I've heard applesauce is a good substitute for butter and oil. :]

It depends on what you are baking.  Butter cakes and cookies don't take to substitutions very well.  Quick breads, brownies and muffins turn out great when you substitute applesauce, canned pureed pumpkin or other pureed fruits for the oil.  Use the same amount as you would oil.  Yeast breads, you can just leave out the fat.

Thanks for the reply! Would the puree affect the taste much?

Original Post by 0000qq:

Thanks for the reply! Would the puree affect the taste much?

Little bit. But only in the most wonderful ways.  You will really have to trial and error the foods you are trying to cook. Each recipe will handle it differently. It also really depends how diet friendly you want to get. It's not going to be exactly the same by any means.

Sub egg beaters or egg whites instead of whole eggs.

Sub apple sauce or pumpkin for oils. You can even use yogurt sometimes.

Sub skim milk for milk...

Check the recipe browser for your favorite goodies to see what other CCers have input as their substitutions. Hope that helps.

not all recipes that have oil in them are bad.  Olive oil is actually pretty good for you.   If your up to the challange of taking care of a sour dough starter, and you don't mind the sourness of the bread, you can make anything from bread loaves to waffles to pizza crust with it.  

My sour dough bread recipe is really simple

2 cups starter

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 tbsp Olive Oil

2 tbsp Honey

1/2 cup prepared Powdered Milk.  (optional)

I put in the milk because it makes it a little less grainy.  You could use soy milk instead of powdered or even skim milk.  I can't afford to buy real milk for a family of 8 right now.  Its just to expensive.  The powdered is a good substitue that is also nonfat. 

You just mix all of that into your starter, kneed, let it rise (will take longer than regular yeast bread because it uses wild fermented yeast to rise), punch it down, let it rise again and bake at 350 until thumping the top makes a hollow sound.   I usually end up making it in round loaves.  It will be to big for your regular loaf pan and to small for two loaves.  I either use my pizza stone or my 6 inch spring form pan to bake it in.  The spring form is great because you can easily tell when its risen to double in bulk again and ready for baking

Try yogurt instead of oil, depending on what your baking.