Shortening definitely has its place in vegan baking. From pie crusts, shortbreads and puff pastry, it’s a basic building block for texture. This solid fat is so integral to these types of desserts because it alters the way gluten is formed in baked items that utilize wheat-based flours. For more on the food science of shortening, check out my article on how to make vegan shortening.My original recipe for vegan shortening utilized a mixture of coconut oil and vegetable oil such as canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil. The coconut oil is solid at room temperature. When it’s mixed with a certain ratio of fats that are liquid at room temperature, a certain level of softness can be dialed in that makes it suitable to use as shortening. This recipe utilizes deodorized, also known as refined cocoa butter.
I've gotten into the habit of using various Vegan Butters in my baking projects. I like having the peace of mind in knowing I have complete control over what goes into it. These butters were designed to mimic real butter. But lately I’ve been noticing something. The same hard consistency that allows the butter to work well with creaming into cookie batter, cutting into pie crust dough and rolling with croissant dough can also be its downfall.
This firmness inhibits the butter from being enjoyed on a completely different level: being spread onto toasty pieces of hearth breads, smeared on steamy biscuits and dabbed on pancakes fresh off the griddle. In these cases, butters that are optimal for baking tend to sit on the food, desperately depending on the residual heat to allow them to melt so they hopefully spread out as they ooze along. Then while you’re eating, hopefully you’ll eventually get to the part with the melted butter on it. What a treat that’s going to be! It shouldn’t have to be this way.
What I like best about Vegan Butter is how it can be crafted to meet your exact flavor and texture specifications. Since we’re building butter from the ground up, we have the freedom to use building blocks that contribute almost any quality we desire. In that roughly 80% fat and 20% water, we have lots of room to play around. For this version I wanted to showcase the unbelievably smooth, savory flavors of truffle oil for a Vegan Butter that could stand up to traditional dairy-based butter as a bread spread, or even quite possibly outdo it when baked into pastry such as savory pie crusts. But why are we infusing vegan butter with truffle oil? Let’s get some background information on what truffle oil brings to the table.
When I originally developed my first Vegan Butter recipe I had no idea it would be helpful to so many bakers. I just wanted something that was truly homemade where I had full control of the production process so I could introduce variations to tailor the vegan butter to the application I was working on. Other advantages were that it didn't need to rely on palm oil, which much of the commercial vegan butter industry utilizes, which is linked to rainforest destruction, as well as placing Sumatra orangutans in perilous danger.
The original Vegan Butter recipe uses refined coconut oil for a base, but what happens if there begins to be environmental issues with that type of oil? What if it's difficult to find coconut oil in your area? What if you recently had a dump truck empty 3500 pounds of deodorized cocoa butter in your driveway and you're wondering what to do with it? I don't know which one of these issues led to this, but soon after posting the first Vegan Butter recipe, people started inquiring how to make it using cocoa butter instead of coconut oil.
One of the benefits of Vegan Butter is that since you’re building it up from scratch, you can have full control of what you want it to be. It doesn’t have to go down the route of completely replicating traditional butter if you don’t want it to. Why would you want to replicate the texture of butter but not necessarily the flavor? Frostings and short doughs such as tart dough, pie crust and shortbread come to mind. You have much more variability in your end result if you can control flavor through your actual fat in addition to other ingredients. Imagine chocolate croissants where the butter is replaced with a fat that has the texture and flavor characteristics of both chocolate and butter. This is the reason I developed Chocolate Vegan Butter. Oh and you can spread it on toast too.
The more I learn about pastry, the more I realize that European pastry is on a completely different level compared to classic American pastry. My impression is that European pastry is all about introducing flavor depth through manipulating eggs, butter and technique. Croissants, strudel and danish pastries come to mind. American pastry, on the other hand, tends to build off bold flavors with a strong sugar backbone accentuated by spices. Apple pie, cupcakes and cookies come to mind here.
In the quest to become an adept baker, it’s important to draw from as many influences as possible. One trick that many American style bakers use to improve flavor depth is taking a cue from European bakers by using cultured European style butter.
How does American style butter differ from European style butter? Let’s take a look.
Several years ago, one of my favorite restaurants, Millennium, in San Francisco had a particular bread spread they would serve with fresh bread, just as you were seated. This particular spread wasn't buttery, but it had a particular creamy buttery oomph that actually made it taste better than butter when it was slathered on your crusty slice. And since it obviously wasn't butter, you could spread on even more without getting funny looks from your Mom across the table. You could run out of it and confidently ask for more, again and again! Then one day they switched over to a fava bean-based spread that was sadly sub par and the bread spread I loved oh so much mysteriously disappeared from existence. This savory bread spread made a lasting impression on me and I knew that one day I would rise to the challenge and create my own rich version.
This White Chocolate Vegan Butter is enhanced with sweet, white chocolate undertones. Spread this Vegan Butter on chocolate muffins, crusty toast or feature it in a white chocolate tart crust. A white chocolate danish dough with dark chocolate in the center could be particularly interesting.
