Error

1/5 stars

I didn't have sugar, butter, vanilla, or baking powder, and I substituted the milk with cheddar cheese. Also, I don't have an oven, so I just used a frying pan on the stove top. It turned into an omelet! Would not recommend this cake recipe.

7/11 with rice

It might sound totally insane but this is barely an exaggeration with some of the ones you see submitted there (and I mean ones that aren’t jokes).

They will absolutely make tons of substitutions and still rate the recipe based on it. It’s infuriating and should be illegal.

This is outrageous. Where are the armed men who come in to take the substituters away? Where are they? This kind of behavior is never tolerated in Boraqua. You cook like that, they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Bakers? We have a special jail for bakers. You're leaving out ingredients? Right to jail. You're editing Michelin Star recipes? Right to jail. Right away. You're whisking too fast? Jail. Slow? Jail. You're adding too much butter for cakes, pastries, you right to jail. You undercook flan, believe it or not, jail. You overcook quiche, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the food delivery and you don't show up? Believe it or not, jail, right away. We have the best cooks in the world, because of jail.

I mean, it still requires heat to caramelize the sugar before mixing ingredients. I'd say that it's cooking by loose definition, or are you arguing that flan should not be made. No judgment either way. I'm just curious.

Jail is too lenient! Death penalty!

[Door to walk-in oven slams shut]

"Hello, Kaeyghleigh, I'd like to play a game. Next to you are two buttons. One will set the oven to 80F for 350 minutes, the other 350F for 80 minutes. To survive, you'll need to follow instructions carefu-- [whooshing noise as the gas flames flare up in the oven]. Okay, that was fast."

I tried to make fried eggs but I didn't have eggs so I replaced them with ice cream.

0/10 hot ice cream soup isn't fried eggs!!

But the ice cream obviously had no yolk. So I used yellow mustard.

How did I not know about that sub! I love hearing about those idiots

How did i not know about that sub? I would love hearing those idiots

Honestly one of my favorite subs ever. Would be nice if we had that one here

Be the change you want to see in this world.

Carrots having way too much sugar is wild to me. Like what do you eat except kale?

I mean, carrots do have a lot of sugar as vegetables go, but it’s like 5% sugar by weight. If you’re cutting out stuff with that low of a ratio, you’re probably taking a low sugar diet a bit far.

I wouldn't eat a raw carrot either unless I'm looking for a sugar shock but this is like one ingredient of a cake, a fucking CAKE!! What else did you supplement?

I wouldn't eat a raw carrot either unless I'm looking for a sugar shock

Are you literally out of your mind? Sugar shock from A CARROT??

Are you sure you're not confusing “a raw carrot“ with "a big bag of candy"? It's a common mistake in some cultures, I bet 🤷

I'm not an expert on that but I'm pretty sure I was joking

Upon further consideration as well as evaluation of your supplementary information, I have concluded that you were in fact joking.

I have furthermore decided that your joke was funny and that I'm a bit of a doofus for going all in on my "they're super serial" hypothesis.

Have a lovely day 😁

serial like serial killer or dr. house?

Serial like Al Gore about manbearpig.

Traditionally carrots were used as the main sweetener in carrot cake. Something developed during lean times when honey, fruits and sugar weren’t available. So assuming this person was looking for a “low sugar cake” recipe, they may have found a carrot cake recipe that only used carrots for sweetening.

… and then they removed the carrots to reduce the sugar content further. So yah it’s going to be an awful cake if there is zero sweetness in it. Like, just make a savory baked good at that point.

Carrots as sweetner is sad...

More kale

They're making a cake, you don't want sugar in cake!

Red kale is actually kinda sweet

I asked you for directions to Santa Monica but I decided to drive to the Mojave instead and there was NO BEACH AND NO OCEAN.

2/5 stars, wouldn’t recommend Santa Monica

Carrots have way too much sugar?? To go in a cake?? Wut

What's wrong honey? You haven't finished your kale cake.

In my grandparents’ region (south-east of France), there’s a traditional pie made with leafy greens: tourte de blettes, that is to say “chard pie”.

My grandmother calls it tourte d’herbes (“herb pie”), it’s very good, there’s definitely sugar in it!

… now i’m hungry.

fun fact is that chard pie can be made either sweet or savory

Yes, the savory kind is very different but good too. I love chard.

Kace

Kake, by KDE

Someone probably tried to install Linux on a cake

Kacke - which is coincidentally a German word that describes the look and taste of said cake very well.

