Soft spread for baking?

caitybabes

Hello all,
I usually buy stork or a spread suitable for baking but I accidentally bought a tub of soft spread thinking it was suitable for baking. Having got it home I have now found the tiny writing that says not suitable for baking and there's 1kg of it!

Have any of you used it for baking before? What were the results like?

I only use butter for spreading as I dont like the flavour of spread but find it fine for baking usually so won't use it up on bread.

Could maybe use it for making icing but won't get through it very fast.

Thanks,
Cait

purpledonkey

Which spread is it? You could always give it bash and see how it turns out or make some viennese biscuits with it

caitybabes

It's "'Tesco everyday value soft spread". Really annoying, I did search on the pack in the shop but it was written so small I didn't see it.

I'm baking a lemon drizzle in the morning to take to my mum for her birthday and am running v low on baking spread. Could use some butter but it's v expensive. Might be worth doing a mixture of cheap spread and butter, that would up the fat content enough perhaps?

According to a spread website it needs to be above 49% fat to be appropriate for baking, so perhaps blending it would work?

Might be ok to use in my pastry recipe where it's half lard half marg.

suki1964

The trouble with that spread is its main ingredient is water, I wouldnt even use it for pastry

can you not take it back?

Use the butter for mums cake, will be so much nicer

purpledonkey

I would agree with suki1964, the main ingredient of that spread is water so it wouldn't really work (plus it would lack flavour). If you haven't used it, Tesco might take it back, depending on their return policy. If not you can freeze it until you decide what to do with it. I know butter is expensive at the moment (also had an annoying moment last week when I bought salted butter instead of unsalted); Tesco and Asda sell unsalted butter for about a quid at the moment for 250g.

I think if you blend it with a higher quality butter that might work, as the lower quality ones tend to have a higher water content.

Hope that makes sense and it works for you! Either way lemon drizzle sounds good

firesidemaid

do tesco have a policy like asda, whereby if you don't like something then they will take it back regardless?

if the writing is that tiny, i would take it back.

caitybabes

I was wondering if they would take it back, I just didn't want to drive all the way there to find out as the round trip is about £2.40 in petrol according to Google maps. Might just go to the local one stop to get something, save the cost of the petrol. Good idea about freezing it so I can get round to using it as and when.

Do you think it might work for chocolate fridge cake as it just gets melted rather than baked and there's plenty of flavour from the chocolate.

Thanks to all who have replied!

caitybabes

Update: I used half butter, half soft spread and the lemon drizzle turned out beautifully! Think I'll just use it up this way when I'm baking.

Gillybean103

Well I bought the sains soft spread 1kg for £1.35, and I bake with it, hadn't made any difference to the outcome and I'll keep using it