Use shortening like Crisco or a store brand equivalent. Otherwise, find a recipe that calls for what you have on hand.

Yes, what mimipadv says. I keep all things on hand, butter, shortening, canola oil, lard and even have some olive oil, though I do not like olive oil taste.

Sue

The last shortening I bought was mostly coconut oil, and it works very well in dessert recipes. If you wanted to substitute any oil for shortening, I think coconut oil would be best. Butter would be my second choice, and I think that would have worked well in your banana bread. Lard would be better than either of those two, however.

Most shortening has transfat, a dangerous substance that has been banned by the FDA but the effective date isn't immediate, it's delayed a bit into the future. It's best avoided anyway, especially when in processed foods.

Both butter and olive oil will bring along a flavor, often desired in the case of butter and often not desired in the case of olive oil. If substituting a flavorless oil for shortening makes the result too moist, try it again using less. Or find a different recipe that doesn't use shortening.

For some reason, "shortening" has come to mean Crisco....when it originally meant anything to make a "short crust" or a "short cake" that is one that was tender and flaky.
In old recipes shortening will mean either butter, lard, Crisco, Spry, beef tallow, something called "Cottolene" which was made from cotton seed oil. As a kid I don't remember oil in the kitchen at all. Salad was either made with mayonnaise, cream or bacon grease.
Baking done with oil for shortening mostly doesn't work....as you have found.

I was trying to avoid Crisco but I guess butter isn't any better, healthwise,

Especially with baking, when substituting ingredients in a recipe, a bit of trial and error is often required. Transfats are dangerous, butter has saturated fat but isn't nearly as much of a problem. Lard has even more saturated fats than butter and for now, much of it is also hydrogenated.

For those of you who are Crisco fans, it didn't have transfats in it years ago and won't have it in the future. We'll all live longer without it, recipes and palates will adjust.

If a recipe lists shortening as an ingredient, I use Crisco. When butter was severely rationed during WWII, many baking recipes were developed for alternative fats, including hydrogenated shortening and clarified chicken fat and some of them are still around today.

SW is behind the times. There has been transfat-free vegetable shortening on the market for at least a decade. Look at the Crisco can. They may still make the old style, but they bought out one of the originators or something, and since then theirs has been transfat-free. There's also a conversion for adding water to substitute for butter. Vegetable shortening works great in cakes, acts more like oil in cookies, and works in pie crust but doesn't taste great. For pie, I use butter or half butter half vegetable shortening. You should have been able to do a conversion for your banana bread, but it's not one to one, and, yes, butter would have worked better.

If the recipe says "shortening", it means solid shortening, as Linda enumerated. There are conversions for using liquid oil in cakes and quick breads, but it won't work for anything that will spread. The different kinds of solid shortening work differently because of the sizes of their fat globules, how they melt, and when they release water. The flakiest pie crust comes from the top quality "flake" lard because it's bigger fat globules make nicer steam pockets when heated, pushing the layers of flour apart (i.e., flaking) better. If you're baking with margarine, be aware that it melts at a higher temperature than butter, and browns differently, and only use the ones marked "baking sticks" that have 100 Cal./TBSP. The 80 Calorie stuff they sell for table use is more like liquid oil and just doesn't bake well.I hope the blueberry comes out well!

You can salvage the banana by toasting it and topping it, crumbling it into a parfait, adding it to a light bread (challah or pretzel bread work well) and make bread pudding, crumble and toast it with a little butter and make it into a topping. Lots of things you can do with it.

plllog: I don't have any canned Crisco, but we do have some of the Crisco Baking Sticks that were purchased within the year. The ingredients begin with: soybean oil, fully hydrogenated palm oil, and then partially hydrogenated palm and soybean oils....Those are trans fats.

Mr Blueheron likes the banana bread so I just froze them. BTW, the blueberry bread turned out perfect. It called for 3 T of canola oil which solved the shortening question. I don't know what to use for shortening if Crisco contains trans fats.

Just to clarify, the Crisco that comes in the round blue tubs claims to contain 0% trans fat. (I just checked my small tub.) The formula was changed years ago, and perhaps the company developed a method of partially hydrogenating oils that also results in zero trans fat. Anyhow, that's the claim.

Crisco has seriously reduced the amount of trans fats in their produce...."They say" only half a percent. But coconut oil works well for me....even in pie crust....but not as good as lard or butter.

BTW lard contains no trans fats.

Golly gee, I am behind the times too, and glad to hear it. I admit, that I do prefer shortening for making flour tortillas and with half butter for pie crust. I was buying the expensive "natural" shortenings, the last being made from red palm oil but will definitely have to check out the Crisco now.

When making substitutions, I try to go for a similar products. If subbing for shortening, I would use something that is more solid like butter or coconut oil. I am glad it worked out that DH liked your banana bread so it would not go to waste.

Most banana bread recipes call for shortening and sometimes I use butter and sometimes canola oil and I've never had trouble with it before this recipe. Probably because one cup is so much oil to add. I wanted to make as many breads as I could to donate which is why I used this recipe that made two large breads. If I ever make it again, I'll use solid shortening.

I have this:

But I often use olive oil & butter for banana bread - & have used canola in the past as well, w/ fine results. Maybe there could be another factor besides shortening?

I agree, a liquid fat is not the same as a solid fat, and reacts differently in baked goods. I'd have substituted butter, but it's a bit late for that now. I'm glad Mr. Blueheron likes the bread, so he'll have a nice treat in the freezer for him.

