Undoubtedly, butter is considered the best baking fats when it comes to different baking recipes but that doesn't mean that it is the only thing you can have in your recipes. Here's a list of those ingredients including butter to help you make a better decision which one is best for you and with what baking recipes you can use them respectively.
1. Butter
Now, who is not aware of butter? Everyone knows that butter is the standard ingredient used in baking. The reason why it is used often as it makes your baked goods tender and adds flavor to it, also you can use it in a number of ways.
You can easily cream the butter and mix it with other ingredients in order to make your cakes and cookies fluffy. You can even use it cold in short pastries and pie crusts to give your baked goods a perfect flaky finish. You may not know this but butter is also used as toppings or fillings in many baked goods and pastries.
2. Coconut oil
You know that coconut oil is one thing which is solid when cool and comes to the liquid state when kept in slightly higher than room temperature. That's why it might not stay the same while replacing it for butter. You can use coconut oil to cookies, cakes or even pie crust to add a tasty coconut flavor that also makes your goodies unique.
But sometimes when you add coconut oil, it can make your baked goods slightly heavier. A number of people add a ration of 1:1 while replacing coconut oil with butter. However, it would be best if you use it this way: when replacing 1 cup of butter with coconut oil, add 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon of it.
3. Lard
This particular ingredient comes from the rendered pork fat and can be an excellent alternative while baking. Leaf lard is made from the fat around the kidneys and is chosen while baking because it makes your bake good more tender and doesn't give you a porky flavor.
Lard works best with pie crusts as it makes them very tender and also give you the flakiest of results. On the other hand, lard when added to the batter prepared for cookies, it can cause more spreading in them and also make your cakes slightly denser. Generally, lard barely performs well in buttercream as butter.
4. Margarine
One cannot actually make a difference between butter substitutes and margarine. A number of vegan butter products are categorized as margarine. The product is made of hydrogenated oils and water instead of dairy milk.
While baking, make sure that your margarine should contain at least 80% vegetable oil reason being low-fat margarine will not work in the same manner during baking. If you are making pie crusts, cakes or cookies you can use the margarine in the same quantity of butter.
5. Oil
You can use liquid oils that doesn't provide any flavor while baking different recipes. This one is mainly used in making a quick bread and in some specific kinds of cakes. You'll get a slightly airy and coarse-textured crumb if you are combing oil with other ingredients.
When you're replacing oil for butter, make sure you add slightly less say a ¾ cup of oil for every cup of butter. In fact, you can use oil in glazes or sauces to make some different type of ganache but adding oil instead of butter in any classic buttercream recipe won't help you much.
6. Vegetable shortening
If you want to give your pie crust, cookies or cake a tender texture, this solid, snow-white fat can be taken into consideration. This ingredient can be easily used in place of butter in recipes but there's one disadvantage of using vegetable shortening is completely neutral in flavor. If your recipe calls for butter to add flavor like pound cake then the ingredient cannot be considered.
There is butter-flavored shortening available in the market and a number of bakers prefer to use half butter and half shortening for their baked goods. Like crushing buttercream depends on shortening but for flavor and structure, you need to add butter to it.
