Posted on June 26th, 2017

This is something I often get asked. How do you just decide on how to make a recipe and get quantities determined? Great Question!

First of all creating healthy versions of your favourite baked goods can be as simple as swapping out unhealthy ingredients for the exact quantities in healthier versions. For example (1 cup of white flour – 1 cup of buckwheat flour) or (1/2 cup brown sugar – ½ cup coconut sugar), however this might not satisfy everyone.

I do like to make my own recipes up from scratch and this is how I go about it 🙂

First things first – know your ingredients!

• If you’re using ingredients you haven’t cooked with before – google them a little, find out what they are and why they are better for you. Find out if they require more liquid in cooking or smaller quantities than you would usually use of something else (i.e. nuts flours and sugars).

Second – look at other recipes

• By this I mean if you want to make a cake or some muffins, look at other cake and muffin recipes online or in a book and get an idea of how much flour to liquid ratio they have.
• Also it’s a good idea to google recipes using similar ingredients to you (i.e. almond meal muffins) if you haven’t cooked with almond meal before so you can see how others have created recipes using it.

Third – write out a rough recipe

• You need something to start with, so once you have decided what main ingredients you want to use start with writing a basic recipe with quantities next to it – you can always adjust and change as you go.
• Without a rough recipe written down you might forgot just how much of each ingredient you have used.

Fourth – practice and don’t give up!

• Give the recipe a crack – you can only become more confident at creating recipes by practicing.
• It might not work the first time, IT’S OK, you can try again at another time.

I have been playing around with creating recipes since I was a child. Cooking was always a hobby since I was little and the fun I making something from scratch was exciting as it still is now.

I have got a lot better over the years and now find that most my recipes do work first go, however sometimes an epic fail does still happen. I often find I end up trialling a recipe about 3 times before I am content with it as I adjust quantities slightly and sometimes add additional ingredients. Friends and family end up trialling recipes for me quite often 🙂