can I substitute low-fat stick margarine for shortening when baking a cake?

Answer 1

yes, you can. if you want the cake to be even more low-fat and delicious, use sour cream instead of margarine.

Answer 2

Margarine can be substituted for butter. Do NOT use lowfat spreads or light butter for baking.

The main problem with light spreads and tub margarines is their unsuitablility for cooking and baking. Because they contain only about 25% fat compared with at least 80% in butter and margarine, they would ruin most recipes. For cooking, choose heart-healthy canola or olive oil instead. Better still, if you can use cooking sprays or broth you will save additional fat calories.

In baking, regular butter and margarine provide textures and flavors that are difficult to reproduce. It is also hard to substitute a liquid fat for a solid fat, since they behave differently with the other ingredients. Oils are generally not suitable for cookie recipes, although they are usually fine in muffins and cakes. Fruit purees, low fat or fat free sour cream and yogurt can often be used instead of butter or margarine in cakes and muffins, but the outcome will be affected in some way, often leading to a denser product.

For baking cookies, however, I still prefer to use butter over margarine, only much less of it. With some fine-tuning most cookie recipes can stand using about half the quantity of butter called for and still turn out well.

Answer 3

Found this:
If a recipe calls for butter, plastic (solid) fats such as butter, margarine or shortening with at least a 80% fat content work the best. Fats containing less than 80% in fat will adversely affect your recipe, such as lower calorie "spreads". Avoid their use.

So the answer is a conditional yes. If your low-fat margarine doesn't contain too much water you can use it.

Answer 4

No, it'll ruin your cake. Low fat margarine contains a great deal of water (unlike regular margarine which is mostly oil). Have you ever popped pop corn and put diet margarine on it? You know how it wilts and gets soggy...that's because of the water in it. Would probably change the texture of your cake considerably.

Answer 5

no most likely the margarine has yogurt in it the low fat has morein it and more non grease or oil.it mite work but your cake will be dry a good way to test margarine is to put one lump margarine and one lump shortening in a fry pan on opposite sides if the margarine sizzles longer than the shortening it will make the cake dry

Answer 6

Sure, I do all the time. I never use butter. I perfer the tub margarine, like " I can't believe it's not butter. Good stuff. Charles R

Answer 7

yes, but it might change the taste a bit

butter, margarine, shortening can all be interchangable. you might wanna do half margarine, half shortening to preserve the taste

Answer 8

Yes, but you may just want to use real butter. Fer crying out loud, it's a cake; it's supposed to be rich and calorific. If you want something 'healthy' try a yummy fruit salad.

Answer 9

For oatmeal cookies I added half applesauce I had handy I made earlier, to substitute with half butter that recipe asked for

Answer 10

Not really. You will compromise the texture and quite possibly the color. You could try, but, make sure the margarine is really cold.