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I have a cookie recipe I am trying for the first time, and it calls for both shortening and butter. I only have butter-flavored shortening on hand for the shortening. Should I reduce the amount of actual butter the recipe calls for? Or should I trek back to the store for regular shortening?

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    Plenty of cookie recipes use all butter so the flavour should be acceptable (assuming the flavour of butter-flavoured shortening is acceptable; I've never come across it)
    – Chris H
    Dec 15, 2017 at 17:30
  • One person's opinion: replace all shortening in all cookies recipes with unsalted butter. But that will change the "fluffiness" of the cookies. They will tend to be a little shorter and not puff up as much. But they will taste so good you won't care. Dec 15, 2017 at 22:19

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Butter and shortening behave differently in the cookie dough, so unless you are planning to do more adjustments, I recommend you stick to the given butter-to-shortening ratio. If a recipe uses both, it's often to get the best of two worlds.

This leaves the question of flavour.

If you use the butter-flavoured shortening, you will get a stronger "butter" flavour. This may or may not be what you want. So it's mostly a matter of taste (yours, to be exact) whether a trip to the store is in order or not. Without knowing more about your recipe, we can't even try an educated guess.

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