I'm new to baking. i'd like to make these substitutions if possible:

stevia instead of sugar
whole wheat flour instead of flour
unsweet cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate
(olive?) oil instead of butter
protein powder?
psyllium husk powder?
flax seeds?

i see various vids that swap out pieces of it, but not all of these. can anyone give advice on how to make these substitutions? or if you can recommend a youtube channel, website, book, etc where they provide recipes with these substitutions, that would be great!

right now i'm using 1/3 cup Stevia in the Raw per 1 cup sugar and adding water for texture, then using subbing 1/2 of the flour with whole wheat flour. they're not coming out too well yet, so i haven't tried using the other things.

bread, cupcakes, cakes, muffins, scones, and beyond!

This post was edited by carteblanche on May 26 2012 11:41pm

whenever i sub whole wheat flour for regular flour i go 1:1.

Pastry is like chemistry... if you swap ingredients you're definitly gonna get something different... sometimes the changes will be minor, sometimes it will completly ruin the recipe.
My advice is that you find recipes that already have the ingredients you are looking for...

don't overmix

This.. You really need to know what you're talking about if you want to change baking recipes. You need to know why a specific ingredient is in the recipe, what it does, and why there's that amount of it. For example, oils and butter are slightly different in how acidic they are, this change will affect how much of whichever leavening agent you chose to use you will need. As well, the different flours have different gluten contents which will also affect your leavening agent, and how much liquid you will need.

When changing over to whole wheat flour to AP flour, you generally want to use some the AP flour still if the recipe is already built for it. From that you just need to find the ratio. Some Whole Wheat flour doesn't have the same consistency and gluten structure AP flour does, which is why it gives you something different.

Whenever I am changing over for the texture, or flavor I start with a 1/4 of whatever you need for flour subbed out for the whole wheat. See how they work together. Not the desired product? Add or less as needed.

My experience with unsweetened cocoa powder is to mix it with a bit of flour and baking powder. Do it through a sift so that it becomes really fine, and when it is mixed with your wet ingredients do it slow so it doesn't dry out more than you want, assuming you want to know how to utilize it for a better product over melted chocolate.

You want to start using Protein powder? Personally I just drink vitamin drinks, or metabolism drinks, but any shake is best taken with Skim milk with about a scoop or two per 12oz. That usually gets you the best concertration between the two, to supply everything you need. It does depend on the shake though, and what kind of diet you are taking. There are tons that just use water as the source of liquid.

Olive oil in my opinion just needs to be used in small quantities. Coat your pan for what you need and cook with it. It shouldn't really take more the 1floz to cook anything through, no matter the size. Generally the sub from butter to olive oil should be easy. Judge by eye what you need and cook with it. If you want to use this as well for baking breads, a mixture of water and oil may be subbed but it may or may not require other products to give a similar product. I have only ever made one kind loaf bread with just water and oil instead of butter which works quite well.

This post was edited by Fusik on May 30 2012 12:44pm

part of the problem i have is that i never baked before the normal way (all flour, sugar) so i'm not entirely sure what the texture/taste should be

any suggestion on the ratios?



I'm taking protein shakes separate right now. i'm curious if the protein powder would work fine in baked goods? does the heat render it useless? would the flavour from the powder enhance (or detract) the flavour of the baked good? i think it dries out the recipe, so would i need to compensate with water/milk/oil?



i'm trying to meet my quota for unsaturated fats, which varies around 50-70g/day. olive oil is almost entirely unsaturated whereas butter is a large chunk saturated. i need a fair bit of oil, otherwise i gotta eat extra nuts. i dont care much for crunchy foods so i'm hoping to avoid the nuts.


another question came up when trying to bake chocolate chip cookies: how do i replace brown sugar? im looking online but i can't find a brown stevia. i'm not entirely sure what brown sugar does in recipes as opposed to normal sugar, so i'm not sure how to replace it :$

thanks for the input guys

This post was edited by carteblanche on May 31 2012 06:22am

So I went and had a quick chat with my chef. Here is what he had to say about protein powder and the cocoa powder.

For the cocoa powder he suggested a 2:1 ratio of flour to cocoa powder. That is what I also use in the few recipe's I make at home so that made sense. Give that a shot and see where it leaves you.

Protein powder is a bit trickier. Personally I wouldn't recommend it as his results were quite poor he said. It doesn't really add anything once it's been baked in and to make it work properly you really just have to re-write the whole recipe. So honestly stick to the shakes unless you can find some recipe's ;P.

I will take a look for some oil water ratio's. Better yet if you want to post the recipe I can maybe mock a new one up, and if that doesn't work bring it to my chef. Personally the bread I make is about 4ft by 2ft and 3.5 inches high. I use 3lbs of water and 7.5oz of olive oil for each loaf so on a smaller scale i would need to see what it looks like.

The texture/taste your looking for depends on the product you are making. What kind of product are you trying to achieve with the whole wheat flour? Throw me some ideas and maybe I can describe the texture/taste I would be looking for.

The replacement for brown sugar though, I have no clue. Whenever I read brown sugar I use it. It tastes to good to sub out for me =]

Hope some of this helps and gets you the product your looking for!

Looks like I'll stick to the shakes then haha.

i've made some muffins, banana bread, cinnamon bread, and brownies so far. the brownies were disgusting, but the others were ok-ish.

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup stevia
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 tbsp water

(i think the yellow is butter?)






I dont have any fancy baking stuff yet. I just use a spatula and a whisk right now. Considering moving somewhere with a bigger kitchen next year where i can get the mixers, food processors, etc.

Cookies are next on my list (peanut butter, then oatmeal, then snickerdoodle, then chocolate chip if i can find chocolate replacements). then i wanna try some cupcakes, cakes, other kinds of bread, pretzels, scones, cheesecake, and pies.

The problem is right now i'm looking at youtube recipes which are normally sugar + flour, then im trying to sub it in myself. i simply can't find very many stevia based youtube recipes. i'm gonna start googling more and maybe buying a baking cookbook with stevia.

since i used to consume large amounts of splenda (100-200 packs a day), my taste buds are probably kinda screwed up. raynor@healthandfitness suggested i take a few weeks and dont touch anything sweet at all to try and fix it. i'm dreading it

This post was edited by carteblanche on May 31 2012 10:09pm

I'll take a look, but if you have butter gushing out like that after cooked then there is to much butter in that or it wasn't cooked long enough.

100-200 packs a day?!?!?! That's freaking intense haha.

Either way I will dive some more into the situation!!!