For some bakers, it is a question of what their customers will pay for, and sadly, in the country I live in right now, butter prices are sky high. it takes a baker with integrity and immense generosity to continue to bake with butter and cream.  What gets my goat is that many marketing tacticians try to downplay the necessity of butter, and continue to push transfat loaded products because people don’t know any better. How these people can sleep at night knowing they’re essentially hawking poisons that can give people strokes is beyond me.

I especially hate it when people market no-melt “buttercream” when it is really shortening and icing sugar!

It’s also a question of what people are used to. Years ago, my mother did an experiment with her science classes. They taste tested chocolate cupcakes from scratch, from a mix, and from an industrial bakery. Students preferred whatever it was they usually ate.

Generally, I’m also in the anti-shortening camp. Still, I prefer shortening in biscuits and wheat tortillas. It’s what I’m used to. I rationalize it by saying the blandness lets the toasted flour flavor come through. Luckily for me, the 0-trans fat Spectrum shortening works really well for these things.

Cathy

Cathy - you make a very good point… my MIL has been drinking diet soda for years and claims to like the artificial flavor much more than that of the sugar sweetened varieties.  I think she’s been consuming it for so long that it is the normal sweet flavor to her palate.