If you're a butter person, I understand.
I am too.
So when someone suggests replacing butter in baking, my first question isn't "is it healthier?"
It's "will it still taste good?"
Because there is absolutely no point making a beautiful cake, biscuit or slice healthier if nobody actually wants to eat it.
Thankfully, baking with ghee isn't about giving up buttery flavour. Quite the opposite. But ghee and butter aren't exactly the same ingredient, and knowing the difference makes it much easier to get good results.
Why ghee changes your baking
Ghee starts life as butter, but what happens next changes how it behaves in your baking.
When we make OMGhee, we slowly simmer Australian certified organic, grass-fed butter for hours. The water evaporates and the milk solids separate, brown and infuse their warm caramelised flavour through the butterfat before being meticulously filtered away.
What's left is beautiful golden butterfat.
Butter still contains water and milk solids, so when you're substituting ghee for butter, you're not swapping two identical ingredients.
You'll often see advice saying you can simply substitute ghee 1:1 for butter. And in forgiving recipes such as biscuits, brownies, slices and crumbles, you can certainly experiment that way.
But because you've removed the water that's naturally present in butter, some recipes may need a small adjustment to their liquid.
Baking is chemistry, after all. Unfortunately it refuses to bend entirely to my preferred method of "that looks about right." 😂
If you're new to baking with ghee, start with something forgiving and get a feel for how it behaves.
Our Peach, Thyme and Orange Ghee Cake is another good place to start because it's been made specifically with ghee in mind.
A natural fit for lactose-free baking
This is one of the reasons many people first discover ghee.
During the traditional ghee-making process, the milk solids are separated from the butterfat and removed. OMGhee is independently tested as lactose-free, which makes it a useful option when you're looking for a lactose-free cooking or baking fat.
There is an important distinction here, though.
Lactose intolerance and a milk allergy aren't the same thing.
If you're baking for someone with a diagnosed milk allergy, don't assume that because ghee is lactose-free it's automatically suitable for them. That's a conversation for them and their healthcare professional.
If lactose is what you're avoiding, though, ghee opens up a lovely world of buttery-tasting baking without the lactose. Read more about Ghee and Lactose here.
And nobody needs to be served the sad "special" biscuit in the corner. 😂
Where the flavour really comes from
This is where traditionally made ghee gets interesting.
As the butter slowly cooks, the milk solids separate and begin to brown. Before we filter them away, all that slow caramelisation develops the rich, nutty, almost shortbread-like flavour you'll taste in OMGhee.
That flavour is already there before it ever reaches your cake tin.
And it happens to work particularly well with the things we already love putting into baked goods.
Chocolate and ghee are very good friends. So are apples, pears and bananas. Add nuts such as walnuts, almonds, pistachios or pecans and you're heading somewhere good.
Then there are the warm spices: cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg.
Ghee has been used in Indian cooking and sweets for thousands of years, so pairing it with spices is hardly something we've discovered. There's a very good reason those flavours have been hanging out together for so long.
If you're wondering where to experiment first, try:
- Brownies and blondies
- Biscuits and cookies
- Crumbles
- Muffins and loaf cakes
- Granola
- Fruit cakes and slices
- Anything involving chocolate, nuts or warm spices
No new skills required
If you already bake, you can bake with ghee.
You don't need special equipment or an entirely new collection of recipes. You do, however, need to remember that ghee isn't butter with a different name.
A few simple things will help:
- Don't assume every recipe needs an exact 1:1 swap. Butter contains water and ghee doesn't.
- Watch your mixture. If it looks noticeably drier after substituting ghee, you may need to adjust the liquid.
- Pay attention to temperature. Ghee can be liquid, soft or firm depending on the room temperature, and that will affect how it behaves in a recipe.
- Start with forgiving bakes. Brownies, biscuits, slices, crumbles and granola are good places to experiment.
- Use the flavour deliberately. Chocolate, fruit, nuts and warm spices all work beautifully with good ghee.
Once you've baked with it a few times, you'll get a feel for it.
That's how most of us actually learn to cook anyway. We make something, eat it, decide what we'd change next time and somehow end up standing in the kitchen eating the evidence. 😂
Upgrade your cooking today
If you've never baked with ghee before, don't start by rewriting your grandmother's technically perfect sponge cake.
Make some brownies. Bake a crumble. Try our Peach, Thyme and Orange Ghee Cake.
Start somewhere forgiving and see what ghee brings to the flavour.
You might discover that jar beside the stove is good for considerably more than frying eggs.
Same food. Same kitchen. Change what you cook it in.
