a baking question

[ratcreature]

I'm used to baking with butter (or in the rare cases that I've made vegan cake I got vegan margarine that on its label announced it as okay for baking). However butter prices being what they are (they are up to €1.05 as the cheapest for 250g again here -- food prices suck), I've been considering to substitute margarine, but the cheap non-vegan baking margarines have dubiously long ingredient lists, presumably to simulate butter taste and consistency. And of course there is the trans-fat prone hardening process issue that can come with margarines. (And the less scary vegan ones tend to cost about the same as butter or even more.)

So I've been wondering whether I could just use the neutral, no-frills vegetable fat you buy in cheap blocks as substitute for part of the butter, say half-half, and let some taste come from real butter, but cheaper as you'd only use half as much, and circumvent the whole margarine issue. That fat is just naturally hard fat with no other stuff in it, the kind you use for frying if you want hot temperatures. But then I wondered about the dough consistency and baking properties that would follow, as of course margarine is usually only about 80% fat with the rest water (same as butter I think) and softer at room temperature.

I mean, the problem of softening it enough could work through melting it at a low temperature, depending on the cake recipe I often do that with the butter anyway, but maybe you then would still need to add a bit less of the pure fat and more liquid to simulate the percentages.

Maybe I should just experiment and see whether the results are edible, but surely that kind of thing has been tried by many people, since it's not as if high butter prices are a new phenomenon?

Comments

[calvinahobbes]

In most cakes it's entirely possible to simply substitute butter for oil (and I guess add less fluid? hmmm, Google seems to agree). You'll want a neutral oil, of course, like grape seed or similar. I know from experience that cookies tend to be much more crisp and crumbly when baked with oil. The taste is different, but you could continue using half-n-half.

[ratcreature]

Huh. That would be easier to mix, certainly. I guess I'll just have to look out for consistency of the batter/dough when trying for the first time.

[calvinahobbes]

In cakes that call for sugar and butter to be mixed first I've also had excellent results with liquid margarine (IDK if that's a specifically Nordic thing) -- but that's usually more expensive than the regular kind.

[ratcreature]

Those exist here well, but are more expensive too.

[musesfool]

You could try vegetable oil instead, but you might have to adjust other liquids.

[ratcreature]

Yeah. Though that definitely won't work for pie crust baking. (I once tried to make a vegan pie crust and used oil before I understood that the flakiness in crusts comes from not having the butter mixed completely with the flour but just cut in. The result was very... well, a mix of tough and soggy depending on the place in the pie. But then I often have less luck with crusts than with cakes.)

[musesfool]

No, for pie crust you want solid shortening and butter.

[gchick]

Yes, you can definitely substitute - you'll get a slightly different texture in some things, especially pie pastry (vegetable shortening tends to be more fluffy/flaky, butter a little more tender and easier to brown around the edges), and of course butter has flavor. I prefer butter for everything unless I have a reason to go vegan, but a half-and-half mixture works fine and is a good compromise in most things.

Solid vegetable fat is very commonly used in baking in the US - you'll find a lot of info that's more tailored for particular kinds of recipes if you google "shortening" or "Crisco" (which is the most common US brand name, commonly used as a generic term). Note that most are hydrogenated oils (and so prone to trans-fat issues) rather than naturally solid at room temp - the exceptions are mostly tropical oils, which may not be flavor-neutral and may have environmental downsides.

[vehemently]

Crisco twin!

[ratcreature]

Huh. Here recipes for baking always list butter or margarine.

The vegetable fat I buy for frying doesn't say it's hardened/hydrogenated, which afaik need to be declared here, but it is hard at room temperature, so I guess it may be a mix of palm or cocos (it just says that it's vegetable fat nothing more specific), though at least with use for frying its taste seemed neutral to me.

[vehemently]

I buy vegetable shortening (Crisco) in a tub, and it's soft enough at room temperature to mix into a batter easily. From the description, it sounds like you don't have that as an option. (We don't have hard shortening, that I know of; there's Crisco or tubs of lard, both of which are soft at room temperature. Lard is cheaper, but everything you cook will taste vaguely like processed pork.)

Crisco is vaguely gelatinous, although I'm pretty sure it is not made of gelatin any more. It's been around in American cookery for years and years, although it's only in the past decade or two that it became explicitly and exclusively vegetable shortening. Before that, it had some kind of meat extract in it, presumably to maintain that soft texture.

(For reference, I do sometimes do pie crusts with a less-than-50% amount of Crisco in with the butter. It makes the dough very easy to work compared to an all-butter crust.)

