Butter or Stork?

peachyprice

If you're a novice baker and are used to ready made pre-packed cakes then I guess you will find Stork fine, but once you've baked with butter, that's it, there's no going back. Times have to be seriously hard for me to consider using Stork, it's just not the same.

peachyprice

FrugalMummy wrote: »

I made a few cake batches this weekend and with one I used stork butter and one I used margarine and I could tell the difference straight away! So yes use stork butter. hmmmm I'm drueling at the thought of homemade cake

There's no such thing as Stork butter, Stork is margarine.

maman

peachyprice wrote: »

There's no such thing as Stork butter, Stork is margarine.

But many would say Stork is better for cooking than many margarines.

Shame so many 'sharp' dismissive posts for OP asking questions as a novice baker.

I'd say the advice about how heavily flavoured your baking is going to be is good and of course whether cost is an issue.

It's a bit like having butter on toast: vastly superior IMO but something you could compromise on if you were having jam/marmalade as well.

Hope the baking turns out well whatever you decide.

snowleopard61

I have a bit of a thing about Stork too; something about the smell. If you want a compromise (cheaper than butter and less yukky than Stork) you could use a better quality margarine for the cake itself and butter for the icing? I always used to buy Flora until they changed the formula and it became disgusting, but I would happily use own brand versions of Clover - I think Sainsbury's is called Butterlicious, or maybe that's Aldi's - or Olivio for the cake mixture, and then butter for the icing. I would never use margarine in icing (I tend to use cheap cream cheese rather than butter, but definitely not margarine).

ETA: Aldi's cheapest solid butter (i.e. the brick type rather than spreadable) is 98p.

peachyprice

maman wrote: »

Shame so many 'sharp' dismissive posts for OP asking questions as a novice baker.

What should we all have said? "Oh yes, Stork is yummy and gives equally good results as butter" which isn't, in lots of peoples opinion, true.

Miss_Purple_Hat

I'm going to be controversial here and say that I always use Stork, including for butter icing because it's cheaper and my mum always used to use it. Plus you don't have to melt it (as long as you don't mind putting in some elbow grease). My whole family love my cakes and so do my friends, so it can't be that bad!

(Though I will note that my butter icing is usually heavily flavoured.)

bigsmoke

I'm exactly the same miss purple hat - I get all sorts of compliments on an all in one coffee and pecan sponge when made with stork that I haven't had when I tried making it with butter. From people who are snobby about using butter in cakes too. So I'd probably vote for 'ok in flavoured cakes'.

I'll also always have the fond memory of a friend's little Bro calling their helpline on a snow day when we were kids to ask if it actually contained stork or would it be suitable for vegetarians. Naughty I know, but we did giggle...

bigsmoke

Ps someone mentioned 'stork butter' above: I'm sure I've seen a block of stork wrapped like butter in the chiller recently, as well as the usual tubs of the stuff.

Does anyone know the difference?

flubberyzing

I've always used Stork for cakes because my Mum always did. It's honestly never occurred to me to use butter... haha!

snowleopard61

I think you're probably right, the people above who always use Stork and have never had any problems with it. I can imagine it would give a perfectly good result in baking. My aversion to it probably is purely psychological - for the same reason, however little money I've had to spare, I've never bought Value/Basics spreads, although on the whole I've tended to buy more expensive margarines rather than butter, and if push came to shove I'd probably just eat my bread dry. (I love butter; the problem, on top of the price, is that I love it all too much and it exponentially increases the amount of bread I eat as well as the amount I spread on it.)

It's really hard to explain - I have the same problem with very cheap ice cream. It's not a horror at knowing the ingredients are unnatural or anything like that, and certainly not a snobbery, because I'll buy el cheapo just about anything else. It's just a (literal) gut feeling, and something about the smell._pale_