Baking Without Butter: 7 Substitutes, by Dough Type

Hello lovelies,

My first vegan shortcrust was a disaster. I had swapped the butter for oil, on the logic that oil is also fat, and what came out would not roll, fell apart in the oven, and ended up closer to wet breadcrumbs than to pastry.

At the time I assumed I had underworked it, or added too much water. What I know now is that there was nothing to rescue. Oil cannot work in a shortcrust, no matter how carefully you handle it, and the reason has nothing to do with technique.

It is worth understanding that reason once. After that you do not need a list telling you which fat goes in which recipe. You can read it off the dough.

What does butter actually do in a dough?

Butter does 2 things in a dough: it stops the flour forming gluten, and it carries air into the mix. Both depend on it being solid.

The first is the more important, and in English it has its own name. Fat in a dough is called shortening, and that is exactly what it does: it coats the flour particles, stops them absorbing water, and prevents long gluten strands from forming. Without fat the dough turns tough and elastic. With it, the dough goes short, tender and crumbly. A study in the Journal of Food Science and Technology describes exactly this race: the fat and the water compete for the surface of the flour particles during mixing, and if the fat gets there first, the gluten network is interrupted.

That also explains the quantities. In traditional baked goods, solid fat makes up somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of the mixture. This is not an ingredient you swap out casually. It is a large part of the dough.

The second job appears when you cream butter with sugar. That works tiny air bubbles into the fat, and those give you something soft and springy rather than something crumbly. Rub the same fat into flour with your fingertips instead and it stays in flakes, and the result bakes up flaky. What that looks like when it goes right is our vegan apple cake with crumbles, whose whole topping is nothing but fat rubbed into flour.

Two techniques, two completely different outcomes, and both assume the fat is solid enough to be handled that way.

It is the same logic as the egg, which also does several jobs at once and therefore cannot be covered by one substitute. How that works is in my guide to replacing eggs in baking.

Which fat suits which dough?

Sort by dough, not by ingredient. Then the decision takes seconds.

And if the recipe never says which kind of dough it is? The method line tells you. If it says "cold butter", "butter in flakes" or "rub in with your fingertips", you need solid fat. If it says "melted butter", "liquid butter" or "mix everything together", oil is fine. And if it says "cream the butter with the sugar", the fat was there for lift, and that needs thinking about separately.

If you remember one line, make it this one: anything that should turn short or flaky needs solid fat. Anything that should turn moist and soft is fine with oil. The rest is detail.

Why doesn't oil work in shortcrust?

Because oil stays liquid at every temperature, so it never forms the flakes a shortcrust gets its structure from.

A shortcrust works because solid fat sits in pieces among the flour. Each piece keeps water away from the flour right where it sits. In the oven those pieces melt, and where they were, tiny pockets are left behind. Those pockets are what you register later as short.

Oil cannot do this. It has no pieces; it flows everywhere and wets the flour evenly. The dough does not turn short, it turns dense and leathery, and it tears when you roll it because the structure that would hold it together was never there.

This is why every good shortcrust recipe insists the fat be cold. It is not about freshness. Melted fat behaves exactly like oil, and the moment it melts the advantage is gone, before the dough ever reaches the oven.

The same principle carries the Swiss Wähe base, the thin pastry that sits under every fruit tart here. How thin it rolls and why it still holds is in our vegan Swiss apple tart.

In practice: if your recipe says shortcrust, streusel or cookies, use cold full-fat margarine or vegan butter, cube it, and work it in quickly with your fingertips. What a dough like that looks like when it goes right is in our base dough for vegan cookies, which makes 3 kinds from one batch.

And if the dough still crumbles too much to come together: add 1 tablespoon of ice-cold water, press it together briefly, and do not knead. Kneading develops exactly the gluten the fat was there to prevent, and turns short into tough.

Cookies with dates

Vegan Chestnut Cake

The perfect vegan cheesecake – with silken tofu

Apricot Crumble with 5 Ingredients

How do you convert butter to oil?

Not 1:1. Use roughly 80 g (6 tbsp) of oil for 100 g (7 tbsp) of butter, so about 0.8 times the weight.

The reason is simple and almost never explained: butter is not pure fat. A meaningful share of it is water and milk solids. Oil is 100 percent fat. Swap gram for gram and you tip considerably more fat into the dough than the recipe intended, and the result comes out heavy and greasy.

