Betty Crocker

Does anyone know how to successfully convert traditional recipes to healthier ones?

I've been trying to weed out processed sugar and white flour (and other processed, unhealthy, un-whole-foods foods and ingredients) and it's pretty easy for me, for the most part, because I've been accustomed to a 'real food' diet my whole life. BUT, it does get hard when I try to make a healthy version of, say, pumpkin bread.

It's the substituting ingredients in a recipe that seems to trip me up. And when, like today, I try really hard and try figuring out how to make it turn out with different ingredients that the recipe originally called for and imagine how good my healthy pumpkin bread is going to be...

It's really disappointing when it doesn't come out quite right. Especially because if I had just followed the recipe, it would have turned out like sweetbread is supposed to.

It has good flavor and isn't burned or anything, the only problem is that it is still too moist inside (even after baking it for 15-20 extra minutes). My best guess is that of the 1 1/2 cups flour it called for, I put in 1/2 cup of whole wheat pastry flour mixed with ground flax. But there are two other possible contributing factors: 1-I used frozen pumpkin that I cooked and saved from last fall, but it seems to get watery with freezing and thawing (but I drained off all the excess liquid!) and 2-of the 1 cup sugar it called for, I substituted 1/2 cup of it with brown rice syrup. But here, to accomodate for the extra moistness, I left out entirely the 1/4 cup of water that the recipe called for.

I would really love some reliable equations for making conversions like these! But, I guess, unless I'm willing to put up with the trial and error, I should just go searching for healthier recpies in the first place.