I know there's a recipe for Mayonaise cake that is super moist.

I am baking sugar free brownies that are a bit dry, box recipe. I'd like to use mayo instead of oil and see if it comes out moister. However I am not sure what the equivalent? I know in the cake mix the oil is double. Not sure if the brownie mix would be the same?

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    You are replacing pure fat with a mixture of fat, water, protein, a bit of carbohydrates and salt. I think you need to adjust for at least the water in your recipe as well. – user110084 Jun 6 '17 at 10:10
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    I think there are a lot of sour-cream-included recipes that probably make for a better flavor match. – PoloHoleSet Jun 6 '17 at 15:48

Note that basic mayonnaise normally is made from egg yolks, oil, mustard, citron juice, salt and pepper. This is means that the flavors in mayonnaise are a bit sour. This is normally compensated with sugar in the recipe, but you are using a non-sugar recipe.

I think the idea of adding mayonnaise for the texture is ok. However I experienced the effect of making a cake becoming more moist from some other ingredients from which i think they fit more properly in a brownie recipe. You could replace the amount of oil by the same amount of applesauce. Or add some additional applesauce to the recipe (2 tablespoons I would say) The flavors of applesauce do not seem to change the flavor of a cake a lot in practice. And applesauce is used in a lot of recipes to bake low fat. So in stand of sugar free you now have low fat brownies. If you still want it to be sugar free you can use or make some sugar free applesauce of course. If you don't want to use applesauce you good think of adding a couple of tablespoons of vanilla pudding to the recipe. Or even chocolate pudding, to give your brownies even more chocolate flavor. Also replacing some of the water you use in the recipe by some more oil can work. The water while evaporate during the baking. However, the oil does not do that, and stays liquid at room temperature after baking. This causes an moisty effect.

Note that you will almost always add some more sugar/oil in the recipe if you only want to use 'instant' products. If you want to make non-sugar/low fat brownies this may not be what you want. So you could also think about undercooking your brownies a little. So shorten the cooking time a little bit, so you don't cook your brownies 'dry' but still a bit undercooked in the middle. This makes it very moist, and personally I think the 'undercookedness' of brownies it actually the best think about them.


I would keep the weight of the mayo the same as the weight of the oil using this conversion site: http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_volume_cooking.htm

The other nifty trick to chewy gooey moist brownies is to pre-cook a quarter to a third of the dry mix with the entire water amount. Cool a bit and add in the rest of the dry plus the mayo. This also reduces the baking time somewhat if dough goes in warm.

  • But this is not just a density adjustment since the composition is entirely different, one is just fat, the other a mixture of fat, protein, water etc. If mayonnaise were not premixed, you would not dream of adding all that water and eggs into the recipe against taking out the oil as a direct substitution – user110084 Jun 6 '17 at 14:40
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    not with an angel cake or a torte or.... but brownies? They have wider parameters: drier moister chewier flaky doughy. It's worth experimenting: failures get eaten up – Pat Sommer Jun 7 '17 at 18:28
  • Understood, totally in favour of experimenting. Is it worth point that out in the answer to avoid readers going for a 1:1 conversion in all situations? – user110084 Jun 7 '17 at 23:40

I am out of oil so am looking for a good substitute. So far all of them say the same thing: butter, melted, same amount as oil called for, margarine- same, applesauce-same, bananas-same. This info was specific to brownies. If you use applesauce or bananas, I read that you start with less water than is suggested and "gauge the consistency. Add more water as needed based on desired consistency, not to exceed original amount recommended. I'm going to try butter. If I can find my way back here, I will let you know tomorrow how it worked.

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