Guide to Vegan Substitutions - Butter

This guide is intended to help you convert your own favorite non-vegan recipes to be vegan friendly. This post will be covering butter substitutions.

Butter is generally easy to replace in most recipes, as there are really great vegan butters on the market these days. Please note that when I say vegan butter, I am referring to products such as Miyoko's or Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks, NOT the sort of vegan butter spreads you buy in a tub. Vegan butters already have a higher water content than normal butter, and spreads have an even higher water content than sticks, which is not ideal for baking.

That being said, the sort of butter substitute you'll want to use may depend on what kind of baked good you are making. I'll provide general recommendations below, though each recipe may vary.

ENRICHED LEAVENED DOUGHS

This category is easy - use whatever vegan butter or oil suits your budget and tastes. Miyoko's is always my go-to vegan butter, as it is tangy and delicious. But seriously, you can use margarine, vegan butter, canola oil, whatever you like, in a one-to-one ratio in enriched leavened doughs and they should turn out just fine.

CAKES

Cakes are just a smidge trickier than leavened doughs. If a cake calls for creaming together butter and sugar, you can generally use margarine / vegan butter, though they are softer than butter and therefore should only be left out to bring to room temperature for 10-15 minutes or so. While results will likely still be pretty darn good, your cake may not turn out exactly the same. There are lots of great cake recipes that already call for oil (such as depression-era wacky cake, and most carrot cake recipes), so I would highly recommend giving those a go, or looking up vegan-specific recipes.

COOKIES

When a recipe calls for creaming together butter and sugar to start, you'll definitely want to start with a vegan butter / margarine, as opposed to shortening. As I mentioned with cakes, you should only leave your butter out for 10 minutes or so before using, or it may be too soft. In the same vein, it is generally a good idea to chill your cookie dough for about 30 minutes after mixing and prior to baking to allow the butter to firm up again and prevent spreading while baking. I have tried skipping this step in the past, and ended up with one giant, flat cookie. Not what I was aiming for! For cookies that call for melted butter, you can of course melt your favorite vegan butter, or substitute with a neutral-tasting oil, if that's what you have on hand.

PIE / TART / LAMINATED DOUGHS

This is basically the one type of baked good where I do not recommend Miyoko's above all others, as it has a very low melting point, and when dealing with pastry, you generally want your ingredients to stay firm and cold for as long as possible. When your fat melts into pie crust or laminated pastry, it becomes a single unit, and you loose the delicious layers / flakes that you're aiming for.

As far as I can tell, coconut oil has the highest melting point of easily available vegan fats (use refined coconut oil to avoid any lingering coconut taste), and therefore it is a good choice when making pie dough and puff pastry. Shortening has the next highest melting point, and is therefore also useful in this category. Please bear in mind when making laminated doughs that may find you need to refrigerate (or even freeze) your dough more often than a recipe recommends to keep things firm.

My preferred pie crust (as shown in my Decadent Chocolate Tart recipe) includes both coconut oil and Earth Balance Buttery Sticks to get a rich and flaky dough. When using vegan butters in this context, it's a good idea to freeze them after cubing but before including in the recipe. Because coconut oil gets so firm, you need only chill it in the fridge before using.

And I think that's everything! Did I forget anything? Please let me know if you have questions, or if you have a specific recipe that you are wondering about.