Healthy Baking Substitutes

One of my favorite Hobbies is cooking and baking, mostly baking, which can be a problem.... I usually find myself scarfing down the majority of what I've baked!  Then I feel sick....and guilty.  Well I've found some solutions to this problem.  Theres a way to enjoy what you bake with out filling sick or guilty with some simple tricks in the kitchen.  Here's some of my favorite healthy swaps to use while baking:

1. Unsweetened apple sauce for sugar: (cuts a ton of calories, and makes for a delicious moist product.  Can use 1:1 for sugar, but can cut liquid down about 1/4 for the recipe depending on consistancy)

2. Mashed bananas for fats or sugars: (make sure your bananas are very ripe.  adding nutrients and cutting calories)

3. Coconut milk for cream

4. Greek yogurt for sour cream, mayo, or cream: (adding protein, and reducing calories and fats)

5. Agave Nectar/honey for sweetener:  Still sugar but not empty calories, more nutrients that white sugar.

6. Black Beans for flour: (cuts out gluten, adds protein.  Best in my black bean brownies that you can find on my website.  Can sub 1:1 ratio)

7. Oat flour, or whole wheat flour for white flour: (adds nutrients, fiber, texture, and cuts out gluten if using gf oats.  for every cup of white flour, sub 7/8 cup of whole wheat/oat flour)

Here's a delicious muffin recipe that uses some of these substitutes, and you can enjoy without the guilt!  Maybe save a few for someone else ;)

Carrot Ginger Protein Muffins

INGREDIENTS

1 mashed banana (about 1/2 cup)

1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce

1 cup grated carrots, chopped

2/3 cup egg whites, or from the carton I used 1 whole egg and 2 egg whites

3/4 cup oat flour (just pulverized oats!), I used whole wheat flour

1 cup oats (I used quick cooking but it doesn’t matter!)

1 Tbsp Coconut Flour

1/4 cup low fat Cottage Cheese

1/4 cup nonfat Greek Yogurt (You can probably sub cottage cheese for greek yogurt, but I used what I had)

1/2 cup baking stevia/splenda/sweetener

1/2 cup vanilla protein powder, I used Whey

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp fresh grated ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

dash of salt (optional)

optional add-ins: walnuts raisins

PROCEDURE

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix together. Divide batter into muffin pan (sprayed with olive oil cooking spray).

Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

This recipe yields 16 muffins.

NUTRITION per muffin (1/16 of recipe).

 70 calories

 9.5g carbs

 1g fat

 5g protein