As promised, here are my 2 cents on diary free butter…
I cannot tell you how many people are truly astounded when they hear that we don’t eat butter in our house. But to be clear, that does NOT mean I do not bake or cook buttery sauces – because I certainly do! When I first started down this path because Joe cannot have dairy, I found Smart Balance – and I used it for everything – cooking, baking, you name it, and it worked pretty well just as a direct 1:1 substitute for butter in most cases. But then, as I began to explore more in the world of baking- cakes, brownies, icing, pastries… I began to realize the specific role that butter plays, and went down a very deep rabbit hole around margarine versus “Spreads”.
buttery spreads vs. margarine
It turns out that anything that calls itself margarine, is held to a specific fat content standard by the USDA that is exactly the same as butter- both must have at least 80% fat content. “The FDA has established a standard of identity for a product to be called “margarine.” Margarine must contain not less than 80 percent edible fat”.
This is the huge difference between true margarine and buttery spreads; the later of which often have 70% or less fat content and can get away with it because they are called spreads rather than margarine (Smart balance has 64%). What this means that the buttery spreads have much more water content than traditional butter or margarine, and therefor are less solid and/or stable and provide less support when it comes to leavening, holding form or shape.
In short if you want puffy cookies aim stick to true margarine or butter; if you are okay with a little, softer, chewier and can deal with flatter cookies, smart balance will work just fine.
beware, not all margarine or buttery spreads are created equal (or dairy free)!
You will find me checking and double checking the ingredient label when I buy my “butter” at the store – this is because (1) it’s really unclear from the names whether these product have any dairy in them and (2) suppliers change their ingredients, sometimes without notice, and suddenly a previously dairy free item has whey in it!
It also turns out that many margarine have SOME form of dairy in it – and that is why I was just making do with Smart Balance. And then I discovered Fleischmann’s Margarine – perhaps one of the oldest brands ever, but I had not realized it was dairy free. It turns out that I had a good reason for this: only the unsalted version of Fleischmann’s Margarine is dairy free, the salted version has dairy – go figure.
To add to the confusion, I have recently only been able to find the Fleischmann’s unsalted sticks which are spreads (65% fat), not margarine – the good news is that it appears that the formulation is still conducive to acting a lot like margarine and I have successfully used it for very finicky recipes such as swiss meringue burttercream which does not work with Smart Balance. I think this is because it has soy and palm oil, where as Smart Balance is mostly canola and olive oil.
Well, that’s the end of my dairy free butter rant- some notes on the 3 mentioned products below.
Works for: cooking, baking cakes and brownies
Careful with: cookies – you will get flatter and softer cookies, cookie dough likely to be more sticky
Do not use for: buttercream icing or the like where you need the fat to hold structure, will become soupy!
Fleischmann’s Margarine
This is the ideal all around winner for baking- if you find any let me know!
Works for: just about anything; (I discovered this while making buttercream icing so really recommend for that!)
Careful with: cookies; i have actually grown accustomed to the cookie variants that Smart Balance creates, so its a matter of preference
Fleischmann’s Spread Sticks
This is the runner up, while it’s a spread, the formulation allows for similar use to the margarine – I think this is because it has soy and palm oil, where as Smart Balance is mostly canola and olive oil
But be careful: make sure you buy the sticks, the tubs have an even higher water content to make them more spreadable!
Peanut Butter Cookies (with coconut flour) ~ Colorful Cooking with Aparna
[…] In another bowl: Beat together 1 egg with 1 tbsp cooled melted butter; Mix in 1 tbsp honey and 1 tsp vanilla, add 3 tbps granulated white sugar and 3 tbps brown sugar and beat until creamyDo not leave out the honey in this recipe- and if you scale up the recipe, maintain the proportion of baking soda to honey.Highly recommend fleishmans margarine or other stick butter vs smart balance or spread- they will work but you will have flatter less puffy cookies. See post on dairy free butter for more details here. […]