Swapping butter in for margarine in cookies?

Cafe Society
1

So, I decided I should make a tiny bit more effort on the cookie front, and found an old recipe of my mother’s for a sort of three layered bar: layers of oatmeal/flour/sugar/margarine on top and bottom, with a middle layer of apricot jam. Not separate layers you put together after baking like sandwich cookies, you just put the first layer of crumb-stuff in a cake pan, pat it down, spread it with the preserves, sprinkle the rest of the crumbs over the preserves, and pat down gently. Then bake/cool/cut into narrow bars. Dead simple, right?

The thing is, it calls for margarine for the crumb layer, and I don’t think I’ve had margarine in the house for several decades. Can I just swap in equal amounts of butter for margarine, or do I have to make other tweaks? Like add some water, maybe? Because there is no other liquid at all in the recipe, not even any eggs.

2

Anyone who suggests substituting margarine for butter would give a starving dog a rubber bone. Yeccch! :face_vomiting:

My dad, who was never into health food but loved to criticize people, once asked sarcastically why I bought butter instead of margarine, which was supposedly “better” for me. I told him that if he ever bothered to read the label on a box of margarine, he wouldn’t eat it either.

“It ain’t 100% corn oil, Dad. If it were, it would be liquid at room temperature.”

3

You should be able to use butter just fine. No other changes need to be made.

If your mother was like mine, she grew up eating margarine rather than butter. I think it was more common to eat margarine than butter in the '50s and '60s. So the term “margarine” was kind of the default.

Apricot bars like you’re describing used to be one of my favorites as a kid, with raspberry a close second.

4

It’ll taste a little different, of course. But the fact that you only have butter in the house, not margarine, is probably evidence that you prefer the flavor of butter.

5

I seem to remember margarine being cheaper than butter in the '60s. At least, that’s what we always had in the house after we went on welfare.

6

It’s certainly cheaper now, and I think that that’s mostly the only reason why someone would prefer it over butter (yes, I’m sure there are a few who prefer the taste of margarine, but not very many).

7

Oh, good! It seemed logical, but I’ve read articles about how chocolate chip cookies come out differently with margerine vs. butter, so I wasn’t completely sure.

Raspberry, huh? I was thinking I might try with cherry jam, if the apricot ones come out good. I bet any fruit jam/preserver would work okay. Well, maybe not a really sour marmalade.

Absolutely!

8

Margarine used to be a lot cheaper, and it was considered better for you. People who grew up with margarine often tend to prefer the taste that they grew up with.

9

Pillsbury, I think, used to make a packaged mix for those bars when I was a kid. Apricot or raspberry. Cherry sounds great!

10

I doubt you’d notice any difference between butter or margarine in the final product unless you eat the crusts side by side.

11

I’d like to try these sometime. Nine years I’ve been in Toronto, and I still haven’t. :frowning:

12

Nanaimo bars are interesting but paralyzingly sweet. Even when I was a total sugar addict I had a hard time eating a whole one but YMMV.

I would not only use butter over margarine, I’d also use at least 50% whole wheat flour and raw or coconut sugar instead of the white refined stuff and find a reduced sugar or fruit only jam for the middle. Also a little vanilla in the crumb layer. That way you’d have a less sweet, more balanced flavor profile–and I bet using cherry fruit spread in the middle would be amazing. I might have to try that–for myself, I’ll use erythritol brown sugar style and almond flour. I do restricted carbs these days. :wink:

13

@StarvingButStrong Would you post (or PM) the recipe? It sounds like something my grandma used to make (with margarine).

I always use butter in place of margarine. Many of my baking recipes come from old 30’s - 60’s church cookbooks, where finding actual butter in a recipe is a rarity.

14

Those sound killer good, but super rich. Definitely not something to scarf down a half pan of! And I’m not sure what custard powder is, never noticed it in the store. Perhaps you could substitute vanilla pudding mix? Regular or instant?

The recipe calls for brown sugar, not white, but I think brown sugar is literally just white sugar they’ve stirred a little molasses into (for light) or a bit more (for dark brown.) I doubt it’s any ‘healthier’ to a degree that matters at all.

Sure!

Apricot Bars (My mom’s note after the title: Good! Super easy)

For the crumb layers: mix together 1.5 Cups flour (doesn’t say, but Mom rarely used anything but AP white); 1.5 Cup Quick oats;1 Cup brown sugar (again, it doesn’t say, but Mom mostly only used light brown); 1 teaspoon baking powder.

Cut 3/4 Cup margarine into the dry ingredients until it’s all combined and sort of ‘sandy’ in texture.

Line a 9" X 13" cake pan with aluminum foil.

Put 2/3 of the crumb mixture into the pan, spread evenly, and pat down to make a even, firm layer.

Middle layer: 1 Cup (8 oz. jar) of apricot preserves. Dollop it around the top, and spread as even as possible. Try not to disturb the crumb layer too much.

Top layer: Sprinkle the remainder of the crumb mix on top, evenly, and pat down gently to make a flat layer without mixing into the lower layers.

Bake at 350F for 35 minutes. Let cool completely. Lift the cookie out of the pan, peel off the foil completely. Cut into bars. Can be stored for a couple of weeks at room temperature in a tupperware container.

My mom added a note: cut into four sections lengthwise then about 10 slices to each secion.

So – about 40 bars, roughly 1" X 3".

15

There are a number of custard powders on the market. I suspect the one in the recipe is Bird’s, which is a British staple and is widely available in Canada (they have it at Walmart in particular). Or, you can make your own from scratch:

https://www.google.com/search?q=custard+powder&client=firefox-b-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZhfr9qdvtAhViFVkFHQrCCGoQ_AUoAnoECBMQBA&biw=1252&bih=600&dpr=1.09

I wonder if custard made the old fashioned way (with milk and eggs) would work as well?

16

Thank you @StarvingButStrong!

I just use vanilla non-instant pudding in Nanaimo bars, but if you have a World Market near, they carry it.

17

If your mother’s recipe is old, it could have been using margarine that’s much higher in fat than common today. Lots of stick margarine today is only 55% fat; for baking you want 85% or higher. Using butter will make it more like with the old margarine. I’ve noticed the Nestle toll house cookie recipe on the bag no longer says margarine or butter, just butter.

18

Brown sugar vs. white sugar is actually an important distinction in a lot of recipes. Molasses is acidic, and is a significant part of the acid/base profile in many recipes which include baking soda.

But yeah, healthwise, it doesn’t matter. Sugar is sugar, pretty much, and what makes it unhealthy isn’t it being “too refined”; it’s using too much of it.

19

I remember an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown was baking cookies and explained that using butter or margarine made a difference in texture and thickness of the cookies.

If I’m remembering correctly, butter having water as one of the ingredients would melt sooner and the cookies would be thinner than if you’d used margarine.

I admit I might be mis-remembering though. It does affect texture in some baked good I know.

20

Different sugars have different glycemic indexes and absorption rates–these differences can be critical, so no, sugars are not all the same. The more refined a sugar is the faster it’s absorbed and the greater its impact on insulin levels. So yes, the level of refinement does make a difference in which sugar you choose for a recipe.