Cachu (pron same as above), a welsh word that is even more appropriate

That’s insane, pronunciation and meaning are indeed very similar.

If carrots have too much sugar for you, sweety, don't bake a fucking cake.

any site worth their salt would remove these reviews as they aren't based off the product posted since they subbed items

They substituted the salt with nutritional yeast.

0/10, tasted like floury paste.

“I tried playing my DOOM: The Dark Ages copy for Xbox but I don’t own an Xbox so I put the disk in my Nintendo 64. The game didn’t even launch wtf this game sucks”

You forgot the bit where they cut the disk so it would fit in the slot, and are also upset that the store won't return it anymore.

So in cooking, I tend to do this sort of thing all the time, but not in a dumb way - for example, when I roast a chicken, if I want a more Asian spin on it, I’d sub out my usual herbs de Provence + fresh parsley/sage/rosemary/thyme for chili crisp, ginger, sambal olek, minced Thai basil, and a bit of cilantro, or something like that.

But in baking, there’s actual chemistry involved with almost everything, so you do not want to fuck with that unless you actually know what you’re doing..

Also I'm so shy to ask the author from explanation when I change a little thing. I know I'm not an expert so maybe for this recipe preheating my oven was actually very important...

But at the same time there’s a difference between making an informed/educated guess on a valid swap vs what these people are doing, which is one short step from “I didn’t have cinnamon sticks so I got some sticks from the tree outside my house”

There’s a sub for this on the other site, called “Didn’tHaveEggs”. It’s funny as.

Damn I must've missed out on that one on other site

Thank you. It was one of my favorite subs but I couldn’t remember the name.

I've replaced the celery in the raw celery recipe with pizza. Why am I not losing weight?

It says 10 calories per serving! What gives!?

I'm doing keto, but with muffins.

In the 60s of last century (IIRC, was before my time) there was a product called "Millical", a powder to be mixed with water that provided (according to knowledge back then) every nourishment for the day with a total of 1000kcal (hence the name) per "day pack". Basically a diet powder. Best comment was "It tastes boring, so instead of water, I mix it with cream."

It's like that Marie Callender Pie incident lol

I didn’t know this meme until now, and this image is my favourite. Can’t stop laughing.

"I grilled this pasta for hours and hours, but it wouldn't go soft!" (Terry Pratchett, "Opera")

Do people just substitute things that look similar?

I didn't like egg whites, so I used soap instead. Ew, it tastes like soap!

chef_the_kiss ★☆☆☆☆

I replaced the vanilla extract with balsamic vinegar and it tasted like a disgusting overcooked salad! Why would you let me do that?

somebody wants a mud pie!

Next time maybe mention I shouldn't use soap in the recipe?

You forgot to rate it

I'm guilty of this. For my pesto recipe I replaced pine nuts with peanuts, olive oil with sunflower oil, basil with spinach, cheese with nooch, but kept the salt, pepper, garlic and citric acid. It's not exactly pesto anymore at that point, but for a struggle meal it could be a lot worse.

Technically what you made very well could still be "Pesto", since the word refers to how it's prepared not what's in it (shares the same root as Pestle). The basil, pine nut, olive oil, and cheese recipe you were following would be Pesto alla Genovese

Well that's explains why supermarket "Pesto" is allowed to be completely devoid if olive oil. I hate it so much, it tastes wildly different with sunflower oil than with olive oil.

Oh, I'd use olive oil if my wallet allowed it. But I did quit coffee not too long ago, maybe I should make olive oil my new luxury item.

For sure. I make pesto sometimes with dandelion leaves, olive oil, and walnuts. Any oil you like the flavour of, any bitter green, any nut. Garlic, however, is mandatory.

Ah, but did you then complain that the recipe was bad?

Seeing as I was frankensteining the recipe from several sources, I wouldn't even know where to complain if I had wanted to, so no.

I wouldn’t even know where to complain if I had wanted to

gold

Like it’s definitely a different thing, but it’s the same general concept, gonna have a wildly different flavor but fill the same kind of culinary niche.

Replacing carrot with kale in a freaking carrot cake is like replacing basil with potatoes.

There are worse ways to riff on a recipe, I don't know what nooch is but the rest at least sounds like possible replacements. You're right it wouldn't be pesto, but I don't think I'd hate it.

