![\"Baking](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Baking-ingredient-substitutions\u2014a-handy-guide-to-get-you-started-replacing-one-baking-ingredient-with-another.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n[feast_advanced_jump_to]\n\n\nFats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The average butter sold at most grocery stores in North America is roughly 80 % fat, while oils (like canola oil, coconut oil, or vegetable oil) are 100 % fat. Many will recommend to replace one fat with the same amount of another in a 1-to-1 substitution. This can work but when trying to substitute oil for butter, or butter for oil, the extra fat in oil and the lower fat content of butter will have an impact on the texture of the baked goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More fat will create a more tender product that may be more delicate and prone to crumbling, while less fat may create a more dry baked good. Also, when taking a recipe made with softened butter that is mixed with sugar via the creaming method <\/strong>and replacing the butter with oil, this will have an impact on the airiness of the baked goods as you can't whip the oil with the sugar to incorporate air into the mixture. These are things that you need to know before proceeding with the following substitutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want a substitute for butter, your best bet is oil. Remember that oil is liquid at room temperature so you won't be able to use the creaming method with oil to incorporate air into the mixture. That may lead to denser baked goods at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember that butter is solid at room temperature, which means that while it's easy for you to whisk oil with sugar and other liquids in a recipe, for example, it won't be quite as easy if you replace the oil with butter unless you melt the butter. Plus, melted butter may become solid when mixed into batters or doughs that are too cold so you need to be mindful of temperatures when working with butter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vegan butter is a dairy-free butter substitute made from vegetable oils that are mixed with water, salt, flavour agents, and the mixture is combined into a butter-like paste with the help of emulsifiers. Be very careful to read the ingredients of the vegan butter you have to verify if it's salted. You may need to reduce or eliminate the salt from your recipe if it was written with unsalted butter!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vegan butter has the same water content as regular butter and is meant to replace butter, cup-for-cup, in most recipes. I've used it in cookies like these clementine snowball cookies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sugar is essential in baking and it actually counts as a wet ingredient, even though it looks like a dry ingredient. In the creaming method, butter and sugar are whipped together to incorporate and trap bubbles of air, lightening the mixture and leading to airier baked goods. Sugar also helps baked goods retain moisture, which means they will store better and last longer. For these reasons, eliminating sugar from most recipes isn't an option you should consider. Even reducing the quantity of sugar isn't ideal without having a big impact on baked goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I've seen a lot of people push cane sugar over granulated sugar by claiming cane sugar is better for you, but they are essentially the exact same thing, so don't be fooled! Sugar is sugar and both are sucrose, regardless of if it's white granulated sugar or \"organic\" cane sugar. These two sugars are interchangeable in any recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Replace 200 grams (1 cup) granulated sugar (or cane sugar) with either of the following<\/p>\n\n\n\n Replace 200 grams (1 cup) of brown sugar with either of the following<\/p>\n\n\n\n Replace 250 mL (1 cup) of maple syrup with either of the following<\/p>\n\n\n\n Replace 250 mL (1 cup) of honey with either of the following<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interestingly, you can swap honey for molasses, volume-for-volume. A great example of this is in these matcha gingerbread cookies<\/a>. The recipe is almost identical to the classic gingerbread cookie cutouts<\/a>, but it's sweetened with honey instead of molasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Glucose is an ingredient use in many of the Milk Bar recipes (like the Milk Bar birthday cake<\/a>). Since glucose is not as sweet as light corn syrup and since corn syrup is more fluid:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since light corn syrup is sweeter than liquid glucose and more fluid:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chemical leaveners are part of the family of ingredients known as leavening agents<\/a>, which are added to recipes to help your cakes, cookies, and breads rise. These include baking powder<\/a> and baking soda<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Baking powder is a chemical leavener that helps your cakes rise. Recall that you should be using 5 mL (1 teaspoon) baking powder for every cup of flour in your recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recall that you should be using 1.25 ml (\u00bc teaspoon) of baking soda for every cup of flour in your recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When making dairy substitutions, it's very important to think about the percentage of fat in the dairy product that you want to replace. Don't replace a full-fat dairy product with a low-fat dairy product and expect the same outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It's also important to recognize which dairy products are acidic so that you can replace an acidic dairy product with another acidic dairy product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sour cream has a pH around 4, which means it's also an acidic dairy product. Recipes with sour cream, for example cake batters, will feature both baking powder and baking soda, to ensure that the batter has enough \"rising power\" as it bakes to open the crumb and lead to a more tender, lighter cake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yogurt has a pH somewhere between 4 and 4.5, depending on the brand, so it is an acidic dairy product. This means that you should replace it with another acidic dairy product if you want to make a good substitution that won't negatively impact your recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greek yogurt has less water than regular plain yogurt, so swapping one for the other can lead to problems given the difference in water content. Still in some recipes it is possible<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buttermilk sold at grocery stores is usually fat free and an acidified dairy product that has been cultured (meaning inoculated with good bacteria, just like yogurt and sour cream). The pH of buttermilk is usually around 4.5. If you don't have buttermilk, you can use the following substitutions as a guide and replace 250 mL (1 cup) of cultured buttermilk:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Milk has a pH around 6.5, so it is slightly acidic and not quite neutral. Still, you shouldn't replace milk with an acidic dairy product without making adjustments in your recipe (adding some baking soda to balance out the acid, for example).