Vegan Butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 Tablespoon of the cocoa butter with 1 additional Tablespoon canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil.
Three Herbed Vegan Butter is the ultimate Vegan Butter because three fresh herbs are infused into it, resulting in multiple layers of buttery goodness. Feel free to mix up the herbs to add your own special flavor profile. Slather this butter on crusty artisanal breads for an amazing flavor combination. You can also use Three Herbed Vegan Butter to make buttermilk biscuits or a savory pie crust. This is currently my best attempt at making a vegan butter that rivals real butter.
Vegan Butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 Tablespoon of the coconut oil with 1 additional Tablespoon olive oil.
Kimchi adds a layer of spicy tang to vegan butter due to its fermented goodness. You can use mild or spicy kimchi depending on how much spice you'd like to have come through. I recommend medium to spicy kimchi for a complex Vegan Butter that's great on toast or other savory items. You could even make a mushroom Vegan Turnover using this as your butter block!
Vegan Butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 Tablespoon of the coconut oil with 1 additional Tablespoon canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil.
Several years ago I ate at a world famous garlic themed restaurant in San Francisco and discovered to my excitement that caramelized garlic can be delectable spread on bread the same way as butter. I couldn’t believe how the garlic transformed from a spicy, harshness to a smooth, subtle butteriness with just the application of heat. In later years I became more familiar with this magical trait of garlic and decided to pair it with the creaminess of vegan butter here. Enjoy this Garlic Vegan Butter spread on your toast, baked into your hearth breads or use it as a base for something like puff pastry garlic knots. Either way, it’ll be able to stand up to the complexity of traditional butter.
Vegan Butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 Tablespoon of the coconut oil with 1 additional Tablespoon olive oil.
Coconut Vegan Butter is similar to Vegan Butter but involves unrefined coconut oil and agave syrup to accentuate the coconut flavors. The result is a spread that celebrates the richness and smoothness that only coconut can offer. Since this Vegan Butter is slightly more sweet than a regular vegan butter, it's recommended to add another layer of complexity to things like pancakes, toast or a baked item where coconut would enhance flavor. Also use this to make things like coconut pie crust or coconut lime scones.
Vegan Butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 additional Tablespoon of the coconut oil with 1 Tablespoon canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil.
Banana Vegan Butter doesn't utilize curdling so it's great for people looking to avoid soy. It can also be made raw. It has a smooth, subtle buttery banana flavor that's great for using as a butter substitute or for amping up desserts that already showcase banana. Try Banana Vegan Butter on pancakes or make banana croissants. Non-dairy butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 Tablespoon of the coconut oil with 1 additional Tablespoon canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil.
As I progress in my vegan baking adventures I strive for quality ingredients that give me as much control as possible over the flavors and textures I'm trying to convey. I also love breaking foods down to their most basic components and building them back up again, learning and getting unnecessarily excited along the way. For some people it's TV. For me it's this sort of food hacking.
I recently decided that I wanted to create a high quality vegan butter because I began to tire of the store bought yellow goop that I was so steadily relying on. What if I don't want all that diacetyl flavoring, beta carotene coloring, palm oil and who knows what else? My vegan butter experimentation ended up being more successful than I imagined. What if I made my own shortening?
Butter is one of those ingredients that can be so central to baking that as soon as some people hear the term vegan baking they wonder aloud almost in a panic, “what about the butter?!” Many vegan baked items get along great with fats like canola, coconut oil or even olive oil. These types of fats work wonders for cakes, cookies, bars and breads. When designing recipes where we need something to act like butter, things start to get complicated. Solid fats like butter and margarine are integral to things like puff pastry, pie crust, shortbread, croissants, danish dough and certain cakes. This is because in these cases the fat is used to coat the flour so gluten doesn't develop too much and also trap air bubbles to enhance leavening and texture. The only option in these instances is to turn to a margarine or similar vegan butter that is solid at room temperature and gets soft as it melts so it blends to one cohesive mass of dough.
This Creamy Vegan Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting recipe is a great way to get that cream cheese flavor without resorting to lab derived ingredients like xenophobo-lactate. This vegan frosting features cashews and is enhanced with just the right amount of apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, sugar and vanilla extract. The mixture is then given a rest to allow complex flavors to develop more fully. It takes longer to make due to this step but it's worth it.
Shortening definitely has its place in vegan baking. From pie crusts, shortbreads and puff pastry, it’s a basic building block for texture. This solid fat is so integral to these types of desserts because it alters the way gluten is formed in baked items that utilize wheat-based flours. For more on the food science of shortening, check out my article on how to make vegan shortening.My original recipe for vegan shortening utilized a mixture of coconut oil and vegetable oil such as canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil. The coconut oil is solid at room temperature. When it’s mixed with a certain ratio of fats that are liquid at room temperature, a certain level of softness can be dialed in that makes it suitable to use as shortening. This recipe utilizes deodorized, also known as refined cocoa butter. 
