Tips of the trade

I have always been asked by friends and family for numerous tips regarding cooking and baking.
From how to ensure you have a good, tasty result even when you have a limited budget, to how to know how much and what ingredients to include and exclude in a recipe that you have to alter.

So I decided to write a few short tips every so often devoted to these questions. Here are the first few.
Hope it helps some of you to make your money (and your imagination!) go a little further :-)

Recipe Roulette:

1. You can usually cut the amount of sugar by 1/3 in a cookie, biscuit, cake recipe. So if it calls for 1 cup sugar, make it 2/3 of a cup. I always use brown sugar in my cakes and they still come out as delicious and white and fluffy as ever. Sometimes in certain sweet breads and cakes you can substitute the sugar with bananas, apple sauce.
2. Note: Whenever you are unsure about something, Google it! There is a wealth of information on the internet on how to replace certain ingredients in recipes when baking and cooking.
3. Eggs play different roles depending on what you are making. In a quiche they are paramount to the finished product, so probably Tofu would work. In a cake mixture they make it light and fluffy, in cookies and muffins they act as a binder and to give moisture.
4. Here are a few I found for making cakes:
• 1 tsp baking powder + 1 1/2 TBS water + 1 1/2 TBS oil
• 1 tsp baking powder + 1 TBS water + 1 TBS vinegar
• 2 TBS water or milk + 2 TBS flour + 1/2 TBS shortening + 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 TBS vinegar + 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 TBS lemon juice + 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 TBS cornstarch + 3 TBS water for each missing egg
• 2 TBS arrowroot flour
• 2 TBS potato starch
• 1 TBS tapioca starch + 1/4 cup warm water (mix well & allow to gel a bit before using)
• 1 tsp yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water
• 1/2 banana, mashed (medium size) + 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 2 TBS applesauce
• 3 TBS mayonnaise (*contains eggs so not suitable for allergy or vegans)
5. When you need to bulk up fishcakes, use potatoes that you have boiled until just firm (don't boil until they are too soft), you want them to act as a binder. Add an onion, some herbs and spices, the fish and potatoes and blitz in a food processor until just mixed. You can crumb and lightly fry or fry balls of the mixture without crumbs. 
6. To save on your meat budget: Bulk up bolognaise sauce, meatballs, hamburger patties, stews with lentils, and beans. In most cases you won't even know they are in the meat dish.
7. "Try to cut out 'bad' fats as much as possible and include 'good' fats in your diet." This is a statement we hear all too frequently, but how do we do it practically in a home kitchen?
• When roasting always use a good cooking spray first and then use a pastry brush to brush over some olive oil that you have heated slightly to make it easier to brush over the food. 
• When frying, use a good cooking spray to coat the pan and then a tablespoon or so of olive oil.
• Here is a link I found very helpful when grocery shopping. http://www.helpguide.org/life/healthy_diet_fats.htm

More tips to come :-)