One of my favorite baked goods tricks is to replace some of the fat in the recipe with homemade applesauce. It works well with all sorts of muffins and quick breads, but it’s particularly delicious when you’re already featuring apples, like in the muffin recipe I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon.

I make two types of applesauce: Frozen Chunky Applesauce and Canned Smooth-Style Applesauce. Both work as replacements for up to half of the oil, butter or other fat in many baked goods that get their rising power from baking soda or baking powder, especially when that fat is liquid rather than solid. Use canned smooth applesauce if you want the substitution to blend in seamlessly. Chunky applesauce does the job when you don’t mind bites of apple in the mix or when pureed before measuring to make it smooth.

Learn more about making muffins and get the complete recipe for Double Apple Muffins in my column.

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Applesauce can replace oil or butter at a 1:1 ratio, but there is a limit. If you do a complete swap, the texture will be unappealingly dense, so follow a tested recipe or replace no more than half of the fat if you’re experimenting. You may need to adjust the overall liquid-to-dry ingredient ratio as well. Stick with unsweetened or barely sweetened applesauce so that you don’t affect the sugar level. I get better results with my thick homemade applesauce than watery store-bought versions.

I typically swap applesauce into fruity quick breads and muffins, but it also adds subtle apple-tinted sweetness to brownies and loaf cakes. When I tested recipes from the Old Farmer’s Almanac collection, I was surprised by how well tart-sweet applesauce contrasted tangy sourdough in Applesauce Walnut Bread. That loaf uses sourdough for flavor and both baking powder and baking soda as leaveners, so it still falls in the quick bread category. I’ve been experimenting with applesauce in my Sourdough Ciabatta dough for sweetened rolls and am finding the pairing tasty in dough entirely powered by wild yeast.

Where you don’t want to make the applesauce switch is in any recipe that calls for a solid fat, like cold butter or room-temperature coconut oil, that you cream into sugar or work into flour. These tender baked goods will come out flat and dense instead of lofty and flaky. So stick with butter for the crust of last week’s Fresh Pear, Goat Cheese, and Rosemary Galette recipe and show off fall fruit in the filling.

Excited about using applesauce in your baked goods? Here are just a few other recipes on the blog that incorporate applesauce. You can find more in the recipe index.

• Sour Cream–Applesauce Coffee Cake or Muffins
• Cranberry-Orange Quick Bread
• Pumpkin Quick Bread
• Tangy Rhubarb Muffins
• Zucchini Bread with Sesame Seeds

In another unexpected usage, I typically thicken fruit leather with applesauce. You can learn more about making my family’s favorite blends in this blog post.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.