PrintButter Flavored Shortening
I have a recipe for molasses cookies that calls for 3 cups of butter-flavored shortening. I don't want to use that (actually, I don't have any; I never buy the stuff). Can I substitute 24 ounces of room-temperature unsalted butter? I hate to waste my recent gift of molasses in a runny, burnt cookie. Thanks for the advice.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
Start Talking!
Need a question answered? Have advice to share? Start a Talk topic now!
Sign up to get your questions answered and share advice.
7 Comments:
You can usually substitute butter for shortening as long at a 1-1 ratio.
schwartz at 11:15AM on 03/23/08
Substituting butter will work, but it will make the cookies thinner, and they'll spread more (I've learned the hard way). Be sure to leave a lot of room between them. Alternatively, you could try a 50-50 ratio or use cake flour instead of all-purpose (according to Shirley Corriher's CookWise).
suthungirl at 2:07PM on 03/23/08
well I don't know how it would affect the texture off the top of my head, but there are three main differences that I can think of between the two. Standard American butter is sometimes as high as 19% water, as opposed to 0% in shortening. Shortening is also going to be very refined, and thus have no solid particles, unlike butter. And butter melts at a different temperature, I believe lower, than shortening.
For more info about what exactly the change will do to the texture of the cookies, see here: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Season3/Cookie/CookieTranscript.htm
There's more there than I could easily summarize here. If you don't want to read that whole thing, you can just check out Alton Brown's recipes for thin, puffy, and chewy cookies on the food network website, but you obviously won't get the full explanation.
Nicholas H at 2:30PM on 03/23/08
24 ounces of butter is a pound and a half. That's waay too much, if you do decideto try it. Remember a fluid ounce and an ounce by weight are not always the same thing.
lemons at 4:52PM on 03/23/08
Thanks for the help. I got cold feet on the butter/shortening substitution (I thought 24oz of butter was a LOT, too), so I searched for another recipe. Turned out more cakey than the butter-flavored shortening chewy one, but still good.
pamelamarie44 at 6:12PM on 03/23/08
That sounds like a huge recipe - what's the yield?
Also, butter and shortening have distinctly different effects on cookies. Unless you want to profoundly change the outcome, I wouldn't sub more than half of the shortening for butter.
(Mmmmm molasses cookies make me think of Christmas... )
chiff0nade at 5:10AM on 03/24/08
I use the butter flavored shortening instead of butter because it fits my budget more and also it taste more buttery than butter. I use the Crisco brand which it now comes in 0 grams of Trans Fat . This is more Healthy wise. To substitiute BFS for butter is 1 cup BFS + 6 tsp water = 1cup (2 sticks) butter. To make a chewier cookie leave off the water when using BFS , adding the water will make it more cakey. The BFS makes a great buttercream frosting.
jag54 at 6:33AM on 05/04/08