think of any baked good that doesn't require some form of sugar.
  • darciecoles
    darciecoles Posts: 7
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    You can substitute other sweet, natural products for processed sugar. I make banana bread with unsweetened applesauce and it's pretty darn tasty. As for flour, I'm unaware of anything that you can straight up sub in. Maybe switching to an enriched flour (higher protein levels) might be an option? You can also sub in avocado for eggs as an emulsifier =)

    http://allrecipes.com/howto/baking-with-sugar-and-sugar-substitutes/
  • loislane22
    loislane22 Posts: 71
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    You can substitute other sweet, natural products for processed sugar. I make banana bread with unsweetened applesauce and it's pretty darn tasty. As for flour, I'm unaware of anything that you can straight up sub in. Maybe switching to an enriched flour (higher protein levels) might be an option? You can also sub in avocado for eggs as an emulsifier =)

    http://allrecipes.com/howto/baking-with-sugar-and-sugar-substitutes/

    Thank you! I will look into that. Can you taste the applesauce in the banana bread? I am not a huge fan of it. I am not a good cook so its hard to experiment with new things when I cant even get basics right, like boiling an egg.

    Thank you everyone for your replies. :)
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,554 Member
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    Really... I think it's much bettter to stick with the recipe and just be realistic about portion sizes.
    If your cookies come out at 45 cals each you can enjoy 2 or 3 for a very moderate calorie count and then leave the rest for another day.

    I think this is a much better life lesson than seeking a way to make a low calorie substitute (that never tastes so good anyway) and which only encourages you to eat an unrealistically large portion - frankly, this is probably the reason most of us are here today, we aren't good at stopping after 2 cookies, we want to eat them ALL!
  • loislane22
    loislane22 Posts: 71
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    Really... I think it's much bettter to stick with the recipe and just be realistic about portion sizes.
    If your cookies come out at 45 cals each you can enjoy 2 or 3 for a very moderate calorie count and then leave the rest for another day.

    I think this is a much better life lesson than seeking a way to make a low calorie substitute (that never tastes so good anyway) and which only encourages you to eat an unrealistically large portion - frankly, this is probably the reason most of us are here today, we aren't good at stopping after 2 cookies, we want to eat them ALL!

    Yes that is also true, didn't think of it like that. :)
  • fvgirlca
    fvgirlca Posts: 10
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    you can substitute honey for sugar (sorry not sure of the ratio) or cut the sugar in half and add vanilla or some other extract that is sweet. Flour ... you can substitute oat flour or another type of flour or you could reduce the flour and add ground flax seed (to make up the rest) or something along that line.
  • loislane22
    loislane22 Posts: 71
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    you can substitute honey for sugar (sorry not sure of the ratio) or cut the sugar in half and add vanilla or some other extract that is sweet. Flour ... you can substitute oat flour or another type of flour or you could reduce the flour and add ground flax seed (to make up the rest) or something along that line.

    Maybe i will try that, spend a saturday experimenting with it. Thank you.
  • tigersword
    tigersword Posts: 8,059 Member
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    you can substitute honey for sugar (sorry not sure of the ratio) or cut the sugar in half and add vanilla or some other extract that is sweet. Flour ... you can substitute oat flour or another type of flour or you could reduce the flour and add ground flax seed (to make up the rest) or something along that line.

    Honey may work, the rest won't. You can't substitute oat flour for wheat flour, it won't work. Wheat flour is a structural component, it mixes with water and creates gluten, which is a protein structure that allows baked goods to set. Oat flour doesn't have gluten, so if you tried to use oat flour instead of wheat flour for a loaf of bread, or a cake, it would collapse and just fall apart.

    Sugar is also a structural component, and honey is just another type of sugar. Replacing sugar with an extract would ruin the structure of the baked good, as an extract can't provide any structure.
  • darciecoles
    darciecoles Posts: 7
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    Thank you! I will look into that. Can you taste the applesauce in the banana bread? I am not a huge fan of it. I am not a good cook so its hard to experiment with new things when I cant even get basics right, like boiling an egg.

    Thank you everyone for your replies. :)

    I can't taste it, but I also like applesauce =) Baking takes practice, just like everything else. A year ago I could barely feed myself on my cooking, and now I've worked up to trickier things (PS baking with booze is WAY more fun). A few things that helped me was to follow a recipe to the letter, and then watch it like a hawk while it's baking. Another tip is that when baking, you should be weighing your ingredients. This provides a more accurate ratio between your ingredients, creating a better product. I'm a stickler of making things from scratch now, just so that I can control what goes in to it--and I'm pretty old fashioned with the butter and the sugar ;)

    The only reason I've looked into substitutions is because a family member was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and I don't believe that this should mean he can't still enjoy good-tasting food. However! I refuse to use artificial sweeteners (I'm convinced that aspartame damages the pancreas).

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