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some people substitute apple sauce

Emeril has an oil crust recipe ("Pat-in-Pan Pie Crust") which looks pretty simple. I've always made pie crusts with oil instead of butter. True, you don't get the same texture, smell, or taste with oil, but it's really not bad-tasting at all. This is using the baking blind technique, but you can experiment with it. Other people might be able to say more about it than I can.

1-1/2 c. AP flour
1/2 c. oil
1 tsp salt
2 Tb sugar
2 Tb milk

1) Mix all ingredients in a 9" pie pan.
2) Hand-form a ball and mold into the pan.
3) Bake at 400 degrees F, 10-11 min., until golden brown.

I only eat buttery pies when I'm out but at home, I use either low fat cream cheese or yogurt for cakes (it works really well) or olive oil for pie crusts.

First, if you're making a substitution, make sure it is healthier in the sense you want it to be healthier. Subbing equal amounts of fat gives you the same amount of calories, so there's no gain on that front. If you're subbing a hydrogenated fat for the butter, then you're going with something that today is considered less healthy.

Honestly, for pie crust, I'd leave the fat they way it is, and sub some whole wheat pastry crust for the white flour. More fiber is better for you and negates some of the fat. Or make a pie with only one crust instead of two. There's no rule saying that you have to have a bottom and a top crust on a pie.

For things like cakes, cookies, etc., start off by finding recipes that are naturally healthier (whatever that happens to mean to you). Oatmeal cookies come to mind. Usually they aren't as fat and sugar laden as other recipes, and they've got a decent amount of fiber, but the overall healthiness also depends on what else is in there.

For regular cake or cookie recipes, again, a whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat flour can make the desserts a little better for you. Start with maybe a quarter of the flour subbed out, and increase it until you get to the point where it's not working the way you want it to. For some recipes, like chocolate chip cookies, you might not notice at all. For lighter cookies, you'll notice the whole wheat sooner. Then again, you might like it better.

There are all sorts of substitutions for butter and oil in baking. People use pumpkin, yogurt, applesauce, prunes, etc. It's not going to be the same, but some people like the changed version better. You'll only know if you try.

One thing to keep in mind is that when people think that an item is better for them, they'll eat more of it. So instead of two cookies, they'll eat six. In the end, they end up eating more, calorie-wise, than they would have if they thought the item was really bad for them.

I'm w/ Simon here on the Margarine.
It's quite scary stuff if you really think about it.

I would go with the real thing if you can redhead.
But as others have said: yogurt and applesauce are great substitutes.

PS - fun margarine fact:

"in Ontario [CAN] it was not legal to sell butter-colored margarine until 1995."

Awww shucks :) I don't really, but I am obsessed with food, absorb info well, and I am also quick with teh google.

Don't change the recipe, change what you are baking. Fats are important to texture in baked goods, that is why they are called shortening. they shorten the texture making the bread, or other dough more tender, create air space for rising as well as provide flavor. altering the amount of fat can change the bread from a favorite to a lump of hard dough. Switch to breads that don't call for shortening or oil. Make foccacia or other breads which use olive oil, don't butter the bread or roll when you eat it. Substituting any fat may increase the calories, change the flavor or introduce less healthy fats. Removing the fat will make your pie crust dry, or in the case of a fruit filling may make it soggy as the fat prevents the absorption of the water from the filling, if you make a mealy crust for the bottom.

There was some interesting laws about dairy foods in Wisconsin, as well. Seems to me that non-dairy creamers were banned from being served in restaurants, for one thing.

Evil margarine fan here, and I wanna defend my friend.
Margarine isn't the near-plastic product it's been given a reputation as. It's hydrogenated vegetable oil, which means it's been bombarded with hydrogen ions to turn a bendy chain to a straight chain of hydrocarbons (Organic chem fans will know what I'm talking about).
As for the cancer claim, I find that hard to believe. In your stomach pH of 2, nothing survives. Margarine, not unlike anything else you put in there is gonna be Cleaved, baby.

