It’s no big secret, I love to bake. So any excuse to bake yummy things is indulged upon in my house… especially when it’s National Blueberry Muffin Day and fresh blueberries are in season! Among it’s being 7-11 Day, Thursday the 11th was also National Blueberry Muffin Day.

We’ve been trying to keep things a little on the lighter side around our house so I decided to try out a recipe from my vintage copy of Slenderella “reducing” (an archaic word for “diet” or “weight loss”) cookbook from 1957. I wanted to attempt not only something a little bit retro, but I wanted to see if I could adapt something to modern baking.

The recipe called for something called liquid Sucaryl (a liquid sweetener no longer sold in the US). It’s listed as being 30-50 times sweeter than table sugar. It’s also a liquid which makes it even trickier to work around. Nowadays we have a slew of alternative sweetener options. Honestly though, over the years I’ve tried many and have not been pretty apathetic about them all. We use the occasional packet of powdered stevia in our coffee; but for baking, nothing beats the real thing!

To compensate for the lack of Sucaryl on the market, I picked up some liquid stevia as a substitution. I’ll be truthful when I say I did a little research, but not enough to really quantify exact ratios… I kinda just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best! I seriously never recommend this since baking is such a science of balance; but I figured since it was such a small recipe yielding only 8 muffins, it couldn’t hurt much.

Using liquid for liquid, I just used liquid stevia in place of Sucaryl and amazingly, it worked! Another swap I made (true to form) was I used Carnation Almond Cooking Milk in place of the skim milk called for as well as coconut oil in place of the melted butter. The muffins turned out all right, but of course one couldn’t get around the distinct something-isn’t-normal flavor. The Mr ate them nonetheless without complaint!

I have plenty of blueberries left over that I may try the blueberry pancake recipe this week! With the popularity of our current diet culture, what’s one “reducing” recipe you’ve made that actually wasn’t that bad?