Nooch is nutritional yeast. It's probably the most expensive ingredient in the recipe hah, but it goes a long way. Even though I'm not vegan, I've dabbled with vegan substitutions and nutritional yeast was probably the best part of that journey.

Well those ingredients are way more similar to eachother than "eggs and mashed banana"

Only if you replaced the peanuts with raisins, the basil with pine needles and the olive oil with teriyaki sauce would you have a case for being guilt to this degree.

Actually banana for eggs can work if you know what you're doing. In many baking recipes, the egg is used as a binder. Pectin (found in fruit) can work as well, but you need to alter the recipe in very specific ways to make it work.

Tell me you're vegan without telling me you're vegan ;-)

The hard part is not having every cake taste like banana bread. But I can confirm that it works if you know what to do.

Yep! Got it in one :)

What in the poverty is "nooch"? Also, peanuts have too much flavor and spinach too little compared to their counterparts. I can't even imagine what that tasted like. Along with the rest that just sounds like sour garlic peanut butter. No thank you.

It's not a poverty thing, it's a vegan thing. It's Nutritional Yeast, which tastes kind of cheesy

It still probably tastes more like pesto than what you get in a jar from the supermarket

Unrelated but if anyone wants to try pesto 2.0, sub the basil for wild garlic and half the pine nuts for cashews, it's a delightful taste sensation.

Nooch has so many delicious uses.

I got pretty addicted to vegan parmesan. Such a simple and easy thing to put together but oh so tasty.

I'm really loving the last one there. Somehow "shots" is their preferred unit of measure. Most cookies don't have any liquid ingredients, either, so milk is kind of a wild addition. Then they blame the recipe for being chunky, which I assume is due to the banana that they did a shit job of mashing. The cherry on top is that there is a rating out of five stars at the top (looks like they gave five stars?), but then they throw in a rating out of ten at the bottom. Should have given a thumbs up rating, but I assume the thumbs are busy in their ass.

Sugar is a liquid ingredient

The fuck kind of sugar are you using?

Hey since no one apparently answered you:

In baking, you typically have “dry” ingredients and “wet” ingredients.

Sugar is considered a wet ingredient in the world of baking. In chemistry parlance, it’s hygroscopic so it is mixed with other wet ingredients before adding the dry ingredients.

Gatekeeping is whack. It took me 60 seconds to give you the real answer.

Oh wow thank you. Keeping this in mind will help me remember to stop mixing in the sugar with the dry ingredients before reading the rest of the recipe, then having to throw out all of it because I find out that the sugar should've been mixed with something else. This is something I've done way too many times cause I'm an idiot.

Thank you. This excellent explanation also shows that SpaceNoodle's reply has absolutely NOTHING to do with what the original commenter was talking about above (measuring cookie ingredients in "shots"), so who knows what SpaceNoodle's smoking, but I think I'm good without whatever liquid they're using instead of sugar in their cookie recipes.

Everything can be a liquid with the appropriate conditions.

I do love me some supercritical sourdough bread

I can see you're not a baker

No, Dr. "Rather than explaining a patently ridiculous statement, I'm going to make a second vague statement in an effort to make other people feel stupid for kicks", I'm not a professional baker. I'm a chemistry teacher.

So, since "I can see you're not a chemist" (see how pretentiously shitty that sounds?) and you are apparently just about as good at following recipes as the numbskulls here, let me teach you something: while you may be in your baker's la-la-land with your hard-won recipes and art, if you used simple syrup (or as you call it "liquid sugar", Chef Cordon-Bleu-At-Home) in ANY of the recipes here (or virtually any online mass-consumption recipe, I have yet to find even one that calls for it) instead of actual sugar, your shitty cookies would be more runny than Yoda's diarrhea in the swamps of Dagobah.

Now, either let's see a common recipe made for lay-people that calls for simple syrup in cookies, or kindly fuck off with your sanctimonious gatekeeping pretense.

Not sure why the person you’re replying to is refusing to explain. Assuming they’re not a TOTAL idiot, I’d guess they’re alluding to a baking rule of thumb for mixing order. Maybe they learned this rule but they don’t actually understand it well enough to talk about it?

Generally, you include sugar with the “wet” ingredients while baking. It’s a timing thing, it tends to incorporate better and dissolve a little if you mix it with your butter, oil, milk, eggs, etc. Once that’s all mixed in you add your “dry” ingredients like flour and baking soda / powder. Those are easy to over mix so you add them last minute.