Quite a lot of cookie recipes call specifically for oil rather than butter, these days. Cakes, too.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I don't think I can get the exact equivalent of your vegetable shortening in regular supermarkets here. Wikipedia informs me that here it's only used in industrial bakeries here in Germany (though apparently there exists some brand in Austria that's sold for non-industrial household use). But I've never seen anything like that. Recipes here always either say butter or margarine. (Or lard in some cases, but I don't eat that because I'm vegetarian so anything directly from dead animals is out.) And then there are the hard vegetable fats like palm/cocos fat that you can buy in blocks. And of course oils.

[vehemently]

On the one hand, Crisco is one of those gleamingly white, made-of-something-strange, plasticky things for which American cookery is famous and/or infamous, like Cool Whip or flavored mayonnaise.

And on the other hand, so convenient! So easy! How can you not have Crisco!! Life is unfair.

My mother did once do a pie crust with solid(ified) palm oil and butter -- 50% each -- by freezing the palm oil, which came from the store in quasi-solid sticks, and then cutting it into the flour the same way as with the (also frozen) butter. That worked just fine. So your hard blocks may not be too much of a problem.

(The cookie and cake recipes I can think of which don't call for butter generally get their flavor from vanilla or some other essential oil like almond or mint; and get their texture from the rising properties in eggs, which may not be vegetarian enough for you. I have made a vegan chocolate cake, which uses oil + soda + vinegar to get its rise.)

[ratcreature]

On the one hand, Crisco is one of those gleamingly white, made-of-something-strange, plasticky things for which American cookery is famous and/or infamous, like Cool Whip or flavored mayonnaise.

Heh, my biggest cultural shock upon experiencing an US supermarket many years ago was actually "cheese" from a spray can, closely followed by peanut butter pre-mixed with jelly (or jelly-flavored peanut butter or something equally disgusting and bewildering). We do have weird mayonnaise products though as well: Mainly you can get it prepackaged with ketchup, as many people like their fries with both. Personally I find it that rather too reminiscent of toothpaste when it comes out of a tube in red-white stripes.

[saraht]

Stick with butter. Life is too short for substitutes!!!

[shadowvalkyrie]

My reaction as well! ":-D

[lilacsigil]

Australian recipes always say butter or margarine, too. Some vegans substitute with apple puree in cakes and muffins, though I don't think that would work well in pastry. I always use butter, though - I live amongst hundreds of dairy farms and there are three butter factories within an hour's drive!

[ratcreature]

How could apple puree substitute fat? That doesn't seem like a viable (or tasty) strategy to me, even in cake.

[lilacsigil]

Here's an example!

I don't think it's meant to replace the fat - I think it's meant to replace the texture and remove the fat content. I've never done it myself, though, because if I'm going to eat cake, it had better be delicious and full-flavoured cake!

[penknife.livejournal.com]

A little poking around online suggests that you can substitute vegetable shortening for butter, but that you should add a little bit of water (2 tablespoons added to 1 cup of shortening; don't know the metric measurements, sorry) if you want to get similar results in baking.

[ratcreature]

That makes sense, with butter having also some water in it.

[salamandersfire.livejournal.com]

If you're making pastry my mother swears by half fat and half butter as giving a better consistency anyway.

In the UK we can get baking margarine, which according to the ingredients is Palm oil, rapeseed oil, water salt, emulsifiers and apparently added vit A and D, having just fished a block out of the fridge. It's 75% fat which is perfect. I can use that as a direct substitute in all baking, it's not quite as rich but if you're adding other flavourings that's fine, and it is half the price of butter here.

Don't know if that helps.

Salamander -- long time lurker!

[ratcreature]

Yesterday I made a pumpkin pie with half butter and half fat in the crust and that turned out quite well. It was less buttery of course, but slightly more flaky.

Here baking margarine have the ingredients such as you list, though most are not a naturally semi-hard mix of oils but have hydrogenated fats to harden the oils, but on top of those also food coloring to make them more yellow (though the beta carotene wouldn't bother me too much), then whey (presumably for taste? I don't know, only special vegan ones don't put some milk stuff in their margarine), also citric acid (maybe for conservation?) and the not more closely described "flavorings". Also the emulsifiers, usually mono- and diglycerides are not something I'm too happy about in my food, because they don't actually have to declare whether they are the synthetic kind, the vegetable kind or the kind extracted from animal fats (usually dead cows and pigs), which conflicts with my vegetarianism. So unless you buy the more expensive explicitly vegan brands it's like a crap shot. I mean, I don't outright skip all food listing these, when I buy pre-made food, because they are practically in every product ever containing fat and needing emulsifiers, but I don't eat a lot of convenience food, and I try to avoid them in foods I buy as basic ingredient.

And welcome from delurking!

[kwentiel.livejournal.com]

Hello.
If the recipe has melted butter, sometimes I put half butter and half sunflower oil.
Almu