DIY -- healthier and still delicious

I love to play with my food. Once I got my new toy and could bake again, I started doing some research on the web.

We all need more whole grains in our diet. What if it could be delicious?

In anything you bake, you can substitute whole wheat flour for white, cup for cup. There's even a butter cake recipe out there which uses all whole wheat flour. Add in some dried fruit and chopped nuts, and you can hardly get a healthier snack. Take anything you bake and start by replacing half the white flour with whole wheat. When you're used to it, go a little further, until you're using all whole wheat flour.

But wait, it gets better. In anything you make (not just bake), you can substitute plain fat-free yogurt cup for cup for milk, sour cream, heavy cream, and even butter. I use it instead of sour cream and buttermilk in ranch dressing. I used it to make a peanut butter frosting for the whole wheat cake.  It's great for things with baking powder in them, where you might normally use buttermilk to activate the baking powder. 

So here is a pan of scones, made with yogurt instead of milk. (Although I did use butter for shortening.) Looks nice and brown while it cools on the range top. I didn't cut the scones out into rounds. I cut a plus sign, then a circle, then outside the circle I cut the quarter moons in half. 

And here's some taken out of the middle. See how nice and fluffy it looks? (The little dark things are currants, I had part of a bag to use up.) Scones are another thing you can put dried fruit into, although if you want to use anything larger than a raisin you ought to chop it up. You can also put in carob morsels or chopped nuts, or a tablespoonful of some kind of extract like maple. I have seen recipes with icing but I won't be doing that. The beaten egg glaze on the top is traditional and adds protein.

You can also make these gluten-free. They use baking powder, not yeast, so they will rise even without gluten.

Remember, buy the right yogurt and you can incubate more from a bottle of milk. I have a dehydrate feature on my toy that is perfect for incubating yogurt.

Now. My toy includes air frying. Here's how you make that healthy. For both veggies and nuggets, use batter. Use a fat-free batter. Find a recipe for General Tso's chicken, leave out the garlic and soy sauce from the batter, use whole wheat flour not white, and add whatever seasoning you like. I have dozens of them, berbere and balti, cajun and Italian. Roll your bits in the batter and pop into your air fryer. Less fat, tastes great.

Play with your food!