Tuesday, 29 October 2024

Substitute substitute

 What to do when you want to bake a cake for your sweet-tooth husband and there's no butter and only one egg.

You could go and buy half a dozen eggs but the shops are 6ks away and tomorrow is shopping day. 

Substitute of course. 

I made a chocolate/coffee cake.

It called for 2 eggs. I used 1egg and a tbsp of vinegar.

Butter? Olive oil is even better.

Vanilla? A good slug of my homemade rose geranium liqueur instead.

Coffee? We always have plenty of that, Greek, nescafe classic and decaf. We don't drink as much coffee in the winter so there are 2 tins left in the cupboard. During summer all visitors are offered iced coffee and we drink it anytime of the day. 

Cocoa?  A few months ago I read something about problems with the cocoa bean harvest and stocked up on good plain unsweetened cocoa while it was still available and cheap.  I don't see any lack of cocoa in the shops. Chocolate has gone up in price but what hasn't. 

Flour? We always have kilos of the stuff, just in case.

 Flour, macaroni, rice, beans and lentils, olive oil, preserved olives and wine . In an emergency we wouldn't go hungry. These are the basics. 

Oil? Spit spit spit that we should ever run out of olive oil. We still have half a 17 kilo tin of last year's oil. It's just about harvest time and we will be shopping around for fresh oil.  'They say' that this year the price will be slightly lower. 

We'll See! 


On a Christmas plate
Which I use all year round. 
It's too cheerful not to use and the 2 plates and cups were a present from grandchildren

Not bad at all.  He doesn't like it too sweet. 
I always halve the sugar when baking, including this cake. 

On the menu today
Lentil soup, bread, olives and salted sardines for K. 
Leftover tuna for me. 

A fisherman friend of Ks yesterday gave him 4 big tuna straight from his fishing boat. We have kept one and given the rest to family and friends. 

******** the cake passed the K-test
😁😁😁😁😁







21 comments:

  1. Ah, cake. How I do miss thee...

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    1. So do I. i bake cakes and barely taste them. Yoghurt and stevia is about the closest I get to a sweet. Not a good substitute I might add

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  2. Mayonnaise, if you have it, is a good egg/oil substitute in baking too. The cake looks wonderful. Recipes should be just a guide shouldn't they?

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    1. You know Ive heard about using mayo but never tried it. At the moment there 2 jars in the cupboard. Next time.
      Sometimes I improvise a little too much but stuff always gets eaten.

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  3. How do you manage to run out of butter? Eggs, yes sometimes but butter, no, never.

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    1. We run out of butter because I eat it and sometimes there's a wee shortage. It's one of my basics. Deleicious stuff.
      Actually I use marg when cooking. Don't want to waste good butter on a cake!

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  4. The sign of a good cook - being creative and able to improvise...well done!

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    1. Over the years I've managed to find some jolly good improvisations. K hates it and won't even make something if he doesn't have 100% genuine stuff. I never tell him what Ive done !!!!

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  5. Replies
    1. My trusty cakes recipes, 3 or 4 of them, can be changed without a change in taste

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  6. I was going to suggest vinegar, I have had to do that many times over the years when my children were growing up, still works just as well.

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    1. If there are more than 2 eggs I often use vinegar for a few of them. Works just as well. May try mayo too

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  7. It takes a Good Cook to do what you just did to that cake and still have an edible result! I try not to eat too much cake, but I see that I really should indulge more so that nobody wants to kidnap me LOL

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    1. Cake always improves the day and now it's an insurance policy too

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  8. I’m always substituting ingredients.
    Makes life interesting lol
    I like lentil soup, fakie, in winter with crusty bread. I’m sure it will fill the spot nicely

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    1. Fakies used to give me indigestion but now I'm fine. Except they're not animal based food. But now and again...

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  9. My wife made a Banana cake recently which was delicious; she said she'd make another. When I tasted the second one I couldn't taste any Banana; just Apple and Walnuts. She'd changed her mind, It was OK, but not as good as the Banana cake.

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    1. I have some apple puree in the freezer. Time to get it out

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  10. You are my kind of cook! I always cut down on sugar content in recipes and am not much of a slave to exact instructions either.
    And how my mouth is watering at the thought of fresh tuna!!

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    1. Even with half the sugar it's sweet enough. Most recipes call for far too much

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  11. I always love reading your food posts, they inspire me when I have no ideas of what to cook. Your creativity on this is wonderful.

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