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eggs provide structure and moisture to recipes. They also act as a leavening agent<\/a>. Finding suitable substitutes for eggs<\/a> can be tricky:<\/p>\n\n\n\n All-purpose flour is the go-to flour for most bakers and baking recipes. It's hard to beat in that it's high enough in protein that it can be used for bread making, yet it's not so high in protein and can still be used for more tender applications like baking a cake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It's hard to substitute flours and to replace one with another can literally break a recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bread flour has the highest protein content of all and some have as much as 16 % protein. That protein adds strength to recipes, which is especially useful when making bread. Bread dough is kneaded to rearrange the proteins and to develop the gluten network, giving bread dough it's strength, it's ability to stretch, its plasticity and its elasticity. The gluten network allows bread dough to trap air bubbles so that bread rises without the air escaping, leading to a more open crumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don't have bread flour, you can replace it with all-purpose flour, which also has a high protein content, but you cannot use cake or pastry flours in recipes that call for bread flour. That won't work well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All-purpose flour has a fairly high protein content, around 10 % but some Canadian all-purpose flours made from harder wheat may have as much as 12 % protein, which means when you bake with all-purpose, it's likely that more gluten will develop as you stir together your ingredients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In some cases, you can replace all-purpose with a mixture of cake flour and bread flour, and this is definitely worth a try if you've run out of all-purpose, but you have other flours on hand. Still, don't expect the exact same result with this kind of substitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cake flour has a lower protein content, 7 to 9 % depending on the brand, which leads to less gluten development and so cake flour is great for cakes and other baked goods where you want a more delicate crumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you can't find cake flour, or you've run out, you can bake with all-purpose, replacing it cup-for-cup or with the same amount by weight. Your baked goods may be a little firmer, tougher, or more chewy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another option is to make a mixture of all-purpose flour and cornstarch to replace cake flour. Here's how, assuming you are aiming to make cake flour with roughly 8 % protein content and you have an all-purpose flour that is 10 % protein content:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to start baking with alternative flours, a general rule is to only swap out a portion of all-purpose flour for an alternative flour (roughly 25 %). This is the best way to ensure your recipe will turn out well. For example, if your recipe has 1 cup of all-purpose flour, try making it with a mix of 60 mL (\u00bc cup) alternative flour and 190 mL (\u00be cup) all-purpose flour. Going higher than this is risky without further tweaking of the recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to replace all-purpose flour with whole wheat, you can safely replace up to 50 % of all-purpose with whole wheat flour without having too much of an impact on baked goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This type of flour is very common in UK recipes. Self-rising flour already contains the leavening agent and salt. It's less common in North America<\/p>\n\n\n\n When making substitutions in chocolate recipes, it's important to remember that there are many types of chocolate<\/a> that you can use for baking. But depending on how the chocolate is used, you can't necessarily replace it with another. For example, this chocolate cake made with dark chocolate<\/a> can't be made with milk chocolate. These chewy one-bowl brownies<\/a> can't be made with milk chocolate either. In recipes where the chocolate is melted to incorporate it in a cake batter, cookie batter, pots de cr\u00e8me, or ganache, it's super important to respect the type of chocolate recommended in the recipe to achieve the best results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, in a recipe for cookies, like these chewy oatmeal cookies made with milk chocolate<\/a>, you can absolutely use dark chocolate, or even white chocolate. In this case, the chocolate is added at the end of the recipe, so you could even replace it with the same volume of raisins if you want!<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to substitute cocoa powder with dark chocolate<\/a>, or chocolate with cocoa powder, it's a little more tricky. Cocoa powder is a dry ingredient, while melted chocolate has more fat (cocoa butter), sugar, and sometimes dairy added too. Replacing cocoa with melted dark chocolate, if you don't compensate for the extra fat and sugar in melted chocolate, you may end up with a more delicate cake, prone to crumbling from the excess fat, and a sweeter baked good. Conversely, if you replace melted dark chocolate with cocoa powder, if you don't add back some extra fat and sugar, you may end up with a dryer product at the end. Here are some guidelines for substituting cocoa and dark chocolate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let's not forget that cocoa powder is made from chocolate only, with nothing else added. At most, the cocoa may be \"dutched,\" where it is treated with a base in order to raise the pH of the powder, giving it a more pronounced, darker chocolate flavour. On the other hand, hot chocolate mix is made with milk solids, fats, and sugar. You cannot substitute hot cocoa mix in place of cocoa powder without having a huge impact on your baked goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another thing to note with cocoa powder is that, while Dutch-process cocoa is basic, meaning pH above 7, natural cocoa powder is acidic, with a pH below 7. This means that when working with