Sugar is not a liquid ingredient, it’s just a rule of thumb, the person you’re replying to is being annoying.

Thank you for the excellent explanation. It's such a shame that some people are apparently categorically incapable of explaining themselves, and feel the need to gatekeep instead to feel superior.

This interpretation makes it clear that their comment was a complete non-sequitur, since it is NOT a liquid, and thus is not a "liquid ingredient in cookies" that might be measured in "shots".

🙄

"Wet" and "liquid" are not the same word

(For the confused: with baking you put ingredients in specific orders. Sugar is usually included with the wet ingredients)

Who the fuck substitutes mayo for heavy cream?

Hey, they're both thick and white. And eggs are dairy too!

Hey, they're both thick and white

If that's the bar, we should be glad it was mayonnaise!

Trump voters

Morons, that don't think at all.

Stupid fucks do.

What on earth do these people think recipes are

Suggestions, clearly.

They kind of are if you understand what role these ingredients play and why.

"If"

Yeah and especially for baking recipes. Like they say cooking is an art and baking is a science. Unlike with cooking you can’t really deviate from a baking recipe unless you know what you are doing other wise it is a guaranteed failure.

I'm speechless. So they change the recipe and then they blame the recipe? WTF....

He changed it? How did he change it?

He changed it as it was going out the door 🐀🐀

what?!?

I had a friend who wanted to make my No Bake cookies for her husband so I showed her the recipe and she said she had everything.

I show up to a game night and she’s making them but substituted the butter for the ‘can’t believe it’s not butter’ stuff. I told her it’s not the same thing and she didn’t believe me.

Instead of cookies she served us bowls of congealed cookies.

She tried blaming me but my friend knew better and called her out for not following the recipe.

The margarine is probably a combination of oil and shortening, so I feel like you'd be able to make the sub in a pinch? You'd need to melt it down first because the spreadable stuff in the container has air whipped into it.

I dunno, I haven't tested it.

Edit: I didn't see they were No Bake cookies. Yeah, that would make a much bigger difference.

I mean, most often, you can replace butter with plant-based alternatives. It's not much different as fats go.

Sure, it can be different, and may affect the cooking time/temperature, so you got to test with it, but like, I think you've chosen a rather poor comparison, compared to their substitutes.

Or maybe I don't knowing what shit they put in "I can't believe it's not butter" things. But like in cooking, I've had to leave out dairy, and while I don't bake that much, I've easily replaced butter in cooking with plant-based fats and sometimes beef tallow (even though it is from a cow it's not dairy in any way). Or a mix.

Oh wait no I overshot my "you may have chosen a poor comparison" there. It may that it could've been suitable if it was just a plant fat alternative, but if she brought some zero fat vegetable oil variety, then yeah, that's dumb.

Unilever also uses the brand name to market a liquid butter substitute contained in a spray-bottle. This product is an emulsion of vegetable oil in water formulated with a 'hint' of butter flavor (derived from buttermilk) and is marketed as having zero calories and zero fat content.

Fucking.... Ewww

Decided to give your “famous” crab cake recipe a try. Substituted double chocolate fudge brownies for the crab and was murdered by how bad it was. No crab to be found anywhere in the mess and now I have panic attack disorder. -15/10 Next time just say you don’t know what the fuck a crab cake is, GWYNETH.

There are lots of vegan egg replacement tricks, banana is one of them. If you look at pictures when you search "vegan egg replacement" you'll find a bunch of them. Flax seed "egg", chia seed "egg".
Apparently, the apple cider vinegar one is supposed to be combined with baking soda, which I'm not certain how that'd work as vinegar and baking soda reacts quite violently, releasing a lot of CO2 all at once (classic school "homemade bottle rocket" recipe: vinegar and baking soda).

Oh I'm aware, I've tried almost all of them and none of them worked very well in my homemade vegan and gluten free pasta attempts. (I don't personally suffer from coeliac disease, but I wanted to see how difficult it was living as one. It's difficult.)

Celiac here. I get so annoyed when companies try to combine all dietary restrictions into a single food item, e.g., the GF cookie is also the vegan/ dairy free cookie. It's hard enough to make something edible with a single restriction, but when they try to lump all the restrictions into a single product it is almost always disgusting.

My wife has celiacs and a dairy allergy, so she is one of the rare people that actually can make use of these things, but I get you. I almost feels lazy, like they were just trying to combine all food issues into a single product to appeal to as many people as possible, while forgetting to make the food taste good.

