Beware that water when you make pastry or cakes!

[r1xlx]

I just started work in a club offering drop in lunches for local old folks and the menu is usually a traditional meat and three veg followed by a hearty pudding - many old folks don't feed themselves properly?
Anyway I found the pastry was always hard and the puddings frequently collapsed and were heavy.
I realised that for some time the manager had been using 'low fat' spread thinking she was being considerate of the old folks cholesterol levels.
I pointed out that the spread makers who were so worried about our health were actually making perhaps 500% profit selling us watery spreads while butter gave them barely 100% profit margins!
The pasty was hard because it had too much water so a change to half lard/half spread solves the problem and the old folks said the pastry was finally delicious.
Then I turned to the puddings and used a better spread and the puddings rose and didn't collapse.
The spread makers have been laughing at us buy all that water for years!