Baking advice please.

[flobadob]

I was making some orange biscuits earlier. The recipe includes butter, sugar, flour, orange juice, cornflour, baking powder etc. I went through the recipe using all the correct amounts of each ingredient, except were it calls for butter at room temperature I used a vegetable fat spread. At the end you are supposed to have a firm dough that can be rolled and pressed down but my dough was much too soft so I could only batch it out in spoonfuls.The biscuits turned out okay but the were very light in texture with no good hard crunch as there should be.

Although I'm pretty sure the reason for the issues was the butter I was wondering could I have done anything to the dough without ruining it, such as perhaps adding extra flour to give it more firmness? Or what else could I do, other than obviously using the correct type of butter?

[guilliebrougues]

If it calls for butter either salted or unsalted, I would never use vegetable fat spread. their tends to be vegetable oil in the fat spread, which is not included in butter. Only proper butter , not spreadable kind should be used because the spreadable has also got a certain amount of oil in it.

[gingejbee]

The recipes in baking are like instructions for a chemical reaction - which is what they are. You need to stick to amounts and ingredients properly- otherwise things do go wrong.

[woofgang]

If you are going to use a vegetarian alternative, you have to make sure that it says on the packet that it is suitable for baking. Vegetable oils tend to be liquid at room temperature so they have things done to the oil to keep it solid. If the spread is a "light"kind, it will also have air and water added. to reduce the calorie content.

[atalanta]

Usually where it specifies butter, you can substitute margarine.
Except in celebration cakes.

[owdhamer]

Maybe light is better.