I’ve been using a very reliable recipe for muffins for years. Today, I swapped 1/2 the sugar with Splenda granulated, which the box says is suitable for baking. (Husband is diabetic, so chopping the sugar in muffins in half is probably a good thing)
Well, taste wise the banana-walnut muffins are comparable with past efforts.
However, the muffins are really sticking to the muffin cups. Is this a side effect of Splenda? It’s not a disaster, just an annoying. Is there something else that might be causing this? Does anyone have a solution?
Understood. On the other hand, I have a diabetic who wants to eat the food he’s been accustomed to without throwing his sugar levels into the stratosphere.
That makes sense. That might also account for why the batter seemed slightly stiffer? Would adding perhaps an additional 1/4 cup of water help, do you think? (The recipe calls for 1 and 1/4 cups water).
The only change I made was replacing the 1/3 cup of white sugar with 1/3 cup of Splenda granulated. Otherwise, everything exactly the same. When experimenting I like to limit the new variables, preferably to just one.
Quite nicely. I still had the 1/3 cup of brown sugar. They aren’t sugar-free, just sugar-reduced.
Interesting new tidbit - tonight when I had a muffin for desert I microwaved it for 30 seconds to warm it up. After which the muffin cup peeled off much, much easier (I use those little paper cups designed for cupcakes, muffins, etc.)
Just out of curiosity, why? I think Malienation had a good idea, I wish I’d remembered to suggest something like that myself.
Liquid sugars, honey, corn syrup, etc. have, on the average, about 80% of the solid sugar and 20 % liquid. Thus, if you had a recipe with a cup of sugar, to replace it with honey you’d add 1-1/4 cups, and have to reduce liquidity somewhere by 1/4 cup.
Corn does not agree with me - it causes severe digestive upsets, rashes, and a general feeling of crap. Although corn syrup and corn oil are not as bad as actual corn I really am much healthier if I avoid corn in any form. Therefore, I very much avoid using corn syrup when I cook for myself. Avoiding the ubiquitous HFCS in so many prepared foods is one of the incentives I have to cook from scratch.
If you think honey might be a good substitute that I might try.
Oh, I can see your point then, and I’d totally agree with you. Honey is tasty, but it might give a slightly different flavor than sugar. If you try it I’d suggest using a ligther flavored honey, not one of the darker, stronger ones.
If you don’t mind, could you post the recipe? Or email it to me? I’d like to play around with it myself. I work as a baker, and I love to analyze things like this!
Here’s the recipe (I believe earlier I misspoke the sugar quantities, but the ones below are the ones I use):
2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar (in this case replaced with Splenda)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup powdered milk (optional - but I usually put it in)
3-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 & 1/4 cups water
1 egg
If you’re using liquid milk instead of powdered use 1 & 1/4 cups milk instead of water. When my college roommate and I developed this recipe we were getting powdered milk from food pantries due to poverty, so I have a lot of recipes that use it.
Pre-heat oven to 350.
Either grease and flour muffin tins or use those paper cups that fit inside the holes. I get 16-18 muffins out of this recipe, plan accordingly.
Mix dry ingredients and water in mixing bowl. If desired, add fruit and nuts (I typically do either bananas-walnuts or apples-pecans)
Spoon batter into muffin tins. Do not overfill.
Bake 25-30 minutes.
As I mentioned, I usually add fruit and nuts. This works well either as muffins or a loaf (cook loaf longer, of course). It also works with either white or whole wheat flour though of course the results are slightly different if you change the ingredients. It’s one of a number of recipes I have were there’s a basic ingredient list and procedure followed by a number of possible variations on the theme.
I might try the honey. On the other hand, the extra-stickiness isn’t intolerable, I might just decide to put up with it rather than spend a lot of time tinkering with this and needing to buy yet more baking supplies. It’s good to know as reference, though, if I continue to use Splenda to reduce sugar while maintaining sweetness.
In that recept + either bananas or apples I would try cutting the white sugar altogether and using molasses instead, not 1 to 1 but more like, er, a glop coming to about a quarter cup-ish. Both bananas and apples are sweet enough that you are unlikely to even notice the missing sugar.
When I was baking for my MIL who was a diabetic I usually used that sugar free maple syrup, apple butter, or plum butter in baking in place of sugar. Apple butter would be quite nice in the apple version and probably I would go with maple in the other. You adjust the liquids of course; but if you’ve been making it that long you know what it should look like.
That would be an interesting experiment, however, my budget these days is extremely limited - unfortunately I can’t be stocking up on multiple sweetners (I only justified the rather pricey Splenda because of my husband’s diabetes - otherwise we’d be just two kinds of sugar all the way). Maybe when I’m fully employed again I’ll try that.
I’m allergic to maple syrup, too Darn! And it’s sooooo yummy! And i know exactly where to go to get some locally produced maple syrup and I can’t eat it! Phooey!
Again, wonderful suggestions although it will have to wait until I have more of a budget to try all these permutations.
I usually make sugar free muffins myself (Type II diabetes) or at least sugar reduced. It takes a little playing with the recipes, but you will get the balance right. Your recipe sounds similar to my base one…and I add two additional tablespoons of water when baking with Splenda.
BTW, look for sucralose in the store brands. I’ve found that I can usually save about $1.50 a bag doing that.
Oh, edible muffins; sorry, I got nothin’.
Darn! And it’s sooooo yummy! And i know exactly where to go to get some locally produced maple syrup and I can’t eat it! Phooey!