I can't believe it tastes different

Working in tech support be like
- Except they don't tell you that they did something different and you have to spend half an hour just figuring that out.
  
  Yeah. You would have had to triangulate your way around to getting the information that is exactly the information that you knew already that it was.
  "Sir, I need you to go to the oil that you used and check if it is non-hydrogenated or hydrogenated. It should be printed on the back of the label."
  "What do you mean, I never had this problem before"
  "Yes, I'm aware, they have changed the oil constitution recently. I'll be able to resolve this problem for you, I just need to know if the oil is hydrogenated or not."
  "I don't see what that has to do with anything"
  "Can you just check the back of the bottle, please? Then I'm sure we'll be able to get your recipe working again"
  "Okay, well I didn't actually use oil, I used toothpaste because it was expired and I wanted to get rid of it"
  "Aha! Okay, I understand sir. I'm glad we were able to get to the bottom of the issue you're having. So, if you make the recipe with toothpaste, it definitely won't taste the same or have a good consistency. I think if you switch back to using oil you'll find that the pancakes still taste the same as they used to"
  "But I think I should be able to use toothpaste."
  "Absolutely. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
  
  Yeah, Rule 0 of tech support is “users lie.”
  Oh, you already rebooted? Okay, well maybe your power cable is loose. Go ahead and shut down for me real quick, so you can unplug that power cable and plug it back in. Great, now that you’ve power cycled your computer, the problem is fixed? Glad I could help.
  
  Dude, ages ago when I did tech support. A simple question like: "are the lights on your modem on?" was met with a yes. Then after an hour of troubleshooting you find out, in fact, no they weren't on the entire time and the modem was unplugged. Like, you lied, you never even checked. The real questions then become: why was the modem unplugged? Who unplugged it? What reason does one have for unplugging their modem?
- Click the start button. The start button. It's on the bottom left. Yes, click it. You already clicked it? Don't click it again! You clicked it again? Okay, click it again. Now on the fly out click control panel. Wait, you clicked the start button again? Okay click it again. You know what? Fuck this shit, I quit.
  
  I remember one call where the customer didn't know where the Start button was. I told them that it was the button on the lower left-hand corner of the screen. She said that she clicked it and everything went black. Turns out she hit the power button on her monitor.
  
  After you click it, the Start Menu will appear. While the Start Menu is showing, there are some icons all the way to the left, and one of them is called Control Panel. Oh, you pushed the power button and it's off now? Okay... Push the power button to turn the computer back on. You already did? You pushed it again and it powered off? Turn the computer back on please.
  
  I legit had the following interaction.
  Me: Please close all windows you have currently opened. Costumer: Ok, one moment. leaves phone, comes back 2 minutes later. Me: It will take quite long if you are not sitting in front of your computer, can you relocate there? Costumer: I am in front of the computer, i just closed all windows just like you told me. Me: dies internally
  I had another client with ADSL, asked them what modem they used: Client: "My modem is colorful and full of lights!"
  seriously, tech support is funny shit if it doesn't happen to you.

I looked for the recipe this comment was made in, and in the comments, the original author of the recipe mentions replacing whole or part of the oil with applesauce which might explain why.
- This might be the most rational comment I've ever read on Lemmy.
- Hats off for putting in the effort, thank you.
- Yep. Applesauce can be used as a replacement for oil in cakes and some quick breads. I've done it on the rare occasion I've been short of cooking oil for a cake. Don't think I've ever swapped it in for all the oil though. It does give a bit different texture and flavor, I find it kind of pleasant myself. And youy will need to probably bake the cake for a bit longer too. YMMV based on your oven.
  I personally would not use applesauce to fry in though. But perhaps Flying Squid's mother should experiment for use and they can report back to us on the results.
  
  It's better as a replacement for eggs. I say this as a avid vegan baker, oil is oil. Results may vary, but there is no good substitute. And coconut oil is the best kind, IMHO. Worth the extra couple bucks.
- I believe you, but... you were already there, you couldn't copy/paste, provide a screenshot or a URL?
  
  I did not want to accidentally send more comments to the person in the screenshots way by posting a link. It was a recipe for brownies. Here is the comment made by the author:
  The recipe with the comments is easy enough to find online though.

The other place had something like r' I didn't have any eggs' that was all people giving 1 star reviews to recipes where they substituted Triceratops horn for chicken breast, and it didn't work well.
- That sub was hilarious! So many weird substitutions and people having no idea what the ingredients do for the final result. I actually learned a lot about cooking from that sub.
  
  That is something that often bothers me with many recipes. Often I'm confused why they are using a certain weird ingredient I don't have access to or when they have a step that I don't understand its purpose of and the recipe doesn't explain its reasoning or its reasoning doesn't make any sense. I then have to improvise without any idea if the changes I'm making will significantly impact the final result.
  Only very few online recipes I see explain why they are written the way they are.

