I was making a batch of brownies yesterday and wanted to stretch our butter, sugar, white flour, and eggs -- yep, almost all of the ingredients that go into a batch of brownies. So, I used oil in place of butter, reduced the sugar, replaced most of the all-purpose flour with sifted whole wheat flour, and used ground flax seeds plus water for one of the two eggs in the recipe. I also used the last tablespoon of carob powder for some of the cocoa powder.
The dough/batter was a bit stiff going into the pan. As they baked, I could see the oil bubbling up through the mass. The brownies never had that glistening, smooth look that one expects on the surface of a pan of brownies, even after baking. When they came out of the oven, they looked a bit like a dark chocolate concrete slab. In my attempts to improve the batch and fool my family members into eating them, I topped them with a couple of pumpkin-spice marshmallows, melting chocolate, and the last of some outdated cookie butter (something my daughter bought but didn't really like -- I thought it was okay, though). I swirled this all around as it all melted together. The end result was some not totally horrible bars, which in my family still gets eaten rather quickly.
Going forward -- substitutions are great and can save a recipe when you realize you don't have enough of one ingredient. But if you try to substitute too many of the ingredients at once, you may find that like me, you've made some frankenstein-esque rendition of a family favorite. Fortunately for me right now, I have a very captive audience for anything I cook or bake. These will get eaten.
