Vegan baking substitutions

disposable

Hi everyone I want to bake something for a friend that's vegan. I've found a recipe that I think I can make some substitutions in. I've tried looking on google for answers, but I keep getting told conflicting things, so I thought I'd ask here!

I've never baked anything vegan before, so I'm really clueless about this. Basically all I need to substitute is butter. I'll be making biscuits, and the recipe also calls for some shortening. From what I can tell, some brands of shortening are vegan, is this correct? If so, which ones should I go for? And what butter substitute would go best with a recipe for biscuits? From looking things up, some people say that things like oil are fine, but only in certain circumstances, and other times you should use something like dairy-free margarine. It's all very confusing! So I would appreciate any help that you can offer If people need me to, I can post the recipe, but I'd just rather not in case the person in question were to stumble upon this (I want it to be a surprise for them! )

Breezer

Any time I've had to substitute butter in a recipe, I've used Pure soy spread. It's available in most supermarkets (some Tescos don't seem to have it, others do, any Dunnes I've seen has it) for about €1.50 or something, next to the butter

flikflak

Whenever I make cakes/muffins I use veg oil but have used soya spread in biscuits. I just follow the recipe.

Why dont you follow an actual vegan recipe there are loads of ready tried and tested ones on www.vegweb.com and these will have all vegan ingredients so no need to worry if it will work!

I use the M+S dairy free spread.

disposable

Thank you both! I was looking at vegan recipies, but the person is picky, and I didn't think they'd like a lot of them. Then whenever I did find one, the ingredients list was too complicated, so it's just easier to substitute a couple of things here and there I'll have a look to see what I can find in the shops, thanks

schemingbohemia

lots of baking recipes on this site, i've made a few and they're always really good.

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/

sweet-rasmus

I'll second just using Pure spread or Sunlight Spread (Dunnes brand) or Vitalite (in some Tesco/Dunnes, not sure which). Use it in the place of butter or shortening. I'm sure the melting point etc. isn't the same, but it is similar enough.

Shortening is solid at room temperature according to Wiki... I don't know much about the differences, but I can't say they'd make that much of a difference.

flikflak

Some recipes use coconut oil as shortening as this is hard at room temp.

disposable

Thanks for all the replies everyone, I've managed to find a soya spread in the local supermarket that will probably do the trick