The Laws of Substitutions

Have you ever gotten to the end of the month, aka the end of your grocery dollars and discovered that you are one ingredient short of making the perfect meal?  Well, it seems like it happens to me a lot and because of that I've discovered a couple of ingredients that I can sub in place of those little pesky ones that always seem to be used up first.     

Yesterday, I was a cooking and baking like a maniac! I prepared pie dough, cookies, sweet potato fries, a whole chicken, olive oil and thyme potatoes, baby food, and baked apples.  I'm going to be out of the house a lot this week and wanted to get everything lined up for the week so the coming home would be easier.  BUT! I ran out of some needed ingredients: Butter & brown sugar.

It was really an oversight; I made the pie dough first (which has a good amount of butter in it) and then started on my other dishes.  My chocolate chip cookies needed 1 cup of butter and I only had 1/2 cup. 

Law#1:  Know what your ingredients are for in the recipe. i.e. moister, lift, tenderness, richness, etc.  In my case butter added richness and moister to my cookies (butter is amazing and can be added to many recipes for a number of different reasons.  Say if you were making a savory sauce you would add it at the end for richness and texture). 

Substitute: one Banana!  This worked because I wasn't replacing all the butter just some of it.  The butter I did add gave my dough richness (plus the chocolate chips!), and the banana gave my dough much needed moister. Another sub that would have worked could have been applesauce.

One sub down next sugar. As I opened my brown sugar jar a very sad sight lay before me, just a half of cup of brown sugar (I needed a whole cup of PACKED brown sugar).

Law#2: Know how your ingredients are made.  Did you know that the only difference between your white sugar and your brown sugar is Molasses?! In fact it is the extraction of molasses from brown sugar that gives us our white sugar! 

Substitution: For 1 cup dark brown sugar I added 1 cup white (granulated) sugar and 2 TBLS molasses.  (1/2 the molasses if you want light brown sugar). 

With all my ingredients added I mixed and voila! Chocolate chip cookies!

P.S.
Today I made biscuits and needed butter (still haven't gone to the store), the recipe called for 1 cup buttermilk and 8TBL butter melted.  I don't know if you remember when I made butter but those ingredients are the two products of shaking heavy whipping cream of which I had! This goes along with Law#2; Voila biscuits!!!!