Also: in the debate between margarine and butter, in terms of weight loss, neither is better or worse. same calorie content.

using a sugar substitute, like splenda, would probably make the biggest difference rather than trying to substitute butter most time, anyway...

Butter is not nearly so great a problem as sugar and starches are. As much as I love to bake, I am obliged to admit and warn anyone that baked goods need to be the smallest part of your diet, especially sweet baked goods.

The easiest way to reduce the calories in baked goods is to reduce the amount of sugar in them. Sugar performs two jobs in baking. In many cases, sugar plays an important role in the chemistry of the baking and has important effects on the texture of you baked goods. Try halving the amount of sugar in your recipes and replacing the missing half with Splenda. This will work with some recipes and not others, but it will reduce calories in everything you bake.

Splenda wil NOT work in yeast doughs. The yeast needs the sugar and will not cause the dough to rise if it does not have any sugar to eat.

Moderation is the real answer. I say that, even though I love to bake. For me, it is better to do without than it is to take half-steps with something I know would taste better if I stuck to its original recipe.

There is some good news on this as well. Our odious political leadership has finally made it legal for Americans to buy stevia and stevia extracts to replace the sugar in our diets. Nearly forty-percent of the sweetener used in Japan is derived from stevia. The reports I have read say that stevia is sweeter than sugar and lacks the oddball taste or aftertaste you get from artificial sweeteners. Those products are just now becoming available in grocery stores. I look forward to working with it soon.

Wow, thanks for all the responses! now i want to make a dozen pie crusts with different changes in the butter/other fat content to see which one i like the best. ok, so who is gonna help me eat all those pies?

i guess i didn't think about it, i can keep the butter (or most of it), and just use a substitute for the sugar. when i make bread and muffins, i sub honey for the sugar, but i never thought about making that sub in pastries or cookies. there will probably be some stevia/splenda in my future too!

i know sweet baked goods should be a special indulgence, but they are just so fun to make and so yummy to eat!

I just wrote an article about cooking oil and how vegetable/plant fats (oil) are much healthier than animal fats (butter, shortening..). If possibly, try to substitute an oil (vegetable oil would be fine but make sure it's actually vegetable oil in the ingredients - soybean oil works too). Here is the article about cooking oil.

fat is where it's at! i say go for good quality butter.... ain't nothing like the real thing, baby......

Life is short, butter is good...enjoy life with butter and make changes in other places.

If you think about the calories we Americans consume and where they come from, you are obliged to admit that the bulk of them come from sugars and starches. For a great many Americans, the bulk of their calories are coming from soft drinks, coffee and tea. I hate to think of how many pounds of sugar I have consumed just drinking coffee.

Worse, we cure our meats with sugar, we add sugar to our canned fruits, vegetables and our fruit juices. Half the time you cannot even taste the true flavor of your food because of this foolishness.

Dig up one of the old recipes written during the nineteenth century, and you'll see that we really have cut back hard on the fat, particularly animal fats. Hardly anyone cooks their food with lard anymore and pork has become so lean that it's hard to find enough pork fat to make decent sausage at home. Even our chickens are leaner than they ever were before.

Too many of us eat like blue collar hands while working desk jobs. Portion size is our other big problem. Keep the portion sizes small, but make 'em good and get some exercise.

My only suggestion: don't bake as much. Sorry!
I LOVE baking. I use it to de-stress. However, eating baked goods to de-stress was not a good idea. When I discovered this in college, I switched over to baking bread. Yep.. Senior year of college.. I stopped buying bread.. and just baked my own a few times a month. It was great! My roommate though I was insane. I still made sweets now and then. Thats my only solution. If you want to cut back on butter, don't bake as much.

For quick breads and cakes and muffins, the applesauce or yogurt trick works well. but it still doesn't taste as good as using real butter.

today was bread baking - a splash of olive oil, a squeeze of honey, and no sugar or butter.