My first thought was right there with ideefixe - make them smaller - mini-muffins, so that's what I did. These were wonderful little muffins after I "messed" with the recipe a bit. Here's how I lowered the fat, carbs/sugars, and increased fiber. 1 c. whole wheat flour (spelt would also be a good choice) 3/4 c. Hi-Maize Resistant Starch* 1/4 c. flaxmeal 1/4 c. agave nectar** 2-1/2 t. baking powder 1 t. cinnamon 1/2 t. salt 1 c. milk 2 T. instant coffee granules 2 T. coconut oil (or butter) 1 egg 1 t. vanilla 1/4-1/2 c. mini chocolate chips (I used 1/4-c.) Bake: 350°F oven 11-13-minutes. Yield: 24 mini-muffins. Sprinkle the top with a tiny bit of cinnamon sugar after you pan the batter, OR, dust with powdered sugar after they are baked. This is a "sweet trick" when you lower the sugar in foods. That small amount of sugar hitting your tongue, as well as the sweetness in the chocolate chips, will make them seem sweeter than the amount in them would indicate. I used a 1/4 c. flaxmeal for increased fiber and as a fat replacer. I also used coconut oil. One benefit of coconut oil is that you can generally reduce the amount of fat in a recipe by 25% just switching to coconut oil. I use several brands, but used LouAna brand for the recipe. LouAna doesn't have any coconut flavor. I get it at Wal-Mart and now I can get it at our Kroger-affiliated store, Dillons. I understand Kroger now carries it as well. You'll find it in the shortening/vegetable oil isle. If you aren't familiar with Hi-Maize Resistant Starch, here is some information from Honeyville Grain. I add it to all my baked goods as a replacement for a portion of the flour, in my homemade pudding mix, breakfast smoothie..... *Hi-Maize Resistant Starch (Honeyville Grain - 5#/$16.99 - S/H is $4.49 for your entire order and I generally order several things at a time from them. King Arthur Flour - 3#/$9.95 and 12-oz./$5.95 plus S/H. Information about Hi-Maize from Honeyville Grain: Just 15 grams of Hi-maize (about 1 heaping tablespoon) contains 9 grams of total dietary fiber, which is more than the fiber in 1/3 cup of high bran cereal and twice as much as the fiber contained in 1 cup of oatmeal. 1. Hi-maize is lower in calories than the flour it replaces. Hi-maize delivers between 2-l kilocalories/gram while flour delivers 4 kilocalories/gram. Hi-maize also helps your body burn more fat and may lead to lower fat accumulation. 2. Hi-maize helps maintain healthy blood sugar levels in healthy individuals because Hi-maize increases insulin sensitivity in healthy people. 3. Hi-maize helps balance your energy in the hours following a meal. It has a lower impact in blood sugar and blood insulin than the flour it replaces. For individuals following a "carbohydrate-control" diet, it lowers the "net" or digestible carbohydrates in foods. 4. Hi-maize promotes digestive health. The fiber in Hi-maize is fermented within the large intestine and encourages the growth of friendly bacteria (a "prebiotic" fiber). It reduces harmful compounds such as ammonia, while producing beneficial compounds such as short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, the preferred fuel for colon cells. Hi-maize is ideal for use in a gluten-free diet. 5. Hi-maize is well tolerated. It is slowly fermented and does not produce the uncomfortable digestive side effects sometimes found with fiber. Hi-Maize nutrition per 28g: 40 calories 0 fat 0 cholesterol 15mg sodium 15g carbohydrates 15g dietary fiber 0 sugars 0 protein **Agave Nectar - a natural, honey-like sweetener that is one of the lowest foods on the Glycemic Index of Foods. It doesn't raise blood sugar, BUT, it acts like sugar in baking, contributes to fermentation in yeast breads, browns, unlike chemical sweeteners. I generally use 1/2-3/4 c. agave nectar for each 1 c. sugar. -Grainlady

