Would a cheap person ever use shortening in place of butter for chocolate chip cookies?

[Anonymous]

My mom’s “famous”chocolate chip cookies are made from Betty Crocker bag mix. Sometimes she uses vegetable oil, other times, butter. These are best doctored up and baked as a cookie bar with no salt butter.

[Anonymous]

A lot of recipes ASK for shortening, OP.

You sound like a snob looking for a reason to hate your boss's wife.

My guess: OP has a crush on her boss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The word "mouthfeel" is gross and people who use it are pretentious.

Sorry! The cookie looks normal and has a normal texture, but there's a lingering (fatty?) mouthfeel and seemingly artificial aftertaste. I don't know what other word to use for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our boss brought cookies today. His wife is an excellent cook. However, her cookies today have a strange mouthfeel and artificial taste. There are only so many ingredients in a normal chocolate chip cookie, right, so I’m assuming this time she used shortening or margarine? Apparently there’s even a butter-flavored shortening! Who knew. Or could she have used a pan that she previously cooked something greasy on? Something is off and it’s bothering me. I almost want to grab another one of these awful cookies to sus it out.

Oh dear. You don’t bake, do you?

[Anonymous]

Could using or using too much non-stick spray like Pam cause this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our boss brought cookies today. His wife is an excellent cook. However, her cookies today have a strange mouthfeel and artificial taste. There are only so many ingredients in a normal chocolate chip cookie, right, so I’m assuming this time she used shortening or margarine? Apparently there’s even a butter-flavored shortening! Who knew. Or could she have used a pan that she previously cooked something greasy on? Something is off and it’s bothering me. I almost want to grab another one of these awful cookies to sus it out.

Oh dear. You don’t bake, do you?

No, I don't.

[Anonymous]

You can often pin a recipe in a time or place based on the ingredients. So when people have beloved family recipes passed down they might have different ingredients based on what was available/expensive.

For example a lot of carrot cake recipes still call for vegetable oil because they were created during or after WWII.

Clearly I’m someone who likes to think about these things but I would not assume it has anything to do with money since it would save very little overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can often pin a recipe in a time or place based on the ingredients. So when people have beloved family recipes passed down they might have different ingredients based on what was available/expensive.

For example a lot of carrot cake recipes still call for vegetable oil because they were created during or after WWII.

Clearly I’m someone who likes to think about these things but I would not assume it has anything to do with money since it would save very little overall.

When you make 100 cookies for an office, that's a lot of butter. Or if all you had was a tub of Crisco, maybe you improvise?

[Anonymous]

Next time y'all are at the grocery store, do a price check of Crisco and butter - you're going to find Crisco costs more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of baking recipes that substitute shortening, do a mix of shortening and butter, or use oil or another fat, in lieu of butter. There are lots of reasons someone might do that, from the cost of butter to wanting to experiment to simply being short on something needing to use a substitute.

You are loading a TON of obnoxious judgment into your assessment of free cookies though. Maybe now that I have answered your question for you, we should use this thread to "sus out" what psychological damage or impairment is causing you to do this.

Seed oil is poison. It's very uncool to put poison into baked goods you intend to give as gifts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Next time y'all are at the grocery store, do a price check of Crisco and butter - you're going to find Crisco costs more.

I'm safely assuming their are cheaper off-brands of this garbage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does this have to do with being cheap?

+1
There are lots of recipes that call for shortening, and there are structural reasons, if you will, to use shortening. Assuming it's about cheapness is really weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can often pin a recipe in a time or place based on the ingredients. So when people have beloved family recipes passed down they might have different ingredients based on what was available/expensive.

For example a lot of carrot cake recipes still call for vegetable oil because they were created during or after WWII.

Clearly I’m someone who likes to think about these things but I would not assume it has anything to do with money since it would save very little overall.

My grandmother, who was an excellent cook and baker, had some such recipes, because some of them came from the Depression, WWII, and 1950s periods. There are trends in cooking, as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mom’s “famous”chocolate chip cookies are made from Betty Crocker bag mix. Sometimes she uses vegetable oil, other times, butter. These are best doctored up and baked as a cookie bar with no salt butter.

Those are my kid's favorite chocolate chip cookies. Fine by me. Much easier than choc chip cookie recipes, even Tollhouse.

[Anonymous]

Old school cooks used crisco for buttering pans and in recipes. You’re probably tasting gluten free flour or artificial sweetener which people now fall “sugar”.