Swapping butter in for margarine in cookies?

Cafe Society
21

Using butter instead of margarine will affect the shelf-life of the cookies. They’ll get stale a little faster with butter, but with margarine, will remain soft and chewy a bit longer. It won’t make a whole lot of difference, though. They might be good for three days on the counter with margarine, and two with butter. It’s the trade-off for the richer butter taste.

If you want them to last a week, then no matter what you bake them with, keep them in an airtight container in the fridge, and when you want to serve some, take them out about 20 minutes before you want them, and set them on the counter.

If you don’t care if they’re gone by the end of the day, then it makes no difference whatsoever.

But yeah, you swap butter/margarine 1 for 1.

For people who WANT to bake with margarine, a couple of things to look out for: buy one that says “Good for baking” on the label; otherwise, it’ll have to much water to bake well, and read the ingredients: some of them have milkfat as an ingredient, and there’s one on the market that has lard as an ingredient. If you need margarine because your vegan friend is coming over, you want to make sure you get a pure veggie oil margarine.

22

I’ve had good results subbing in coconut oil too, just have to make sure the recipe is one that won’t be adversely affected by a bit of coconut flavor.

23

Yeah, I think it was the combination of cheaper and being perceived as healthier that was the driving factor. I remember margarine being the consumer favorite in years past- there was a lot of TV advertising (remember “Parkay” commercials?) and a whole lot of formats- sticks, tubs, liquid, etc… while butter was only in sticks and only usually house-brand and Land O’ Lakes.

That seems to have changed in the last decade or so- there are multiple national brands of butter (Land O’ Lakes, Challenge, Cabot, and Tillamook come to mind), and several boutique brands that are both domestic and imported- Plugra, Lurpak, Kerrygold, Horizon Organic, Celles Sur Belle, President, etc…)

I think the only real brands of margarine that I’m aware of are Imperial, Parkay, Country Crock and Smart Balance, and at least at my local stores, you can’t get all of them in every format.

(funny story… my uncle was the only one in our extended family who insisted on butter and wouldn’t eat margarine. Everyone else thought he was crazy, as margarine was “healthier”. Guess who’s still chugging along in fine health at like 84, while a couple of the others are dead, and the rest are not in the best of health?)

24

My mother would never put margarine on the dinner table for bread, but she did cook with it, so we usually had both in the house.

My mother, who had a theory on everything, mostly invented, thought that because butter had a stronger flavor, people used less of it, so got fewer calories overall. Other people would tell her it didn’t matter, because the margarine calories were “healthier” calories.

Of course, it came out decades later that margarine isn’t especially good for you, and really not better than butter. And lo, but didn’t I read an article about 10 years ago that a study showed that people actually do use less butter than margarine.

Someone studied four groups served the same dinner (I forget what it was), but each person had their own bowl of individually packaged butter or margarine squares. Two groups had fairly labeled squares: one had butter labeled “butter,” and one had margarine labeled “margarine” labeled margarine. The other two had deliberately mislabeled squares, butter labeled “margarine,” and margarine labeled “butter.”

The groups had the same number of people, who were matched for gender, age, reported home use of butter or margarine, and BMI. The squares were counted up afterwards, and on average, the butter-labeled-butter group used far less. The margarine-labeled-margarine used the most. I don’t remember which of the other two was used more, but I think the two mislabeled ones were pretty close, and between the fair-labeled other ones.

I suppose there are lots of conclusions you could draw, but the interviews of people afterwards suggested that the reason for less butter use was partly a belief that butter isn’t good for you, but mostly just a factor of needing less butter to hit a taste threshold.

25

When I was a kid in the late 1950’s - early '60’s, the big ones were Mazola and Fleischman’s. Any others were deemed subpar by my mother.

26

Whaddaya mean, margarine isn’t better for you? It has all of that unhealthy saturated fat replaced by healthy, modern trans fat! Better living through chemistry!

27

The first time I ordered breakfast at a Canadian McDonald’s, I specifically asked for butter. The millennial behind the counter gave me two patties labeled “Margarine.” When I took them back and said I wanted butter, he gave me a funny look and said “That is butter.”

Uh, no it ain’t. It doesn’t even say “Butter.” You can read, can’t you? Or do you just not know the difference between the two?

28

If I were going to eat margarine, I’d want Promise. If it’s good enough for Captain Kirk, it’s good enough for me! :slight_smile:

29

Interesting! But my usual practice with cookies that are staying in the house (vs. ones destined to be given away) is to wrap all but maybe a dozen right away, usually in bundles of about six, and freeze them. Then we can greet the re-emergence of that third or fourth packet some weeks later with fresh pleasure instead 'oh. more of those.

Well, hopefully the first dozen will last a few days – there’s only the two of us, and neither of needs a zillion extra calories. Even if you do need more fuel on cold days. :stuck_out_tongue:

Since I know you are all dying to know: I baked the cookies today, using butter, and they are indeed delicious! I had some trouble getting the apricot jam spread evenly and ended ‘peeling up’ some of the bottom crumb layer as I struggled to get it adequately spread. Next time I think I will A) maybe try blending the jam a bit first. The bigger lumps of fruit were especially tricky and B) possibly zap the jam for a couple of minutes. I bet warmer, less ‘set’ jam would be way easier to work with. Might have to reduce the baking time a little bit to offset the starting heat.

30

Make sure there’s no metal in the label!

31

Well, I tried a keto friendly version of this–I used almond flour and bumped it from 1.5 cups up to about 2 because almond flour is moist on its own so a bit more flour helps get the consistency right. I used real butter, the Truvia brown sugar version, added some cinnamon and vanilla to the base and used a sugar free jam. They came out really good. Next time I’m gonna add in some pecans to the mix, give it a bit more crunch and depth of flavor. And yes, decanting the jam into a glass bowl and giving it 30 seconds in the microwave made it infinitely easier to spread around.

32

Good to have the feedback, and I’m glad you got a good result.

That’s the great thing about family/friend curated recipes, isn’t it? All the notes, the helpful hints. (Too dry, up the butter next time. or Drop the baking time by maybe four minutes.) Even a ‘new’ recipe doesn’t have that uncertainty feeling.

33

Well, I consider recipes mostly to just be a jumping off spot and seldom follow them properly so this is pretty typical for me. I do love old handed down recipes though–old church cookbooks especially. Usually a few hidden gems and some Lillek’s level horrendousness contained within, and always that same recipe for scripture cake heh heh.

34

This is fine for most things but you can get into trouble doing it when baking. All sorts of unintended things can happen from even minor tweaks. Just watch “The Great British Baking Show” to see repeated examples of this happening. Baking is both an art and a science and while you can certainly tweak baking recipes it usually takes a really good grasp of the recipe and the science to get good results.

As to the OP, unless there was some explicit reason why margarine needed to be used, I would definitely skip it for butter. Like you I don’t think I have had margarine in the house for 40 years. Nasty stuff.

35

That’s why you read five to ten recipes for specific baked goods to see what they all have in common and what the range of ingredient ratios is and how tolerant the recipe is of fuckery. I think it makes much more sense to learn the overarching principles of what makes a recipe work than simply following a specific recipe to the letter. As for GBBO, if you notice the most common mishaps are over or underbaking, which is a side effect of a timed challenge, and the next most common are deficiencies of flavor–much of which is a matter of personal preference in a home baking environment.