Butter substitute in baking: 9 swaps with ratios, fat and water

Use 3/4 cup of canola or light olive oil for each cup of butter in cakes and muffins. Where the recipe creams the fat, a job the canola chart may not handle, use shortening or Earth Balance’s vegan sticks cup for cup. Replace half the butter with applesauce, and hold other purées to the same half.

In a study at North Carolina A&T, 35 tasters, food science students and staff, scored chocolate chip cookies baked three ways. The batch with half its butter replaced by applesauce scored not significantly differently from the all-butter control. Asked which was most preferred and most worth buying, 16 of the 35 picked it, against 12 for the control. The all-applesauce batch scored significantly lower and got 7 votes. Thirty-five tasters and one cookie are not a rule for every bake. Half is still the line Illinois Extension draws for applesauce, and most swaps need a ratio because butter is about a sixth water.

If you would rather skip the arithmetic, Earth Balance’s sticks are cup for cup by the maker’s own instruction, and our roundup of vegan butter for baking compares seven of them. Everything else needs a ratio. By USDA’s figures a cup of butter holds about 184 g of fat and 37 g of water (our arithmetic). A cup of canola oil is about 218 g of fat and no water, some 18% more fat than the butter it replaces (both our arithmetic). That fits the 3/4 cup of oil that the canola growers and Filippo Berio both chart for a cup of butter. Purées miss the other way. The California Avocado Commission tells bakers to replace 1 cup of butter with 1 cup of puréed avocado, and that cup holds about 34 g of fat and 168 g of water (our arithmetic). That swap removes more than four fifths of the fat and adds over half a cup of water the recipe never asked for.

Fat and water in each swap, per cup of butter

The swap column is the ratio each source gives. The fat and water columns are our arithmetic from USDA’s generic foods (Earth Balance’s from its own label), not from the other brands below, so read them as a guide to direction rather than a lab result.

Substitute	Swap for 1 cup of butter	Fat in the swap	Water in the swap	Ratio from
Butter, unsalted (reference)	1 cup	184 g	37 g	Reference
Canola oil	3/4 cup	164 g	0 g	U.S. Canola Association
Olive oil	3/4 cup	162 g	0 g	Filippo Berio
Coconut oil plus water	3/4 cup oil and 1/4 cup water	162 g	About 59 g	Nutiva, buttery jar
Coconut oil alone	1 cup	216 g	0 g	Nutiva, refined jar
Vegetable shortening	1 cup	205 g	0 g	Nestlé, on the Libby’s FAQ
Vegan butter sticks	2 sticks	About 178 g	Not on the label	Earth Balance
Applesauce, half swap	1/2 cup applesauce and 1/2 cup of your fat	Half your fat’s	108 g from the applesauce	Illinois Extension
Puréed avocado	1 cup	34 g	168 g	California Avocado Commission
Canned pumpkin	1 cup, at tablespoon for tablespoon	Under 1 g	221 g	Libby’s

The two oil charts land 20 to 22 g of fat short of butter and supply no water. Nutiva’s buttery jar is the only instruction in the table that adds plain water, about 22 g more than butter held. The two whole-cup purées sit at the far end with less than a fifth of butter’s fat (all our arithmetic). By USDA’s figures both are mostly water, and that is the trouble with the cup-for-cup advice.

The oil charts come with limits of their own. The U.S. Canola Association says its conversion works well for cakes, loaves and muffins, and CanolaInfo, which supplies the chart, warns it may not work in recipes that rely on creaming solid fat for aeration or leavening. A cookie that starts with “cream the butter and sugar” needs one of the solid fats.

The seven, product by product

Crisco Pure Canola Oil

For cakes and loaves this is our pick. One ingredient, canola oil, with 14 g of fat in a 14 g tablespoon, 1 g of it saturated, and a kosher pareve mark. It comes in bottles from 16 fl oz up to a gallon. Crisco’s page lists baking among its uses but gives no swap ratio, so the ratio comes from the growers: 3/4 cup of oil for a cup of solid fat, and 2 tsp for a tablespoon. The tablespoon row is the one to remember when a recipe wants a few tablespoons of melted butter. Don’t use it for pie crust or a creamed cookie; the chart was not written for either.

