In our last post, we talked in-depth about how different kinds of fats affect the healthfulness of your cookies. This week, we are going to talk about how different fats affect the taste and texture of homemade cookies. Once you know how the fats change things up, you can better tweak your favorite recipe to meet your preferences.
(BenediktGeyer / pixabay)
Flavor
There is one phrase in the culinary world that is repeated over and over again: fat is flavor. You can make substitutions and add spices all day long, but the fat you choose will lend a distinct (or non-distinct) flavor at the end of the day.
Butter
Butter is perhaps the favorite flavorful fat for just about any cookie. The descriptor “buttery flavor” conjures up glorious images of melt-in-your-mouth decadence that other types of fats just can’t (go ahead and try to enjoy a cookie that is described as “oily,” for instance).
There is no perfect substitution for the flavor that butter lends to cookies, but if you choose a different non-butter-flavored fat, you can add a little bit of butter flavoring (available where you get your extracts in the baking aisle). Just go sparingly: a little bit of butter flavoring goes a long way.
Margarine
Many brands of margarine have butter flavor and color added to them (otherwise, they are essentially the same thing as shortening, which has little flavor). The butter flavor will be present in your cookies, but it will likely be less distinct.
Oil
Different oils pass along varying levels of flavor to the cookies you make. Canola, vegetable, and sunflower oil are all relatively tasteless oils, so you will have to ramp up the other flavors in your cookies. Olive oil can have a strong taste, but it can be a good choice in cookies that are slightly more savory (lavender-thyme shortbread cookies, for instance). Coconut oil also has a distinct, somewhat tropical flavor, but it has even more saturated fat than butter, so use it sparingly.
Shortening
Unless you purchase shortening that has added flavor, you are likely to get something that is tasteless. Used in pie crusts, shortening can create an almost savory flavor reminiscent of chicken fried in Crisco, but in cookies, shortening produces the least amount of flavor.
Texture
The type of fat you choose will also impact the texture of your cookies. Melting points and how solid the fat is at room temperature all play a part in how well your cookie holds up after it comes out of the oven.
Butter
Believe it or not, not all butter is created equal. Top shelf butter, for lack of a better term, tends to have more cream and less water content, making it more velvety and flavorful. Discount butter often has a higher water content which will affect the texture of whatever cookies or frosting you make.
The temperature and way you prepare the butter also will impact your cookie’s texture. Cold butter that is grated into the dough or cut using a pastry blender will create flakes or a crumbly texture. But you have to keep the dough cold if you want those flakes to stay in place during the baking process. Most bakers will work in stages with flaky cookies so that the butter stays cold and doesn’t leak out during the baking process.
Typically, if you use room temperature butter and don’t chill your mixture afterward, you’ll end up with flat, crisp cookies after baking. That’s because butter has a low melting point (it can *literally* melt in your mouth), so the butter will melt and spread quickly in a hot oven – potentially even becoming greasy. To counteract the spreading (and greasiness), you can chill your dough for multiple hours before baking. Chilling will also make the cookies slightly chewier.
Margarine
Margarine – especially soft margarines – have less fat, more water, and a higher melting point than butter. That means that you’ll end up with a cookie that spreads less and is a little more firm.
Oil
Most cookies require some degree of creaming, meaning that the fat and sugars are beaten together to create a light, cohesive mixture. Creaming also creates air bubbles that helps make cookies fluffy and light. Unfortunately, liquid oil doesn’t cream easily, and it tends to have difficulty thoroughly mixing with the typical ingredients in cookies (compared to the ingredient proportions in quick breads, for example). That said, if you find a good recipe that is written for oil, you’ll end up with a tender, dense, moist cookie.
Shortening
Shortening creates a very tender texture in cookies. It has such a high melting point that it resists spreading until the last possible moment, making it a great choice if you like pillowy, mounded cookies.
The great thing about making cookies is that you can tweak things to fit your needs. Most of the time, you can go halvsies on margarine/shortening and butter to get that delicious flavor with less saturated fat and spread in the oven. Changing the amount and type of sugar will also impact your end result, but that is a blog post for another day. For now, if you want to make a gourmet cookie for a cookie care package or thank you teacher cookies, don’t worry too much about the fat – just pull out your favorite recipe and get to baking!
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