subject: Butter replacements for baking [print this page] Butter replacements for baking Butter replacements for baking
Nowadays, many of us are more keen on eating healthier foods, and nutrition is much more important to us than it used to be. Butter is one of those foods that should be eaten in moderation, and people often limit their intake. This is rather easy when you are dealing with adding it to foods when their on your plate, but what if you don't see it to begin with? I am talking about that load of butter that is added to brownies, cakes, pies, cookies, squares, puddings, and flaky pastries. The butter that you don't know your eating, half the time.
These foods can be tough to decipher. Desserts are one of the most high-fat foods that we consume because they use so many rich ingredients such as cream, cream cheese, sour cream, white flour, sugar, and lots of butter and fats. The average butter has about 80% fat, combining mono-unsaturated, saturated, and polyunsaturated fats, and that can be bad news for the body if your wishing to maintain your waistline.
I would love to tell you that there were some magical ingredient that holds the same properties as butter, tasted great, and didn't have all the fat, but the truth is that there isn't. When you substitute butter in recipes, you are not only compromising taste, you are also compromising the quality. Accurate amounts of fat are very important in the structure of baked goods. If you take these fats away, you can risk having the entire recipe fall apart.
The reasons for this are several. Lets add margarine to our recipe instead of butter. It should work, right? Maybe. But comparing butter to margarine, you will see that they both have different moisture content and fat content. Margarine tends to act a tad bit different when it comes into contact with high temperatures, and in some cases it can be very unstable and change the reaction that other ingredients have to it.
You may read a recipe from a cookbook that will tell you beside the recipe whether or not they recommend using margarine as a butter substitute for the given recipe. Sometimes it can be substituted, and other times it can't. If it doesn't say anything, you could try adding half butter and half margarine just to be safe.
If you are absolutely determined to ditch the butter in your recipe, there are a few things that you can add, such as applesauce, shortening, or oil. Try adding just half the amount of butter to your recipe, and the other half can be the substitution. Always keep in mind that when you add vegetable shortening that it is made using absolutely no water. Try adding an extra teaspoon or so of water to your recipes if you use shortening as a substitution, but know that it does not have much to offer in taste.
Applesauce tends to be a very common substitution, but keep in mind that it can change the flavor and density of the product very easily. One of your best bets when it comes to substitutions is to not substitute. Find yourself a recipe that doesn't have butter in the first place, that way nothing needs to be compromised.
