A lost baker with calorie questions

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souzouchan
souzouchan Posts: 80
in Health and Weight Loss
Hey everyone!

So I'm currently in the process of losing weight and getting fit as many of you are. One obstacle I've encountered however is with one of my favorite hobbies; baking.

The main thing I'd love to know, if anyone can help, is how to calculate calories in homemade recipes. A lot of the ones I used were passed down to me by my awesome mom and she unfortunately doesn't know either...

If this question has already been posted/answered I apologize in advance, I was not able to locate anything similar. :frown:

Replies

  • spngebobmyhero
    spngebobmyhero Posts: 823 Member
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    best approach would probably be to create a recipe and each cookie or slice of cake would be a serving. It will take a little time to put the recipes in, but it will be more accurate than guessing.
  • souzouchan
    souzouchan Posts: 80
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    I suppose after that is trying to figure out how many calories are in each serving. Like for a blueberry muffin, trying to figure out how many calories are in 1 muffin.
  • stfuriada
    stfuriada Posts: 445 Member
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    Don't your home made recipes have ingredients that have measurements?

    Like 1 cup of brown sugar, 2 tbsp sour cream etc etc?

    Go to FOOD > RECIPES then fill in the ingredients and measurements. It will ask you for how many servings and calculate.
  • therealangd
    therealangd Posts: 1,861 Member
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    Use MFP's recipe function. There is a spot for adding how many servings. In the case of muffins, however many muffins you get from the batch is how many servings to enter.
  • stylistchik
    stylistchik Posts: 1,436 Member
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    Google an online calorie calculator. There are tons of them, you just enter your recipe (1 cup flour, 1/2 c milk, etc.) and how many servings and it spits out a calorie count.

    ETA had no idea MFP had a function for this now. lol
  • spngebobmyhero
    spngebobmyhero Posts: 823 Member
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    well you would put all of the ingredients into the recipe maker. Then, if you make 12 muffins then that is 12 servings. Have you used the recipe builder on this site yet? Its very easy to use and is a great tool!
  • domgirl85
    domgirl85 Posts: 295 Member
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    Agree, use the recipe maker here on MPF. If the ingredient isn't in the database, you can add it as you would any other food and then add it to the recipe maker. i've used it and it's pretty accurate.
  • sgarrard01
    sgarrard01 Posts: 213 Member
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    Or, if you want to be really fussy... simply weigh your mixing bowl add all the ingrediants to make the batter/dough/mix etc. and subtract the weight of the bowl (so you have the ingrediants weight) then divide that by the number of things your making (i.e 12 muffins) and weigh out the mix into each casing accordingly...

    Now thats getting very fussy, but if it makes you happy than it makes you happy!
  • SyntonicGarden
    SyntonicGarden Posts: 944 Member
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    Don't your home made recipes have ingredients that have measurements?

    Like 1 cup of brown sugar, 2 tbsp sour cream etc etc?

    Go to FOOD > RECIPES then fill in the ingredients and measurements. It will ask you for how many servings and calculate.

    THIS! It's time consuming, but ideally, this is the way to do it. Figure out all of the calories of all of the ingredients. (The whole is equal to the sum of its parts.) If a cake is 2400 calories by the time you add all of the ingredients, then if you cut it into 10 slices, each slice is 240 cals. Cut it into 12 slices, and each slice is 200 cals. Magically cut it into 16 slices and each slice is 150 cals. You could also put it in as one serving at 2400 and then figure out the fractions when you add it to the diary, but that's more of a pain sometimes. (0.10 being 1/10 of the cake, or one piece of a cake sliced into 10 and so on)

    Again, it's time consuming at first and you might not get exact calories in each slice (10 slices: one might be 245, another 237) but that's probably ok. And don't be shocked if it's an eye opener. "One cookie is HOW many calories?!?" That'll push you to be more creative with modifying your recipes to make them healthier and still yummy.
  • souzouchan
    souzouchan Posts: 80
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    Those are all awesome ideas! Thank you all very much! :happy:
  • 00fat2fit00
    00fat2fit00 Posts: 7 Member
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    I use the recipe function on MFP and love it. I thought at first it would be really annoying and time consuming. But actually it's really easy and I put it in before I make the recipe so I know where I stand before I bake/cook. (Which is really helpful for me to think about do I really want to make this recipe, and if I do one cookie is plenty, etc.) Also, it can help me really realize how many calories are in something, which helps me think about - do I want to substitute something for the oil? Or half the oil? There are lots of great swaps out there that don't sacrifice taste (in fact some swaps are tastier! Yay applesauce!) When I cooked vegan it got me thinking about swaps for baking, I would have said it'd taste nasty, but I was pleasantly surprised. Good luck! Baking is wonderful and I love it so! And making a family loved recipe is a part of living life! And on the flip side if you end up baking with yogurt and or applesauce, in my experience people LOVE low cal low fat things, or veggie add ins like zucchini or pumpkin. Who doesn't love a baked treat you don't have to feel bad about??!

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