Funny

My wife's family is extremely health conscious and typically eats like rabbits. There's not a dish they have encountered that couldn't be "improved" with a metric fuck ton of broccoli, kale, onions, zucchini, etc. But they also love brownies. It is typically their only indulgence at family get togethers.

But instead of using eggs and oil in the mix like it calls for, they substitute those evil fats with applesauce instead. It kind of sort of works from a textural standpoint, but it definitely still tastes vaguely of applesauce which is not super desirable in a chocolate brownie. Ostensibly the idea is to make it "healthier" and lower calorie. But given all the sugar and other carbs in the batter (including the added sugar from the apples) the calorie difference is negligible but the end result is not the same at all. It feels like they missed the point and messed up the brownies for no reason at all. Doesn't stop them from calling them "healthy brownies" though. Stretching the definition of "healthy" reeeeaaaal far.

In the 1990s when muffins were a craze in the USA my neighbor, a vegan food scientist, kept wondering how anyone thought cake was acceptable for breakfast. I never thought of it as cake until I made a batch and then made a cake and realized they were essentially identical processes.

Well, any number other than zero is infinitelly greater than zero.

Pro tip for baking modern American recipes is you can cut about 1/3 of the sugar no problem, up to 1/2 on some recipes. Bran goes really well with blueberries. The blueberry muffins I make are basically lightly sweetened wheat bread and they slap. Muffins are a quick bread but somewhere along the line people wanted to lie to themselves and eat cupcakes while pretending they're still muffins

You should see some of the "blueberry" muffins they sell at the store nowadays. It's not even blueberry let alone fruit. Some are so bad and cheap it's just fruit flavored pellets with the packaging saying "Blueberry flavored" muffins.

My wife .... a salad is healthy

Goes on to make a salad fit for a serving of four people filled with ranch dressing, cheese, bacon and nuts.

I love her dearly but she absolutely refuses to admit to a smaller salad.

It's ok, I believe chocolate also has antioxidants so it's healthy too!

If anything, the chocolate chips are healthier than the blueberries, since chocolate has more antioxidants than blueberries.

Muffins are cake. I don't eat cake except on special occasions. I think this is a pretty good rule.

I want you to put the same number of blueberries into each muffin.

Do you know how long that will take?

I don't care, just do it.