Yeah, I run into this. One vegan daughter, one girlfriend -of another daughter who has a nut allergy. It is often a one or the other choice, I have to warn one of them not to eat something. It is hard to juggle both those restrictions.

when they try to lump all the restrictions into a single product it is almost always disgusting.

I can only imagine. I haven't gone that deep down the gluten free rabbit hole, but it seemed bleak indeed.

Out of curiosity, do you use a lot of xanthan as a celiac? Seemingly that is the only gluten alternative, but it looked a bit pricey for my testing, so I omitted it.

Oh this is so surprising. I typically use corn starch to thicken sauces. Have you compared xanthan gum head-to-head with corn starch?

The merest suggestion that I would use Xanthin gum was enough for the sauce.

😄 Sounds like it's worth the money then.

I was never a huge baker before the diagnosis, so now we mostly stick to quick breads and cookies when it comes to baking. Those types of recipes usually suffice with either baking soda or baking powder if using an all-purpose GF flour like the King Arthur mix. The best tasting GF flour I've tried though is Bob's Red Mill, and they do specifically recommend (and sell separately) xanthan gum for various types of baked goods. Even when I follow their (Bob's Red Mill) recommendations though, the dough is still typically a bit runny.

Veggies probably will be too, unfortunately 🥲

Never a better time to grow your own

Banana does get a little gluey when cooked. It’s not a perfect substitute but it does help keep things together a bit.

Source: rolled oats + mashed banana + chocolate chips makes a decent chewy cookie.

I always steam when people replace anything with banana, but that's because I'm fuckin' allergic to banana.

Health people act like banana is a solution for everything.

The weird part about these is sometimes the results are absolutely fire as long as you use a little common sense.

Its possible to bake an amazing chocolate cake by replacing the eggs and oil with mayonaise and a great Vanilla cake by replacing the milk and sugar with melted ice cream.

Replacing eggs and oil with mayonnaise?

Milk and sugar replaced with melted ice cream?

You're just substituting two things with one thing that is made almost entirely from those two things.

Like yes, eggs and oil are a great replacement for eggs and oil.

It still sounds insane at first until you think about it. "I'm baking a chocolate cake, fetch the mayonaise" Is not normal behavior.

I kind of want to call the cops

Theres also a great chocolate cake recipe that involves a can of pickled beets I cant wait to try.

B Dylan Hollis on youtube does a lot of vintage recipes, some with seemingly insane substitutions but some of them work out really well. Theres a bunch he does that I still want to try. The disgusting ones are just entertaining.

Nor should it be unless it's the exact same ratio of those ingredients as is in the substitute.

Well, you can always add mayonnaise and an egg to fix the ratio.

I would only do this if I seriously wanted to annoy someone looking over my shoulder while baking.

Whenever I'm thirsty I just drink a liquefied byproduct of hydrogen and oxygen combustion instead of water

Um that's horse thirst quencher. Plus it's incompressible.

Sure, but the people with common sense don't leave these kinds of comments.

As someone in IT people do the same thing. Specifically as a favor I managed to get a crappy Samsung on a up to date version of LineageOS (through a GSI). For some reason it had a very specific problem that you cant do recovery though the OS so I installed teamwin. I tell this person "ok this phone isnt secure, dont put info on it. Also dont reset through LineageOS". Well guess what, he did that anway and I ofc fixed it.

Oh my god, GSIs. I used a phone with a GSI for a month. More than that would just make me kill myself.

The person needed it working quickly unti he can get a new one

I've not seen the movie, but this is shades of that film about the woman who reinvented a lot of cattle technology, and there's a scene where they're trying out her new design for something and they decide the materials and shape are wrong and change them, and then three cattle die, and they're laughing at her saying her thing doesn't work, and she looks at what they did to it and calls them out for being idiots

Temple Grandin?

thats the one

One of my favourite recipes has a comment in a similar vein and it tickles me every time.

For context the recipe is for Oatmeal Cakes, which are baked in a muffin tray.

The commenter says: "I wouldn’t make these again. Although they are not called a muffin, they do look like one in the picture. They are nothing like a muffin. I only realized after I had all of the ingredients in the bowl that the recipe did not call for any flour." (2/5 stars)

This makes me think of this classic about changing recepies...

My mother in law.

These are the people who are impressed by llm ai.