a recipe that calls for regular, Dutch-processed cocoa, you can't replace it with natural cocoa, or at least if you do, your baked goods won't be the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When baking with natural cocoa powder, you may need to add some baking soda to your recipe to balance out that acidity, especially in brownies and cakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all salts are the same or rather, you can't replace one salt with the same amount of another. Though most salts are sodium chloride, the amount of sodium per teaspoon varies greatly according to the type of salt. For example, the box of table salt I got at the grocery store has 580 mg sodium per \u00bc teaspoon of salt. On the other hand, the box of Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt I use in my baking has 280 mg sodium per \u00bc teaspoon of salt. That's half the amount of sodium. For this reason, you have to be very careful when making salt substitutions. For reference:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vanilla is an essential flavour agent in baking and appears in most recipes in some form or another. You can bake with vanilla beans, vanilla extract, vanilla paste, vanilla powder, among others and the vanilla substitution<\/a> guidelines vary from brand to brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You also have to consider when the vanilla product is added: for example, you have to steep vanilla beans in hot liquid to extract the flavour, while vanilla extract is more delicate and not suitable for heated sauces and custards, unless you add it off the heat. Vanilla extract is better for cakes and cookies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don't have access to any vanilla products, you can replace vanilla extract with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This guide to baking substitutions and how to replace one ingredient with another in any baking recipe is a good start, but I can't guarantee the results you will get with any substitution. Make sure to take the time to measure your baking ingredients<\/a> out very carefully and consult the list of baking conversions<\/a> to make sure you properly convert your recipes from cups to grams, or vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some recipes are more sensitive to changes than others and there will be cases where even a seemingly obvious, straightforward ingredient replacement may break a recipe. Though not ideal, it's okay! This is how we learn what to do (and not do) next time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of us aren't born with a natural ability to convert ingredients from cups to grams or ounces. If you would like to learn more about converting recipes from volume to weight measurements, you need the Baking Ingredient conversions chart<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use this baking ingredient converions chart to help you transition from baking by volume to baking by weight. Learn how much one cup of common baking ingredients weigh!<\/p>\n\n\n\nButter<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Oil<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Vegan butter<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Jars](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Kitchen-Geekery-brown-sugar-e1587325998307.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSugar<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Organic cane sugar vs granulated sugar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A few things to keep in mind when baking with honey instead of granulated sugar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A few things to note about maple syrup and molasses in baking<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Granulated sugar or cane sugar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Brown sugar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Maple syrup<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Subscribe](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Free-baking-ingredient-conversions-guide.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nHoney<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Liquid glucose<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Corn syrup<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Complete-guide-to-baking-powder-in-baking.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nChemical leaveners<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Baking powder<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Baking soda<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Pouring](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/How-to-use-vanilla-extract.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDairy products (other than butter)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Sour cream<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Yogurt<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Greek yogurt and plain yogurt<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Buttermilk<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Milk<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Eggs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Measuring-cups-3.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nFlour<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bread flour<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
All-purpose flour<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Cake flour<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Baking with alternative flours<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Self-rising flour<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/The-different-types-of-chocolate-that-you-can-use-for-baking.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nChocolate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Cocoa powder and dark chocolate<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Cocoa powder versus hot cocoa mix<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Natural vs dutch-process cocoa powder<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Nuts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Whole nuts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Chopped nuts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Ground nuts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Orange zest<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Salt<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Vanilla<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Need more help with baking conversions?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Ingredients-conversion-chart-PDF-1024x1024.jpeg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nIngredient conversions chart<\/h3>\n\n\n\n