As we start the new year, it seems nearly everyone has a resolution to lose weight or eat healthier, or get in shape, etc. I am part of a facebook group of about 20 ladies that are trying to encourage each other to keep those goals. My sister started it and has been an amazing coach for us. She posted an article from Greatist.com on healthy eating substitutions. While most of them are good and ones that make sense, it seems to me that the person who thought up the baking ones doesn't actually bake, or at least has very low standards for how their baked goods look and taste. So, both for the ladies in my group, and because it might be helpful to others, I'm compiling a healthy substitutions list of my own, but in a way that has proven not to mess with the chemistry of my baking, and actually tastes good. If this sort of thing interests you, I'd also suggest reading my post entitled
A different food lifestyle.
Flour: You can't just sub whole wheat for white straight out. It depends on what you are baking, what kind of texture you need, etc. If you are making biscuits, cakes, cookies, or anything that you are shooting for a light texture, you need to use whole wheat pastry flour. You can also use spelt flour or oat flour pretty well for this as it has a texture similar to white and less protein, which is what you want in a flour for light baked goods. If you are making bread, whole wheat bread flour is what you want, or your bread won't rise because the protein/gluten levels will be off and your rise times are going to be longer, too. You can try adding vital wheat gluten and other things, but really it's best to either get the ww bread flour or use a combination of wheat and bread flours. I have found King Arthur Flours (both the white whole wheat and the traditional whole wheat) are the beast for breads as they have a higher protein content than most flours. When starting out any flour substitutions in recipes, experiment with a 50-50 mix of wheat/regular flour until you get a feel for how wheat flour reacts and rises differently. You can then increase the amount of wheat in your ratio. Keep in mind this won't generally reduce the calorie count on your foods, just provide more nutritional content and sometimes it does make you fill fuller longer, too.
Sugar: I've experimented with this a lot. I've worked with natural sweeteners (honey, agave, etc.) and all the artificial ones. Some people like Stevia, but most of those people I know have been off sugar long enough that they sort of have different standards of sweetness. If you are planing to just eat the baked good yourself, that's fine, but when I bake, I'm usually going to feed it to people who want it to taste sweet and aren't necessarily watching their sugar. The natural sweeteners might have a lower glycemic index, but they don't generally reduce total calories, so I lean toward the artificial sweeteners. I've messed with the ratio a lot, and for a few things you can get down to as little as a third of the sugar and substitute Splenda for the rest, but usually you have to do half and half sugar/Splenda. Otherwise your stuff starts to taste too artificial. The Splenda people came to the same conclusion, so they have prepackaged 50/50 blends of both regular and brown sugar for baking. Note that you use half the amount of sugar that a recipe calls for if you use these. Nutrasweet (Equal) and Saccharine (Sweet-n-low) breakdown funny under heat, so they are terrible for baking. Stevia or Splenda are the only ones that work well. I have also found that in a lot of recipes for desserts you can immediately reduce the amount of sugar by at least a fourth without really effecting taste and without substituting any artificial sweeteners.
Eggs: the rule of thumb is two egg whites for one whole egg. Egg beaters generally work well (1/4 cup equals one egg). However, egg whites just don't have the same leavening power of whole eggs, so try again to do a mix of whites and whole eggs. I don't really worry about eggs in general, though, as they aren't that high in calories and if you use Eggland's Best or similar you have a better egg cholesterol wise, too.
Oil: unsweetened applesauce substituted 1:1 for this really does work well and even makes your cakes/brownies, etc. more moist.
Butter: There's nothing like the real thing, so don't expect it to taste like it, but you can get acceptably close. Don't use the butter flavored Crisco, because it's actually worse for you, but there's no arguing that it does make the prettiest cookies. Kroger and Land O Lakes both make a really good light butter, but it can be hard to find. Smart Balance makes a 50/50 blend of butter and Smart Balance in stick form for baking that I have found works well. Don't use margarine or any of the butters in a tub because they don't hold up well in baking. It leads to runny or flat cookies and other baked goods that don't hold their shape as well. You can also substitute nut butters for regular butter to switch out good fats for bad fats, but it won't lower the calories any.
Chocolate: Trying using a fourth to a third less, and lean towards recipes that use cocoa powder or unsweetened chocolate versus those that use real chocolate. Substitute dark chocolate for milk chocolate. If you use a good quality chocolate, it intensifies the flavor so you can generally use less.
Spices: By reducing fat and sugar in your recipes, you are taking out some of the flavor. To help compensate for this, use fresh, good quality spices and vanilla and maybe just a pinch more of them than normal. Write a date on your spices when you open them, and if they are more than 2 years old, replace them. I like to actually buy whole spices when I can as they last longer, and then I grind them in a coffee grinder as I need them and the flavor of freshly ground spices adds a much bigger punch. I'm a big fan of Mexican vanilla, and I almost always put twice the amount a recipe calls for.
Sour cream: I make a lot of cakes that call for sour cream. I've found that Breakstone's makes a fat free that is thick and has good flavor. A lot of fat free sour creams aren't thick enough, but this one is. You can also often substitute a good nonfat Greek yogurt for this.
Buttermilk: Nasty for drinking, but a good friend to the baker. You can use less butter or oil in cakes by replacing some of it with non fat buttermilk. You can't sub it in a recipe that wants you to cut in cold butter (like pie crust or biscuits), but pretty much any time for melted butter or when you need to cream the butter. In cakes, you hardly notice the sub at all. I wouldn't suggest 1:1 subbing, but replace a third to half of the normal fat with buttermilk. It also makes an excellent marinade for all meat (including fish) instead of oil laden dressings. You can also sub it for at least part of your mayo in some salad dressings.
Cream: This is one of the hardest for me. If you are using cream in a recipe where it doesn't need to be whipped (for example: scones or ganache), Land o Lakes makes a fat free half and half that you can sub 1:1 and I hardly notice the difference. You can also try evaporated milk or lite coconut milk and see what you like best. However, if the cream needs to be whipped, it gets more difficult. Sometimes you can substitute Cool Whip, which does not taste the same admittedly. Again, you can try half Cool Whip, half real whipped cream. If just using as a dollop on top, use Land o Lake whipped cream in a can.
Cream Cheese: Switching to 1/3 fat Neufchatel cheese is a no brainer with little effect on taste or texture. Fat free doesn't generally work well or taste good, however.
Icing: This is another one that is difficult. They are by definition the ultimate combination of sugar and fat. First off, choose moist dense cakes that you can serve without any icing. Also, a fruit compote or syrup even if they have sugar in them will always have less sugar and fat than icing. Try using a glaze drizzled over the top instead a fully iced cake. Use a butter sub as suggested above, and use less powdered sugar, adding a tablespoon at a time until it's just sweet enough. Use milk instead of cream for thinning. When you just have to have a fully frosted cake, I came up with this frosting recipe. It spreads well and has a lot less calories than buttercream, and seems to go over pretty well:
Ingredients:
8 oz block 1/3 less fat cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 oz container of sugar free Cool Whip
Whip the cream cheese in a mixer until it gets lighter and fluffier. Add in your powdered sugar. This
will make it pretty thick and sticky for a moment. Add your vanilla and mix some more. Then using
the lowest setting on your mixer, add in the cool whip. At first I thought I’d just fold it in, but then
though I don’t really want it that fluffy, I want it to be more like icing, so I went ahead and used the
mixer, and the texture was perfect.
