Baking Without Butter: What Alternatives Are There?

If you want to bake without butter, you can rely on various alternatives. Some are suitable for vegans, others for lactose intolerant or calorie-conscious people. Butter gives cakes and cookies a soft, moist texture and keeps them from becoming too hard and dry. That’s because butter is 80 to 90 percent fat. Flavor aside, you can often substitute butter with other fats, dairy products, or fruit when baking—or leave it out entirely.

Baking without butter is easily possible with substitute products. The easiest way is to replace them with the same amount of margarine. A look at the packaging reveals whether the margarine is suitable for baking. Cakes and biscuits with margarine instead of butter are not lower in fat, but if, for example, you cannot tolerate dairy products or are vegan, purely plant-based margarine is a good alternative. Incidentally, this also applies to butter as a substitute for baking paper – you can also use margarine, coconut oil or oil to grease the cake tin instead of butter.

In the case of batter, you can replace the butter not only with margarine, but also with vegetable oil. It is best to use tasteless oils such as rapeseed oil or sunflower oil. Otherwise, yoghurt, quark and applesauce are suitable to replace part of the butter. However, then you still need to add a little semolina, starch or baking powder so that the cake does not turn out too compact. Also note that some substitutes are quite cute. In these cases, you should reduce the amount of sugar.

Banana puree and avocado puree are also suitable as butter substitutes. However, mashed bananas have a characteristic, strong taste of their own. If this natural aroma goes with the biscuits or cakes, that’s no problem. In addition, baking without butter is usually successful with peanut butter, almond butter or comparable nut products. They give the dough the necessary smoothness and a nutty taste. Also try our almond butter recipes.

Yeast dough even works without the addition of fat. However, a little butter can make it smoother and softer – if you don’t want to do without it, add margarine or a dash of vegetable oil, such as rapeseed oil – which is also on the list of ingredients in our recipe for vegan Donauwelle. In other cases, you can not just do without the butter, but with the whole dough. This is possible, for example, with cheesecake without a base.