Dairy Questions: Milk, Butter, and Cream Substitutions

Y’all remember the good ol’ days of months gone by, when dairy shelves still had dairy on them?

For our second part on dairy substitutions, we’re going to tackle milk, butter, and cream! So as to avoid the repetitive nature of, “this thing exists in dried form,” butter and cream both have dried versions. If you can actually get those right now, awesome! You’re basically set on substitutions! But be aware, dry butter should really only be used for cooking and baking, and dried cream will not make whipped cream for you. Dried milk can be used exactly the way you’d use fresh milk - yogurt, cheese, drinking (my kid tells me it’s gross for drinking, but I’ve known others who thought fresh was gross), baking, whatever. Easy peasy; simply rehydrate and use as you would have used fresh!

I can’t live without butter: please help me!

I can’t live without butter either, friend. It’s the lifeblood. So here’s the deal: if you didn’t manage to hit your per-person limits on butter while you were still doing your pandemic shopping, nothing you can sub is going to be quite the same as the real deal. You just have to own that and either use workarounds or see which friends of yours use butter so rarely they think it might’ve gone bad. Then you can do some contactless trades, or they might take pity on you and gift theirs to your doorstep!

So y’all know, butter doesn’t go bad. I’ve gotten a surprisingly large number of questions about this, which is why I’m mentioning it. If you store it right, which is in either a bog or in your freezer, it’s good literally forever. It’s good at room temp for about 2 weeks (up to a month if European butter, due to higher fat content) before the water content will cause mold, but it’s perfectly safe to keep at room temperature. If you like your butter to be room temperature all the time and don’t intend to bake with it, clarifying your butter will ensure it’s pure fat and is good for as long as it takes you to use it up.

What do you do if there’s no butter full stop, then? When you’re picking, definitely do not pick oil if you don’t want a flatter, less risen final product.

For baking, you may use (for each cup of unsalted butter; for salted add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to your recipe):

1/2 cup of full-fat yogurt (quick breads and cakes)

1/2 cup of nut butter with 1/2 cup of oil (quick bread, cakes, cookies, bars, muffins, brownies)

3/4 cup olive oil (pancakes, bread, pastry)

1 cup melted (or not?) coconut oil or ghee. Ghee is best in high temperature baked goods, and coconut is fine for basically everything. Either of these are good for pie crust and similar, but make sure it’s solid.

7/8 cup of other kinds of oil (this is fine for most baked goods, in my experience) or lard (lard gives a more granular texture and is perfect in cookies)

3/4 cup pumpkin puree, or mashed bananas (quick breads, muffins, cakes, some pastries)

1 cup of mashed avocado (normal baking uses of butter)

1 cup shortening (normal baking uses of shortening)

1/2 cup applesauce or pureed prunes (quick breads, cakes, muffins, some pastry)

1/2 cup pureed tofu, beans, or lentils (brownies, some pastries, cakes, muffins) - some people do the full cup

And then margarine or vegan butters, of course. None of this, other than the margarine and ghee are really going to work for toast or whatever, so I recommend cheese or jam for that application.

I want to eat this right now. My mouth and soul’s opinion is that there is no replacement for butter if you’re trying to make croissants. You’re just gonna need to wait, because you’ll cry less if you do.

How am I supposed to drink my coffee without cream? HELP!

Yep, that right there seems to be most people’s concern about not having cream. How this is going to play out for you really does depend on how much dairy you’re short on, though. NONE of these are going to work for whipped cream, if you were hoping I had a trick on that. I wish I did, but instead I’m rationing my spray can and only allowing myself to spray it directly into my mouth once every 3 days. Gonna run out anyway, I suppose, but you’ve gotta live it up while you can!

For 1 cup of cream, you can use:

3/4 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of unsalted butter - this will work in literally every application except whipped cream

1 cup non-dairy creamer

1 cup coconut milk/cream (not the coconut water drink)

1 cup any soured cream

1 cup evaporated milk

2/3 cup vegan milk with 1/3 cup olive oil

1 cup half-and-half

1/2 cup strained yogurt with 1/2 cup milk

1 cup milk with 2 tablespoons of corn starch mixed in

7/8 cup (14 tablespoons) half-and-half with 2 tablespoons of butter

1/2 cup soy milk with 1/2 cup tofu (I’ve read this can be whipped like cream, but I’ve never tried it because I don’t keep these items in the house)

1 cup cream cheese (who knew?)

