Subbing oil for butter in bundts

[Felicia M Lazar]

Fat substitution question for you all: pardon the generalising, but I find that a lot of cocoa-base bundts use oil & a lot of non-cocoa ones use butter. I'd like to adapt some of my favourite non-cocoa recipes to use oil, but am coming across some conflicting info: most sources suggest .75 oil, though not all.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Lisa Shock]

Generally, butter is 20% water and 80% fat, so, a substitution generally involves an adjustment to the water or milk weight as well as the fat weight. There are also leavening adjustments if the original recipe using the creaming method for the sugar and butter since that leavens the cake -generally one would increase the baking powder/soda measure, or add it if none is in the original butter formula.

[keychris]

Don't know if you have it on your packaging, but we have on the side the Nutrition Information - my butter says: blah blah blah Fat: Total: 70g / 100g ie. 70%

HTH

[Lisa Shock]

I forgot t mention that many cocoa powders contain fat, so, there is generally an adjustment for that as well.

[Will]

Are you willing to use solid fats, such as (non-hydrogenated) coconut oil shortening or earth balance neutral shortening sticks? If so, I've had good luck just substituting directly, though I do know that butter is 20% water. I think just subbing in liquid oil will work as well, but may not come out exactly how you want without some playing around.

[Felicia M Lazar]

Many thanks for the replies and apologies for the delay in my response.

Yes, I'm familiar with the fat/water ratio, I normally use a lovely 84% locally-made butter. I've never seen the earth balance brand here in Australia, they seem to have rather interesting ideas of solid fats and I'm not too sure I'd want to try any of them; I think the only thing for it is a series of experiments upping the liquid & leavening agents.

Thanks again, everyone.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Felicia M Lazar (log)