Filippo Berio Extra Light Tasting Olive Oil

Filippo Berio’s chart agrees with the canola chart at the cup, 3/4 cup of olive oil for a cup of butter or margarine, but its tablespoon row is 2 1/4 tsp, not 2. The chart is a picture on its site, not text, so it won’t come up in a page search. Its baking article sends recipes that call for melted butter to this bottle, without a ratio, and the product page lists baking first among its uses and describes the flavor as subtle with a faint hint of olive. The page this one replaces warned that olive oil has a low ignition point. Filippo Berio gives this bottle a smoke point of 410°F to 446°F. The ingredient list is only in a picture of the panel, so read the bottle.

Nutiva Organic Coconut Oil Buttery Flavor

This jar comes with its own water. Nutiva says to use 3/4 of the recipe’s butter amount in this oil and make up the remaining 1/4 with water. For a cup of butter that is about 162 g of fat and 59 g of water against butter’s 184 g and 37 g (our arithmetic), the nearest match among the rows with both figures. The list is organic refined expeller-pressed coconut oil, organic natural flavors and annatto for color, the page carries a vegan badge, and Nutiva says the butter flavor comes from fermented plants including sunflower, coconut and mint.

The catch is buying it. On 30 October Nutiva’s own store listed the 14 oz jar at $9.49 and the 29 oz PET container at $16.99, and marked both unavailable, so check other retailers. We would save it for bakes where you would taste butter. A chocolate loaf does not need the flavor.

Nutiva Organic Refined Coconut Oil

Same company, same refined oil without the flavor, and a different instruction: this page calls it a one-to-one swap for butter or vegetable oil. One-to-one puts about 216 g of fat and no water where 184 g of fat and 37 g of water used to be, the most fat of anything in the table (our arithmetic). One ingredient, organic refined expeller-pressed coconut oil, with the same 400°F smoke point as the buttery jar. Every size showed as unavailable on Nutiva’s store on 30 October. If you buy it, use the buttery jar’s rule anyway: 3/4 of the butter amount, then water.

Spectrum Organic All Vegetable Shortening

This is the tub for pie crust. One ingredient, organic palm oil, Fair Trade Certified and never hydrogenated, in a 24 oz tub, and the page ends by inviting you to imagine what it does for a pie crust. Spectrum gives no ratio. Nestlé does, in the baking FAQ on the Libby’s site: in baked goods, stick butter, margarine and vegetable shortening are interchangeable cup for cup, though shortening should not stand in for butter in fudge or candy. A cup of shortening carries about 205 g of fat and no water (our arithmetic from USDA’s household shortening). Spectrum sells the taste as neutral, which is fine under a filling and the wrong choice for a butter cookie, where butter flavor is the point.

Palm oil is the other question here. Some vegans keep it out of their kitchens on sourcing grounds; others count it as one more plant fat. Our line is that it is vegan, and the Fair Trade certification is what Spectrum offers on sourcing.

Don’t swap in Crisco’s butter-flavored shortening, sold in cans on the same shelf. Its list includes mono and diglycerides and “Natural and Artificial Flavor”, with no source given for either, and our guide to monoglycerides explains why the source is the whole question.

Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks

The swap with nothing to work out. Conagra’s label page says each stick substitutes for half a cup of butter and calls the sticks great for baking. A tablespoon is 11 g of fat in 14 g, 3.5 g of it saturated, so two sticks carry about 178 g of fat to butter’s 184 g (our arithmetic). The label gives no water figure. They contain soy; the roundup linked above has the soy-free version and five other sticks and tubs.

Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin

Libby’s swaps its pumpkin for butter tablespoon for tablespoon, and the can holds one ingredient, with no salt or sugar added. A 15 oz can is about 1 3/4 cups. Taken at that ratio for a full cup of butter, USDA’s canned pumpkin brings under 1 g of fat and about 221 g of water, six times butter’s water (our arithmetic). Don’t buy it to replace all the butter in anything. Use it for part of the fat in a spiced loaf, on the half rule below.

Purées: half the butter, and stop there

Illinois Extension’s rule for applesauce is to replace half the fat: for a cup of butter or oil, half a cup of the fat and half a cup of applesauce. In a vegan kitchen the fat half is one of the oils or sticks above, and the cookie study at the top of this page is the one test we found of where that line sits.

Read the avocado commission’s cup-for-cup advice the same way. Half a cup of avocado with half a cup of oil or a stick keeps far more of butter’s fat than the full cup of avocado does, with half the avocado’s water (our arithmetic).

For a cake, measure 3/4 cup of canola for each cup of butter; for a crust, use the Spectrum tub at Nestlé’s cup-for-cup rule for shortening. Before you buy anything that tastes of butter without being butter, run its ingredient list through our guide to checking ingredients for vegan status.