I render my own lard, and it's not only not hydrogenated and does not have transfats, it actually contains Omega 3 fatty acids and the healthier unsaturated fats. Coconut oil is the current health fad, I know, but it has more saturated fat than lard does. I know commercial lard often contains all kinds of things that aren't really lard at all, or even related to a pig!

I have only a single recipe that I still use shortening for, that's Grandma's molasses cookies. I've swapped half the shortening for butter, but cutting it all out changes the texture too much, so they are an occasional treat. Although Crisco has no trans-fats, it's still hydrogenated, so I stay away as much as possible and try to focus on other, less processed fats.

Annie

When solid fat is called for in a recipe, such as shortening for banana bread, I substitute coconut oil, which is solid/semi-solid until around 76°F, and liquefies the warmer it gets past 77°F, so I use it for both a solid and liquid fat. The only ingredient in the coconut oil I use is - coconut oil!

Historically, coconut oil is one of the earliest oils to be used as a food and as a pharmaceutical. Ayurvedic literature long promoted the health and cosmetic benefits of coconut oil, as well as ghee (butter fat). The Asian Pacific people, which represents as much as half the world's population, uses coconut oil in one form or another.

I haven't used shortening OR vegetable oil for over 25-years, so my current "health fad" of using coconut oil has be a long-standing food source in our diet. A nice thing about using coconut oil, you can often use 25% less fat and still get the same results in baked goods. So you reduce the calories from fat.

I will also dispute the "butter is bad/worse than shortening....

-Butter is rich in fat soluble vitamins A, E, and K2. K2 is involved in calcium metabolism and grass-fed butter, such as Kerrygold, is rich in K2.

-There ARE healthy saturated fats. The so-called "war" against saturated fat was based on some really bad science. If anything, "fake" fats have been proven to be damaging to health. So enjoy lard (real, not hydrogenated), butter, coconut oil, nuts, avocados (all rich sources for saturated fat) - but as with all fats, do so in moderation.

-Margarine, shortening and vegetable oils are such highly-processed foods, I don't know why they even qualify AS "food".

-Butter is a good source of the fatty acid butyrate. If you want the fiber you take to benefit your gut, you need butyrate.

-Butter is rich in Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA), which is shown to have anti-cancer properties.

-Grainlady

Pretty much agree with what grainlady just said, except that CLA, which is found in the fat of animals, disappears completely if animals are fed grains. So ONLY animals pasture fed AND pasture finished (if for the meat) have CLA. Grain fed dairy animals have none, nor does their cream or butter.

I eat and cook only with olive oil, butter, home made lard, or coconut oil. No vegetable oils here.

Most banana bread recipes call for shortening and sometimes I use butter
and sometimes canola oil and I've never had trouble with it before this
recipe. Probably because one cup is so much oil to add.

So the recipe originally called for 1 cup of shortening? That seems like a lot of fat...that is, unless the recipe yields several (2-3) full sized loaves?

How many bananas?

What I would try is either adding more banana or using applesauce to replace about half the fat and then using butter to make up the difference.

The last couple of times that I have used shortening (in pie crusts) I ended up with a terrible bellyache. Switched to using butter for pie crusts and didn't experience any stomach upset. Mighta' been a coincidence but I avoid using the stuff. I'm not entirely happy with the all butter crusts so I'm going to try using part butter & part lard the next time I make crust.

The recipe called for 5 bananas but I only used 4 because they had been frozen and were very liquidy. The full recipe made 2 full-sized loaves. When I make a recipe for one loaf I usually get 3 small loaves from it. I got 5 loaves from this recipe. Yes, one cup of canola oil is a lot of oil which is why the loaves did not rise as they should. I thought it seemed like a lot of oil but I used it anyway. Next time, I'll use solid shortening.

I'm going to look for that organic shortening in the Organic Section of the supermarket.

We are getting a Wegman's in our area. I can't wait!

Ashley's cardiologist told her to lay off the coconut oil, as he put her on a heart healthy diet because of her stroke at age 27. He says that coconut oil is too high in saturated fat and although some studies have suggested that it may not be as harmful as other saturated fats, until large, controlled and randomized studies prove it, she should "just say no" most of the time. Of course, she's also not allowed my home-grown lard, even though it comes from my organically fed and pastured pigs and he's not so wild about butter either, LOL. Anyway, he lumps it in with butter and lard as a "no-no" and steers her toward olive oil and other monounsaturated oils. He's even more negative about shortening and margarine, allowing that butter is "probably" healthier than either of those.

Annie

In my world, the reason for vegetable shortening or margarine (non-dairy) is that you can serve the cake at either a dairy or meat meal, and Annie's lovely lard would never ever be used for any reason. I don't worry about the relative heathfulness for cake, or even enriched breads. They're not the bulk of one's diet.

I really like the coconut oil. There are times when shortening is needed, but personally the best pies I've made I used lard.

It's interesting how times change. What was it, 25 or 30 years ago the big kerfuffle launched over how bad coconut oil was for us. They banned it from popcorn machines and that "healthier popcorn oil" replaced it. Now it's all the rage. Just like eggs were going to kill us all and now eggs ain't that bad, and in fact, are good for us like our grand and great-grandparents knew. Remember how butter was such a killer and margarine would save us all? Oops... not anymore. That too has flip-flopped. Aspirin was going to kill society as we know it. It too was "proven" to be so bad... but now it's proven to be saving lives and is really one thing that can be called a "miracle drug".

Every time I hear someone rant on over how things are so bad (and they saw it on the internet so they know it MUST be true!) I just have to chuckle and sit back to see how soon it might change.