So you do not have to run the math every time, here are the common cases side by side:

Here is how to do it:

1. Multiply the butter weight by 0.8. 100 g (7 tbsp) becomes 80 g (6 tbsp) of oil; 250 g (1 cup plus 2 tbsp) becomes 200 g (scant 1 cup).
2. Add back the missing liquid if the dough looks stiff. 1 to 2 tablespoons of plant milk per 100 g (7 tbsp) of swapped butter covers the water that came in with the butter.
3. Use a neutral oil. Canola and sunflower do not come through in the flavor. Olive oil very much does, and flaxseed oil does not belong in an oven at all.

It works in reverse too: if a recipe calls for 100 ml (scant 1/2 cup) of oil and you want margarine, you need a little more of it, around 125 g (9 tbsp).

And one thing the math does not fix. If the recipe tells you to cream butter with sugar, the fat was there for lift. Oil cannot hold air. In that case add 1 teaspoon of baking powder as well, or the cake stays flat.

What should you watch for with margarine?

2 things: that it is a full-fat version, and that it is sold as suitable for baking.

The first is where most doughs fail. Reduced-fat spreads contain considerably less fat and a great deal more water. On toast that is a matter of taste. In a dough it is a design fault: the extra water lands exactly where the fat was supposed to keep it out, and shortcrust turns tough instead of short.

The second is about heat. Not every margarine is made for baking. The package will tell you, and if it says nothing, the odds are it was meant as a spread.

And since the question always follows margarine around: the old worry about hydrogenated fats is now regulated. An EU regulation sets an upper limit of 2 grams of industrially produced trans fatty acids per 100 grams of fat in food. That is all I will say about it, because whether butter or margarine is the better choice is a debate I am not having here.

One last practical note: not every plant margarine is vegan. Some products contain small amounts of milk solids. Checking the ingredient list takes 5 seconds.

What works besides oil and margarine?

Several things, each with a limit worth knowing in advance.

Coconut oil is the only plant fat that turns solid on its own at room temperature, which makes it the one real candidate for shortcrust without margarine. The price is flavor: it suits chocolate and anything wintry with spice, and it does not suit a delicate vanilla bake.

Nut butter replaces butter halfway. 100 g (7 tbsp) of butter becomes about 50 g (3 tbsp) of cashew or almond butter plus 35 g (2 1/2 tbsp) of oil. It brings binding and a full flavor, but it makes the bake denser. What else nut butter can do is in my guide to plant-based cream substitutes.

Vegan butter is technically a margarine too, but one built deliberately for cooking. It usually carries a higher fat content than a tub spread, it often comes in block form rather than a tub, and some products are cultured so the flavor sits closer to dairy butter. Those 3 properties are exactly why it works in shortcrust and buttercream where a soft spread fails. It costs noticeably more, and for a plain cake batter it is not worth it. For cookies it is.

Applesauce replaces at most half the butter, and only in cake batter. It brings moisture rather than fat, so the bake turns moist but never short. Use unsweetened, and which apple varieties cook down well is in my guide to the best apples for baking.

Plant yogurt works surprisingly well in muffins but loosens the batter. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of starch or semolina per 100 g (7 tbsp) of swapped butter to give it body again.

What is true of all four: they are partial solutions, not universal ones. Replace 100 percent of the butter with applesauce and you do not get a cake, you get something damp and rubbery.

Pumpkin baguette

Apple pancakes

Apple muesli buns

vegan cookies - 1 dough and 3 kinds

When should you just use butter?

Whenever the fat itself is the flavor, and in any dough that works in layers.

Puff pastry is the most honest case. It depends on a block of fat rolling out into thin, unbroken layers. Few fats can do that, and tub margarine is not one of them. If you cannot find a vegan block margarine, store-bought vegan puff pastry is a better answer than an experiment.

Buttercream is the second. It is almost entirely fat and sugar, and consistency decides everything. Soft margarine gives you a frosting that collapses at room temperature. There is no way around a firm vegan butter in block form.

And then there is the case people rarely say out loud: sometimes butter is in the recipe because the bake is supposed to taste of butter. A pound cake or a butter cookie is exactly that, and swapping the fat there changes not the technique but the idea. That is not an argument against swapping. It is an argument for starting from a recipe that was written without butter in the first place.

What remains true even when the swap goes well: butter-free bakes brown differently and taste less rounded. In our kitchen that counts as a characteristic rather than a flaw.

Lovelies, what I like about this one is that it collapses down to a single question: does the fat in this dough have to stay solid? Answer that and you need no table and no special product. You look at the recipe and you know. And if you want something more structured for the baking season ahead, have a look at our e-books in the shop.

Tell me in the comments: which fat lives in your fridge for baking?

Yours, Verena

Recipes to try

Vegan apple cake with crumbles

Vegan Swiss Apple Quiche / Pie

Cookies with dates

The perfect vegan cheesecake – with silken tofu