baking and improvising ingredients...share your story

[TahliasMom]

when it comes to baking i am always prepared, if i'm short one item, i can usually improvise. but tonight was the mother of all improvises as dd was alseep and so there was not way i could go to the store...
i get a call after 8pm from a coworker. it's one of our managers bday at the office and she asked me to bake my famous banana bread. i wasn't thrilled but said ok as i had frozen bananas in the freezer. mind you i have not baked since spring as it's been a bit warm.
so i go for the eggs and brown sugar, just enough. then i start teh dry mixture and big woops. i only have 2 1/2 cups of flour and i need 3 1/2. madly searching thru the cupboards and nothing. than i found a box of trader joe's pancake mix. scanned the ingredients and it's flour based so what the heck. i halved the baking soda and reduced the spices.
so back to the wet mixture. need oil, cool as i thoght i had enough but only came with 1/2 cup of canola instead of 1 cup. hmm. found butter, melted half a cup, equates to the same thing right? dumped it all in. followed by 1/4 cup of full fat yogurt. i looked in the fridge and realized that dd ate the last of the greek yogurt for snack. hmm, found some low fat vanilla yogurt. same thing right? added vanilla. batter seemed ok, a little lumpy, in went the nuts. and two loafs in the oven.
spend 1 hr and 15 mins agonizing over the loafs. but there must have been an angel over me cuz it turned out darn good..:)

[happymom]

:banana: Couldn't resist the dancing banana! LOL. That was really funny. The melted butter and vanilla yogurt I would have done. But the pancake mix...now that's darn creative!! I'm really impressed!:bighand:

[s7714]

More like you're an angel for agreeing to make it on short notice to begin with! ;)

I haven't tried improvising with ingredients since a chocolate cake incident as a teenager. A friend was staying over and we decided to try to make chocolate cake. Except we couldn't find any baking cocoa in the house, so we used Nesquick Chocolate drink mix instead. We baked the thing for almost two hours and it was still liquid in the pan, LOL! My mom was pretty ticked when she got home and saw how much of a yucky mess we'd made!

[rlu]

Wow, I so could not do that. I don't bake much. My best improv was making fake fudge out of chocolate chips and marshmellows.

[ha98ed14]

My worst improv was using olive oil in brownie mix when it called for veg. oil. :barf:So nasty! I thought olives were vegetables, so I could get away with it. I was wrong.

[vejemom]

I have a blueberry muffin recipe that calls for light cream cheese. I was out, so I Googled it, and one of the subs I came across was cottage cheese. I knew that cottage cheese melts, so I gave it a shot. The muffins actually turned out SOOOO much better than they do with cream cheese that I've marked it in the recipe. And cottage cheese is generally cheaper than cream cheese, too.

[ilfaith]

Once when baking Toll House chocolate chip cookies I realized I only had half the amount of butter required. I replaced the rest with peanut butter and they were yummy. Now I regularly use half butter and half peanut butter.

[elephantmeg]

I just did this last night. I was making zucchini bread to use up my surplus of zucchini (the garden is going crazy). Well by the end I was out of AP flour so I used 1/3 AP, 1/3 bread flour and 1/3 whole wheat. And upped the baking soda/powder a little. It worked!

[AnnieW625]

The other night I accidently added 2 tsp. of baking soda to my choc. chip cookies (toll house recipe), well I also added the 2 tsp. of baking powder to the cookies and they turned out great. A little flatter than normal, but oh so chewy. I also had to use 1/4 cup of cake flour as I ran out of regular flour. I think I'll be doing this every time I make the recipe. I have also done the half butter/half peanut butter thing before too.

[TahliasMom]

My worst improv was using olive oil in brownie mix when it called for veg. oil. :barf:So nasty! I thought olives were vegetables, so I could get away with it. I was wrong.


yeah i ruined a batch of bread and cookies with olive oil before. I just stock with canola now. :)

[TahliasMom]

I just did this last night. I was making zucchini bread to use up my surplus of zucchini (the garden is going crazy). Well by the end I was out of AP flour so I used 1/3 AP, 1/3 bread flour and 1/3 whole wheat. And upped the baking soda/powder a little. It worked!

would you be willing to pm me your receipie? i want to attempt to make zucchini bread but not without a good recipie.

[egoldber]

I am an improvisational baker. DH finds this to be one my more annoying traits LOL!!!

Most baking recipes are really quite forgiving. I routinely....

substitute different types of flour (WW, AP, bread)
eliminate/reduce sugar (I find that I can generally use 1/3 the amount of sugar called for in the recipe)
substitute sugars pretty freely (honey, brown sugar, white sugar, etc, this does affect texture)
sub different types of oil (or even use applesauce instead)
replace or eliminate added fruits, nuts, etc.
substitute for milk (have used soymilk, buttermilk and once in desperation watered down yogurt)

Sometimes the texture is a little different, but it's generally fine.

[TahliasMom]

I am an improvisational baker. DH finds this to be one my more annoying traits LOL!!!

Most baking recipes are really quite forgiving. I routinely....

substitute different types of flour (WW, AP, bread)
eliminate/reduce sugar (I find that I can generally use 1/3 the amount of sugar called for in the recipe)
substitute sugars pretty freely (honey, brown sugar, white sugar, etc, this does affect texture)
sub different types of oil (or even use applesauce instead)
replace or eliminate added fruits, nuts, etc.
substitute for milk (have used soymilk, buttermilk and once in desperation watered down yogurt)

Sometimes the texture is a little different, but it's generally fine.

hmm.you're giving me some good ideas! i forgot about the applesauce for oil, and i had a jar of it! and i always cut the sugar at least by 1/3 to 1/2 as i prefer less sweet baked good...

[happymom]

I am an improvisational baker. DH finds this to be one my more annoying traits LOL!!!



LOL. My mom is always substituting and changing recipes to make them healthier or less fattening. This drives my DH nuts. His theory is- cake is fattening. Period. If youre gonna eat it, it may as well be good!

A bit tangential, but truth is that I think he's right. IDH's family has a healthier relationship with food than my family does. Cake is a dessert and is eaten and enjoyed as such. This means that after a healthy balanced meal, everyone will sit and enjoy one peice of cake. In my family, cake will be eaten at any time of day if its there on the counter. And its not always one piece. Since theres less sugar or oil or whatever, everyone feels less guilty about eating it...As a result, my family is mostly overweight and DH's is not.

[egoldber]

I don't usually do it to make it healthier (although sometimes that is the goal with the flour substitutions), more often it's because I'm out of something I thought I had on hand.

But I do honestly find most baked goods too sweet. I prefer them less sweet and less oily. I think it's gross when banana bread leaves on oily residue on your hands. To each their own. :)

[elephantmeg]

would you be willing to pm me your receipie? i want to attempt to make zucchini bread but not without a good recipie.

I'm PM'd them but here they are here too:

zucchini bread
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Zucchini-Bread-VII/Detail.aspx

pumpkin zucchini bread
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Zucchini-Bread/Detail.aspx
I subbed raisins for the walnuts. It's delish!