Okay, so the other day I was trying to make this cake, right? And the recipe, it called for coconut oil. Now, I’m not a huge fan of the taste of coconut, plus I didn’t even have any on hand. So I thought, “There’s gotta be something else I can use.”
First thing I did was rummage through my pantry. I spotted some vegetable oil and thought, “Maybe?” I mean, it’s oil, it should work, shouldn’t it?
I decided to give it a shot with just a little bit of the batter, like a test run. I mixed it in, and it seemed to combine okay. No weird separation or anything. Into a small pan it went, and I baked it for a few minutes, just to see what would happen.

- I took it out, and the texture was fine, maybe a tad bit oily but I just thought it was maybe because I only used a little bit of the batter.
- But I kept baking until the whole batter was used up.
- It was a bit oily, but tasted almost the same. Not bad!
Then, as I was cleaning up, I noticed my butter sitting on the counter. “Duh,” I thought. “Butter is a classic baking ingredient!”
So, for the next batch, I tried using melted butter. I made sure to use the same amount as the coconut oil the recipe called for. The batter looked great, nice and smooth.
- This one baked up perfectly! It was moist, had a good crumb, and no strong coconut flavor.
- Seriously, it tasted just like a regular cake, which is exactly what I wanted.
I was pretty happy with the butter swap, but then I remembered I had some applesauce in the fridge. I’d heard of people using applesauce in baking before, so why not?
For the last bit of batter, I tried the applesauce. Again, I used the same amount as the coconut oil. This one was a little different.
- The batter was a bit denser.
- It didn’t rise as much in the oven.
- But, it was still pretty moist.
- It had a slight apple flavor, which wasn’t bad, just different.
My takeaways from this little baking experiment?
You’ve got options if you don’t have coconut oil! Butter seems to be a great all-around substitute, especially if you want that classic cake taste and texture. Vegetable oil works in a pinch, but might make things a little greasy. And applesauce is a decent option if you want to try something different, just expect a denser, slightly fruity result. There are a lot of options I can choose from.
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