Butter vs marge?

Windigo said:
Would you think it is closer to real butter than marge? Something I can consider making in my professional life for vegans I encounter?
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If made with refined coconut oil (solid at room temp) then it is preferred by us to marg. I will and do choose to have toast and jam without if I can't have vegan butter even if vegan marg is on offer because I don't like marg (its not the crap we grew up with, it has improved since then, but I still don't actually like it.) But I prefer the cultured version which is made with soya yoghurt (in my case I make it at home from organic soya milk or homemade soya milk) rather than the straight forward version made from soya milk - but it is something that keeps for years in the freezer, just freeze it in a suitable sized ice-cube tray and then pop out. With the 'food dye' added, it could easily be made to look like the same thing and with refined coconut oil tasting much less coconut, it is worth having around. My Indian Potato Pie was brushed between the sheets of phyllo and over the top of it to get the lovely golden colour, so there are plenty of uses for it, not to mention the easy replacement in baking. I am going to try my own puff pastry in the near future with a view to making some pain au chocolat or croissant. I can't get vegan ones over here.

PS - I've been making mine with unrefined coconut oil which is very cheap here (even the organic virgin stuff I use) because I no longer really taste coconut with it being in so many things over here. Hubby can taste it though. I've just been lazy in tracking down refined coconut oil. I can get liquid coconut oil (not refined and useless for butter) but sold in the supermarket, but I've not tracked down refined solid coconut oil!
 
caseydog said:
I am so grateful that I don't have any issues with dairy products. I have difficulty imagining my life without milk, butter and cheese.

CD
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my choice was easy - cheese and milk (I grew up drinking milk and nothing else. Everyone else would go to the shops and come out with a can of pop, I would come out with a pint of milk (in the old milk bottles). I loved raw milk and really missed that when it was banned from sale. So I lived off 2 or 3 pints of full cream milk a day, every day for pretty much all of my childhood and university years.

But I got ill not long after finishing university. Re-occurrent chest infections, week after week for nearly 2 months. I knew by then with my asthma and breathing issues that when I got ill, I had to come off all dairy to help it clear up (dairy causes the body to product thick mucus, not something you want for chest infections!) and when I finally got the all clear from the doctor, I went home and picked up a glass of milk... 999 call, blue light job to A&E and ended up being resuscitated. Back to the dr's when released and explained what had happened and basically it was goat's milk from then on. No cow's anything at all.... and when I got really ill roughly 10 years ago (lost 19kg in weight that no-one could explain), I found I was unable to tolerate even the tiniest bit of dairy of any kind. In fact it took a long time for me to be able to eat much at all, but dairy started producing anaphylactic shock to the point where I have had an allergic reaction to an anti-histamine tablet (I was actually an inpatient in hospital at the time!). The tend to use generic drugs in hospitals and the generic drugs often are made using cheaper tablet fillers that haven't been cleaned as thoroughly as the branded ones. And the tablet filler that causes me so much grief is the most common... it is lactose monohydrate and it is not the lactose that is the issue, but the contaminants in the lactose monohydrate itself - its often made from the waste products of the dairy industry and the milk proteins that are in the tablet filler itself are what triggers my allergic reaction!

So the choice is no dairy or no life. It's easy really.
 
Butter, though I do use margarine for a couple of holiday treats simply because the recipes were developed using margarine and they don't come out right if you use butter.
 
medtran49 said:
Butter, though I do use margarine for a couple of holiday treats simply because the recipes were developed using margarine and they don't come out right if you use butter.
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Experiment with Butter Flavored Crisco shortening. I use it for cookies recipes that call for margarine (mom's recipes), and they turn out better. They "plump up" more, and have a light crispiness. They also seem to get completely done with no burning on the bottom.

CD
 
caseydog said:
Experiment with Butter Flavored Crisco shortening. I use it for cookies recipes that call for margarine (mom's recipes), and they turn out better. They "plump up" more, and have a light crispiness. They also seem to get completely done with no burning on the bottom.

CD
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Nope, because 1 is a candy sort of treat and I'm absolutely positive without a single iota of doubt that using Crisco would be horrible, especially since it's not cooked and there are only 3 ingredients for the main part with chocolate for dipping and a pecan half for the base. For some reason, butter made them too soft, even though margarine softens like butter does.

The other maybe, but I'm not sure I'd want to risk another failure using all those expensive pecans. What kind of cookies are you talking about? The base of this particular 1 is very similar to a rich butter cookie, except using margarine. These are my mother's recipes as well.
 
medtran49 said:
Nope, because 1 is a candy sort of treat and I'm absolutely positive without a single iota of doubt that using Crisco would be horrible, especially since it's not cooked and there are only 3 ingredients for the main part with chocolate for dipping and a pecan half for the base. For some reason, butter made them too soft, even though margarine softens like butter does.

The other maybe, but I'm not sure I'd want to risk another failure using all those expensive pecans. What kind of cookies are you talking about? The base of this particular 1 is very similar to a rich butter cookie, except using margarine. These are my mother's recipes as well.
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I use it to make my mom's chocolate chip cookies, and I don't have an iota of doubt that they are better than the ones my mom makes with margarine. The family agrees -- which does not earn me any points with my mom.

I don't make sweets... or even eat them regularly. I just made a suggestion. Sorry.

CD
 
caseydog said:
I use it to make my mom's chocolate chip cookies, and I don't have an iota of doubt that they are better than the ones my mom makes with margarine. The family agrees -- which does not earn me any points with my mom.

I don't make sweets... or even eat them regularly. I just made a suggestion. Sorry.

CD
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I use Trex sometimes - which is a white solid vegetable fat similar to Crisco. Its good in shortcrust pastry because it makes a good texture - I sometimes use half butter, half Trex. I don't think I've tried using it in cookies (biscuits in the UK). I don't make sweet things very often though...
 
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