All of these should be fine in your… well, maybe only some of them for your coffee, but all of them will work fine in any recipe. If you really just need it whipped, you’ve got to go with the soy milk + tofu substitution!

Yaaaaaaas. The lifebloooooood.

Why are you leaving my pies out? What about sweetened condensed and buttermilk?!

Hang on, hang on. You can still have your pie. Buttermilk has a pretty easy sub if you’re not already making your own, which is to add a tablespoon or two of vinegar or lemon juice to your cup of milk. Let it hang out about 15 minutes, and it’ll work the same as buttermilk! Go on ahead and use this awesome site if you need to make some SCM.

If you didn’t know, this is a great book, even if you can’t use it in your baking.

Seriously, lady, I only need a milk sub!

Okay, okay - here’s your milk sub list!

Let’s do the obvious first: vegan milks. You can use any of them to replace mammal milk in your recipes. You may see small changes to the texture and color, but for the most part this is a 1:1 substitution. I always keep a box or two of unsweetened almond for making overnight oatmeal. It gives a bit of extra punch in flavor and nutrition here, and makes the oatmeal a little creamier than water does. In terms of the vegan milks, if it’s really critical you get as close to cow’s as possible, you’re going to want to go with unflavored soy. Soy tastes pretty similar to cow’s, and maintains the thickness, whereas rice milk (closest in flavor to cow’s) is very thin. Otherwise, just account for the flavor of your alternative milk - sweetened and flavored ones should be reserved for sweet dishes.

Check out goat’s milk, if you can afford it, too. What I’ve noticed the couple of times I’ve gone to the store is that goat milk tends to be there even when cow’s isn’t. I’ve also noticed better stock in the individual 8-ounce shelf stable milks (Horizon is the main brand I see).

If it’s available, evaporated milk is going to be the closest substitute to fresh cow’s milk, and you use it by mixing equal parts evaporated and water for your recipe. Accordingly, you can also use sweetened condensed milk, but you definitely want to cut the sugar in your recipe. Well, maybe not if you’re like my kid and are happy to eat plain sugar, but otherwise cut the sugar.

Yogurt, as per above, is also a winner! How much you use depends on the type of yogurt. If it’s a Greek-style, you’ll want to thin it down. Otherwise, for an unstrained yogurt you use 1:1 here too. Same same with sour cream. For sour cream, you want to make sure the extra tang is welcome in whatever you’re making, because it may otherwise disrupt the balance of the final product.

Water. Yep, water. Ideally, you’ll add a pinch of sugar and a tablespoon of melted butter per cup used so as to mitigate the effects of lost fat and sugar in your recipe, but if you’re okay (or just need to be okay) with any textural or flavor changes, plain water is a go.

Coconut milk can also go in 1:1. Good to have so many options!

This super handy chart I took a screen shot of gives a bit more info on alternative milk options!

Great, Allie, but I am a vegan and y’all are buying up all my milk!

Ohhhhhh. That’s hard. You, however, are in the happy position of being able to actually make your own milk! Here’s what you do!

For nut milks, simply soak a cup of the preferred nuts and then blend with 4 cups of water. You’ll need to strain, of course. If you don’t have cheesecloth, muslin, or a very fine strainer, I can’t speak highly enough of these ones. I use them for everything from dairy to stock to oils for salve, and they never let me down.

For rice, blend up a cup of cooked with with 3 of water, then strain per usual. Oat? 1 cup of rolled oats to 3 of water.

Coconut, which I do make sometimes, is more laborious. You need to get all the peel off of the meat of the nut, then chop it up. Blend with warm water (I do about 2” above the coconut level in my blender), then strain. I generally do this until the “milk” comes out clear, and those thinner batches I either use not as milk or combine and cook down to milk texture. Then I dry and pulverize the spent meat and toss some of the meal into my bread loaves. You probably need to really want to make your own coconut milk for this to be worth the trouble.

‘tis all you need, plus a bit of water, for milk!

Although y’all might think I’m a nutter for saying so, this period of hell in everyone’s lives is a really cool opportunity, on the days we can mentally withstand, to stretch ourselves to see what we can make to feed ourselves when we don’t have what we’re used to. All y’all stay safe, and see if you can’t bake some happiness into your day!