I have such a love-hate relationship with butter, not because of health, but because the price is just too darn high! How can it be affordable to bake anything nowadays? Luckily there is a cheaper substitution to butter that tastes just as delicious, if not more delicious, than butter.
No insult to butter but to me, it seems a little overplayed. Go to a bakery or restaurant and you’ll be shocked to realize that most of the cakes are made with oil. Not only do industrial bakeries use oil to keep costs down, but they use it keep cakes fresher for longer. If you’ve ever had a dry cake, it’s probably, more likely than not, made with butter.
When baked goods are refrigerated or even at room temperature, butter hardens. However, under the same temperature conditions, oil doesn’t solidify, which results in a sensation of a moist crumb and a more appealing texture.
Better yet, affordable neutral oils make for tender baked goods. When water mixes with flour, gluten forms, and if it is overmixed the baked goods can taste tough. Butter is eighty percent fat and twenty percent water, meaning that you can easily have a tough dough. Oil however is pure fat and gluten formation is quite difficult to achieve.
Even though you can use oil in baking, you can’t substitute it for everything; cakes, loaf cakes, brownies, and muffins can benefit from this affordable ingredient swap. Don’t use this substitution trick for cookies, as the oil will make the dough too thin and the oil will cause the dough to spread. If you want a butter substitution, you can use a fifty-fifty blend of butter and shortening.
So there you have it, you can really have wallet-friendly ingredients that benefit the taste and texture of your baked goods.