I recently made the carrot cake, which is delicious, but I just don’t like the moist-to-the-point-of-being-squashy texture of oil cakes.  It bothers me more than even syrups and extracts.  I know, I’m a fuss-budget.  (However, I will happily eat all of these cakes, I’d just prefer to avoid these things in cakes I make, if possible.)

So, the only cake I could find with a direct equivalent oil and butter recipes is the Cordon Rose (TCB p. 69) and the Banana Refrigerator Cake (RHC p 133), assuming you make the Cordon Rose with the optional full 120g of sour cream.

The only difference between the two is the Cordon Rose uses 142g butter, while the Banana refrigerator uses 108 g oil.  Thus oil x 1.31 = butter.

Would you think this multiplier could be applied to any oil cake—German Chocolate, Pumpkin Walnut, Zucchini Muffins ... etc.?

My only hesitation is that the Cordon Rose is written for 30g (rather 120g) sour cream, but the note is that because of the fiber in the banana it can support the extra sour cream. 

Butter has 81% fat, 15.5% water and 6% protein.

So, in the Red Velvet Cake, which uses 57g butter + 57g oil, it would change to 57g buter + 76g butter = 133g butter. However, most other 200g flour butter cakes use around 170-200g butter, although it does seem to vary a little, depending upon other ingredients.

The German Chocolate would go from 108g oil to about 140g butter, similar to the above for a similar amount of flour.

TCB says a butter cake should have 24% liquid, 10% egg, 27% flour, 27% sugar, 12% fat.

Cany anyone make anything of any of this and suggest a way to convert an oil cake to a butter cake reasonably reliably?  I have officially exhausted my mental resources and supply of bookmarks (as well as what is marked and why).

Thanks so much!

—ak

If you use clarified or browned butter instead of plain, it should help simplify matters, and will keep you from having to bacck out the water and protein in butter.

Because it is more saturated than oil, butter will have a different effect on the cake’s texture.  Less saturated fats result in higher cakes with more open crumb (bigger holes) and the perception of increased moistness, while more saturated fats result in cakes with a finer crumb (smaller holes), and lower height.

I’d be interested to hear your results, especially the deep chocolate passion.

I wrote a lot a lot a lot of posts about this a few years ago.  You might be able to find them.  I made a carrot cake, and substituted clarified butter for the oil in a 1 to 1 ratio.  The cake didn’t taste any different at all.  It was possilby a tad less moist…I don’t remember…but it works fine.

Thank you Bill and Julie!  Bill, I’ll search out your posts and read up!