These people are going to be fucking mad when they learn about braille books. “1/10, couldn’t read it, doesn’t have words in it!”

There are people who think if it looks the same, it can be substituted. They blow a lot of chips if they try electronics design.

"I didn't have eggs so I substituted with a mashed banana and two shots of milk" bitch what the actual hell is wrong with you? I knew more about baking in fucking middle school than whatever idiot did that.

I legitimately thought bananas were an OK egg substitute? Same with apple sauce and some kind of garbanzo bean froth?

You'd be right - as long as the thing you're baking is a quick bread (think muffins, cakes, banana bread, etc). Aquafaba (garbanzo bean water) can work in other applications, but that's because the barbanzons beans have added protien to the solution and lets it act as more of a binder. Applesauce and Banana don't bind well, so if you're making something that really needs to rise you shouldn't use them.

That person likely didn't mash the bananas well enough to make cookies.

There may be places in the world where you can substitute an egg with mashed bananas. But a cake isn't. Baking is science, baking is chemistry. You need the egg (among other uses) to provide the lecithine for the dough. How much lecithine is in the mashed banana?

American behaviour

pretty much. And suburban Melbourne mother shit too.

I do believe Sharon mixed up heavy whipping cream and sour cream

You can sub sour cream and mayo in many recipes, weirdly

If the desired aspect of the mayo/sour cream is it's viscosity and general hangings, sure. Dips? Go for it. A burrito? OK, sure. Beef stroganoff? I... I dunno. A topper for chili? Listen... just go buy some fucking sour cream. Costs a buck or two and lasts in the fridge for weeks. Don't put mayonnaise on my fucking chili or we will fight.

I don't think they meant substitute mayo for sour cream, just that both can substitute well for other things. Like sour cream for heavy cream. Or mayo for eggs and oil.

Edit: it's also more of a thing when they are mixed well in whatever you're making. Subbing mayo for eggs won't work well to make fried eggs or an omlette (though I'm kinda wondering about that 2nd one), but you can do it for a cake. My ex's mom makes a great chocolate mayo cake.

I've noticed the opposite, people post reviews like:

I changed this, modified this quantity, replaced that, used another cooking duration, it was great, 5 stars.

Really helpful... /s

I clearly missed something in the last couple weeks- what is with "rule"? Can anyone explain the sudden explosion of this usage?

It is just a meme of onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone. It has only one rule, to post something before you leave. So everybody somehow puts "rule" into the title when they post.

For some reason you're just getting more 196 posts than usually. Or you just started noticing the title more.

Note that there are actually a bunch of rules. "There's just one rule" is itself a meme derived from it's historical antecedents.

Gracias!

In some ways, I think a zombie apocalypse could do the world a lot of good.

We partying like its 1353

i just noticed it was caelen

It’s better to fail while experimenting like this than to keep rigid to the recipe and produce stale results

Add some random shit to the recipe and see what happens, who knows maybe you will invent next sliced bread

If it fails there’s nothing that a strong drink wouldn't deal with

Like mayo with strawberries turns out it is as bad as it sounds but you would never know for sure till you tried. Are you just gonna obediently take somebody’s word for it?

Yeah, but if you do crazy replacements on recipies, at least don't complain to the recepies author, and don't downrate the recipe because of your own ineptitude.

On the other hand, if you find a substitute that actually works, post it as an alternative.

Why not? Can’t they take a bit of criticism? You post something on the web you must be ready for spiciness.

In the comments, sure. I want to hear about substitutions that work, variations that are interesting, and where common substitutions or adjustments fail. (Does adapting this recipe for high altitude work?) An experimental substitution or modification that didn't work? I'll likely find that useless, but whatever.

In the rating, it's just noise. The number should be a guide to answering the question "if I make this item as written, will it be good?" A poor rating based on not following the directions is misleading, same as a good rating based on making changes to a bad recipe.

The author's feelings do not factor in.

Experimenting with the intent to discover how different flavors interact is an excellent thing to do.

However, if you are following a recipe and substitute something in it for something you don't actually know 100% works as a substitute and then blame the person who published the recipe for it not working out so well, you are an asshole.

Who else am I gonna blame? I have such a rule I keep to that it is never my fault.

Unless you successfully prove it. Why would I weaken my position right at the start? Maybe they will make another recipe specifically for you. Nothing to lose

Dissolve gummy worms in monster

You're the person that replaces cream with mayonnaise aren't you?

Yes