The Polar Vortex has descended on Northern Michigan! With too much snow on the trails for biking, and too little for nordic skiing, Northern Michiganders are stuck in the “shoulder season”. So Mom and I retreated inside to conduct the very first Charelvoix’s Test Kitchen.
Our mission, to determine the best fat for baking cookies: butter, crisco, or coconut oil. We’ve been hearing a lot about the magical health benefits of coconut oil. For instance, the saturated fats found in coconut oil are actually good for you; they stave off Alzheimers disease and seizures. They’ve even been deemed a weight-loss supplement! Really?! We’re skeptical!
We did a little comparison of the nutritional content of the three fats:
Nutritional Facts: Crisco Butter Coconut oil
Calories per Tbsp 110 100 120
Total Fat (g) 12 11 14
Saturated fat (g) 3 7 12
Cholesterol (mg) 0 30 0
hydrogenated oils? yes no no
MCFA* (g) 7.4** 1 7.9
*MCFA = medium-chain fatty acids
**Crisco contains soybean oil, fully hydrogenated palm oil, partially hydrogenated palm and soybean oil. Palm oil contains 7.4g/Tbsp, which I’ve used as an estimate for Crisco, as more specific data was unavailable.
Butter has the least calories and cholesterol, and coconut oil has the most saturated and total fat. Crisco is the only fat containing hydrogenated oils, but all three contain medium-chain fatty acids.
What’s the deal with medium-chain fatty acids? These are saturated fats that contain 10-12 carbons per chain, where as the more common long-chain fatty acids contain 12-22 carbon atoms per chain. Proponents of coconut oil claim that it’s the high levels of medium-chain fatty acids found in coconut oil which make it so healthy. Some studies have found that medium-chain fatty acids increase metabolism and decrease appetite (see this article) (and this article). Although a 2012 literature review of controlled clinical studies conducted between 2000-2010 and reported in PUBMED and ELSEVIER found inconclusive evidence.
Then we started baking:
While it seems like the verdict on this “super food” is still way out there, we were interested in how coconut oil affects baked goods when used as a supplement for butter and crisco. We made three batches of chocolate chip cookies, following our favorite Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. In each batch, we used a different fat.
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- Crisco
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- Butter
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- Coconut oil
The dough: Each batch of dough had a similar consistency. The crisco batch was the whitest, while the other two were similar in color. In a blind taste test, we were able to pick out the butter batch because of its richness, but the crisco and coconut oil batches were hard to discern. The coconut oil batch definitely did not have a coconut flavor.
left: coconut oil — top: crisco — right: butter
The cookies: The crisco cookie had the best shape, that classic toll house cookie puff. It was crispy. The butter cookie was nicely browned and had the richest flavor. It did not rise as well as the crisco cookie, and was chewier. The coconut oil cookie was very flat, hardly rising at all, and was the chewiest. Again, no discernible coconut flavor.
Bottom line: We liked the butter batch the best for its flavor and the crisco batch, for its appearance. Since crisco is a much more processed food, we think we’ll stick to butter. We both remain unconvinced about coconut oil: if the leading argument for using coconut oil is that it contains medium-chain fatty acids, so do butter and crisco. While butter contains much less than coconut oil, and the exact amount in crisco is unknown, we’ll wait for more conclusive evidence before we take the puff and richness out of our favorite cookies.
Popsicles for Dinner 