Butter swap wrecked my cookies last weekend - stick vs spreadable

I made two batches of chocolate chip cookies side by side (you know, for a party on Saturday) and used stick butter for one and the tub spreadable for the other. The stick butter batch came out perfect - chewy middle, crispy edges, the whole deal. The spreadable batch? They just flattened into greasy puddles in the pan, even though I chilled both doughs for an hour. I guess the spreadable has extra water and air whipped in? Has anyone else run into this with a specific brand or type of butter that ruined a bake?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavinwood4d ago

Picked up a call from my buddy Mike last month and he was still mad about cookies he made three weeks prior. He used some fancy European spreadable butter from a tub because he was out of sticks and figured it was the same thing. Said his cookies looked like someone dropped dough on a hot skillet and forgot about them, just thin and lacy all over the sheet. He swore off tub butter for baking right then and there, said it's stick or nothing for him going forward. Pretty sure he's still holding a grudge against that butter brand too.

joel2805d ago

Ugh, that's such a bummer. I feel your pain on this one, really. I've done the same thing with store brand tub margarine thinking it would be fine and ended up with pancake cookies. It's the water content, for sure, they just melt into a greasy slick. Regular old stick butter is the only way to go for baking, period.