That is seriously how my mother cooked when I was a kid. The dreaded words before dinner were, "this was an experiment."
And it was always shit like this. "Well, it called for four cups of sugar, but sugar is bad for you, so I substituted potato flour."
- OMG HOhOHOhoHOhoHOoh

I was trying to build a homemade box with wood and nails, except instead of wood I used fucking Uranium, now I have cancer. DIY projects are a scam.
- I wish idiots making stupid substitutions were normally that self-correcting!

You can replace SOME of the oil with applesauce. But replacing all of it (which I did find on some really shitty websites) will not work correctly.
Fat soluble flavors will be diluted by the excess water as well as not giving flour anything to bond to. Less flavor, rock hard baked good.
If you want to try using applesauce, use unsweetened applesauce and only replace (at max) 50% of the oil required for the recipe. Results may vary, I don’t see the use in lowering the fat content of a delicious baked good. I’m eating that shit full flavor, full fat, full sugar. Just eat less of it.
Outside of that tangent, the gall of this person to say “I followed the recipe exactly” when their very first sentence contradicts that completely.
- full fat, full sugar
  Full fat, yes, but not full sugar. We cut the sugar to like 1/3 in most recipes and it usually comes out great. Most recipes I've seen use way too much sugar.
  Fat is way more filling than carbs for the same amount of calories, so don't shy away from the fat. If you load up on fat and fiber, you'll feel more satisfied on less calories, so you're much less likely to sneak a taste of that sugary treat and totally reverse all the good you've been trying to do with reducing calories.
- That’s nice to know.
  I’ve been replacing eggs with applesauce when making muffins for the past 15 years, and I love it. My friend is allergic to eggs, so he is able to eat them too!
  
  It isn’t crazy that the poster did the substitution, it’s is common way to replace some ingredients. She just didn’t execute properly and blamed the recipe maker/poster instead of being self-aware.
  Good on you for going the extra mile for your friend!
- That's why I also replaced the flour with gravel, you see?

Satire? I feel like this has to be satire.
- Have you met people?
  
  People... What a bunch of bastards
- My dad is one of them. Always says that stuff does not matter. I once asked him if he followed the instructions closely and said yes. I did not believe him and so asked every point in the list individually. For every every instruction he told me that he didn't do that.
  
  The amount of people that don't read instructions is ridiculous. They exist for a reason. I always read every manual for everything. Every car I've had, I read the manual front to back. My turtle's new fancy water filter, read it front to back. Furniture, tech, anything, you name it. I guess I'M the outlier so I must be the weird one.
  I've literally had to write documentation at work for a single step procedure for help desk. It consisted of me screenshotting something, circling a button in red with a red arrow pointing to it because our help desk people are incompetent.
- this is the state of culinary education in most of the western world, people can't cook for shit and will somehow burn spaghetti in a pot of water.
  
  Culinary education? You can't eat education, man!
  
  Nothing wrong with the culinary education. The problem is that it doesn't happen. Thank private education for that.
- It's AI.
  
  This might be hard to believe, but people are dumb as fuck even without the help of anything remotely resembling the current iteration of AI.

This isn't as crazy as it seems. In some bread and cake recipes, you can easily replace some of the oil with applesauce and have a successful bake. I've done this with muffins and banana bread to great success.
They're still being foolish as you need some fat for most bakes to work and using apple sauce introduces more fiber, protein and water instead of fat, but it's not a totally baseless substitution.
- Behavior | Reasonableneses |
  |----------|-----------------------------------| | Substituting applesauce | 8/10 | | One-starring the recipe because it didn't work out | 0/10 |
  
  Lemmy supports tables? Damn, never seen one here in the comments. Good to know!
  
  Except "one-starring the original recipe because the modified recipe didn't work out"
  Because otherwise it looks very reasonable instead of very not reasonable

Next time, try that with your car.
- Lol "I followed the instructions exactly except I had my toddler vomit into the gas tank instead of using gas. Why won't it work!? 0/5 stars."
- Instructions unclear, I substituted the car with applesauce, but it failed to properly start up or support passengers boarding, ★☆☆☆☆
- applesauce instead of engine oil will be fun
  
  You say this, but then I used to read r/justrolledintotheshop. People outright fail at substituting engine oil for engine oil from time to time. The kind of person that would try applesauce probably wouldn't be doing more self harm than otherwise.
- if my car is overheated by the side of the road and I have no water, is it ok to pee into the radiator?
  I have pretty good aim
- I put gasoline in my diesel motor, wtf is wrong, it won't work
  
  😬
  (Fun fact: putting gasoline in a diesel engine is way worse than putting diesel in a gas engine. In the latter case, it won't run until you replace the fuel with the correct stuff. In the former case, it pretty quickly destroys the engine.)