Gina -- I use the same amount of applesauce as the oil, butter, or margarine the recipe calls for, and it works well. Instead of being DRY, the cake/bread is SPONGIER than the oil version. Here's what i did with a PUMPKIN BARS recipe: subbed applesauce for oil [1 c.] subbed sweet 'n low for sugar [2c.] used only the whites of 4 eggs Did not add the optional nuts or raisins. Did not frost it. Baked it in loaf pan. It is WONDERFUL. My whole family loves it. Gotta make some more. Original recipe follows w/ original ingred., which i made for SIL's birthday in pyrex dish. Believe it or not, I PREFER the sugarless version! PUMPKIN RAISIN BARS 2 c. all-purp flour 1/2 t. salt, ditto cloves 2 c. sugar 1 c. oil 2 t. baking powder 4 eggs 1 t. baking soda 15-oz can [2 c.] pumpkin 1 t. CINNAMON 1/2 c. nuts 1/2 c. raisins 1 t. NUTMEG I probably increased the spices -- i like Allspice -- but made subs as i told you for the bad stuff. GOOD LUCK! chery-va

I found Dr. Pierson's website 2 years ago and put our 16 lb. VERY food motivated female on an all-wet, no-free-feeding diet and she did wonderfully. On top of the weight loss, her bowel movements improved 100%, as she used to have soft, pudding-like movements quite frequently when we gave her dry. Her energy levels did a complete 180 degrees as well and she was back to acting like a kitten. She is exactly like Sarah's cat in that if you food down, she will eat it ALL and then go over to the other kitty's bowls and eat ALL of their food...and then beg for more! We knew that if we didn't get a handle on things, she would become obese quite quickly. Now, she gets Wellness Chicken or Turkey wet food twice a day. We have to feed her separately from our other cat, as she will inhale her food in 3 seconds while our male is just getting started. We also noticed that wet foods with fish or seafood are too rich for her and contribute to her getting what I call "pudding butt". She managed to trim down 3 1/2 lbs and looks great! Here is a link that might be useful: Cat Info Website - Feeding Your Cat

Oh! Well, you got the answer for the oil question. It sounds like you had a good result. So, on that theme, I have a few touchpoints. I learned to make cakes out of whatever, when they were the only sweets we had (muffins structurally being cakes). Sometimes, the only fat I had was oil, but I wasn’t using recipes. The rule is if it looks like cake batter, tastes like cake batter, and you didn't forget to put in some baking powder, it's a cake. So with whichever fat, one adjusted as needed. I might put in an extra egg for the water, richness (it was low viscosity cooking oil, not olive) and structure (glue). Muffins, being smaller and weighing less are more tolerant. Early in my time having to do all the Passover cooking by myself, I learned that the kind of fat doesn't matter for the structure in the matzah balls. I think it was Cloudswift who explained that the relative amount of fat was small enough that it just didn't make a difference if it was a couple tablespoons of schmaltz or oil, making vegan easy (though the flavor part requires adjustment). Of course, with dumplings of any kind, the biggest difference is in how they're cooked, whether they become fluffy or leaden or chewy. A group of us were making cookies en masse for a fundraiser, and when we ran out of solid fat, one of the gals subbed oil in a couple of recipes. They ran all over the pans in puddles. If they'd been contained, like in a muffin pan, they might have been okay, but there was nothing to hold them together on sheet pans. Drop cookies are meant to spread and flatten as the fat melts, but with oil, which is already liquid, they just spread and spread. Cut cookies are drier and not supposed to spread, though eggs and/or baking powder will make them puff, which means they get a little bigger sideways, too. They set their shapes pretty quickly, before the fat melts. Oil substitute (there may be recipes developed using oil that work better), while better than in drop cookies, again, spreads too fast for the shapes to set. In enriched breads, for the most part, it's like the matzah balls--too small a percentage to make much difference. I prefer solid vegetable shortening (which I usually hate) or baking sticks (“vegan butter”). Butter in the same proportion is too rich and makes the crumb heavy, and almost greasy-seaming. I'm sure that could be adjusted. I've only used olive oil in pizza crust, but EVOO (in quantity similar to enriched bread, not a spoonful) does give the kind of butteriness you spoke of, without being heavy,. For regular breads, lighter oil works fine, but one uses less. Since the liquid in bread is adjusted by feel, depending on how damp the flour (and air) are, I don't know if there's a specific compensation. Many enriched bread recipes call for oil to begin with. One could check the proportions in a few to make a good estimate of how much to substitute for solid fat. I recently made a recipe that called for oil, where I thought the crumb could be more tender, but I think the recipe was meant to be easy to remember, with no fractions, rather than optimized for the best loaf. I hope some of this is what you were looking for. Happy New Year.