Baking is a science, not an art. You want cooking for that. You can't just randomly switch shit and expect it to work. If you must substitute, do some research first and expect to have to fiddle with stuff to get things to come out tolerable.
- Baking is as much of an art as cooking is. It is just much less complacent with mistakes.
  As soon as you get the notion of what to mix to achieve a given result, or which technique produces another, you can start throwing things together and see what comes out.
  I burned, fumbled and messed up my share of cooking/baking and I regret nothing.
  
  Yeah bread is an art, much like sculpture. You gotta learn to feel the dough and the air to understand what size of a scoche you need to give it and of what.
  
  also much more punishing if you do make a mistake. Oh you added too much flour and the consistency is wrong? Well now you gotta add a whole new egg and a bit of everything :)
- Applesauce is considered a substitute of oil when baking. There was a time that applesauce was cheaper and easier to come by than cooking oils. It's been done for a very long time.

Applesauce is a totally acceptable replacement for oil right?
- Supposedly, but I assume you have to be familiar with baking with applesauce, and not just read somewhere that apple sauce can replace "oil, butter, or eggs" and just shoot for the moon.
  
  Wait, really? I was joking, that seems like it would not do any of the things that something like oil or butter would do when baking something.
  
  I sometimes replace my butter on toast with eggs with applesauce on toast with applesauce. I call it a pile of sadness.
- This is probably sarcastic, but in case it's not: Applesauce is a vegan substitute for eggs, not oil. There is no substitute for oil as many oils are already vegan. You can definitely substitute animal-based fats like butter and lard for others like coconut oil to make a recipe vegan.
  
  Nothing can replace the blubbery taste of whale oil unfortunately.
  
  It was sarcastic/joking, but wow I had no idea! They seem so dissimilar, I never would've thought that would work. Didn't think I'd learn this much about baking today lol, thanks!
  
  How would using lard instead of coconut oil make something vegan?
  
  The OP graphic says "I followed the recipie exactly", which they did not, so somehow I doubt that "facts" matter to them, who are making hyperbolic claims for emotional appeals rather than descriptive purposes.
- Absolutely. 1:1 swap even so it’s odd that their dish failed.

I've heard about replacing eggs with applesauce to turn a baking recipe vegan. But the oil?
Also, if you don't want an unholy amalgamation of way too much fat and sugar, why even go for brownies?
- Blood can also be used as a substitute in baking. Pretty sure it's in lieu of eggs. Not curious enough to ruin a perfectly good batch of brownies though :(
  
  I love that your concern is the integrity of the brownies, not the sourcing of the blood.
  
  I have a lovely book on recipes with blood, I'll give ya give ya the name once I find it
  Edit, lol took just a second, blood by Jennifer McLagan
- That was a "fine enough" substitute before commercial egg replacers got as good and commonplace as they are now. I'll still do it for some recipes as I like the added apple flavor and moisture, but I generally use Ener-G Egg Replacer for replacing eggs in a dough mix and maple syrup for egg washes when vegan baking these days.
  
  maple syrup for egg washes
  Holy shit that sounds awesome. And not just as a replacement for egg wash, a maple syrup wash sounds incredible just on it's own merits

Apple Sauce is a mixture of pulp and water, what little fatty acids are available are tied up, so it does not function as an oil substitute. Oil and Water have completely different properties.

I guess I don't know for sure, but my vegan acquaintces say they use applesauce in brownie recipes and it fuckin slaps.
- They are replacing some of the sugar with it, not the fat. I'm a fan of both normal and the applesauce variants, but you need to understand the science behind the normal ingredients before you swap them out for others. Baking is science.
  
  Actually we replace eggs with it. You can also use a banana or something called a flaxseed egg, which is simply one part flaxseed and three parts water. Let it sit for ten minutes.
  
  No they replace the eggs lol
  
  Especially for anything that needs to rise. So it'll be less of an issue for brownies and more of an issue with cakes and breads.

It was 2021, none of us were in our right minds.

Well they got one thing right...They didn't turn out well.

Exactly different

In the defence of this person, some recipes for desserts offer applesauce as a replacement for oil as a healthier option, like the mug cake I made literally 20 mins ago. This might be one of those
- Are we talking about avocado or olive oil here? If that’s the case, the oil is much healthier than anything else in the cake, with exception of water.
  
  Normally any neutral oil, which I think Avacado is too. But not very commonly used

HoHohHOhOHohohOHoHOhoHOhoHOohHOHOHOHO
- You good?
  
  I think Santa has been huffing the coal or something.