: Margarine in place of shortening According to the Wikipedia article on shortening, it seems as though margarine is considered shortening. Has anyone substituted margarine for shortening in any recipes, and can you report

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Margarine is essentially 80% hydrogenated vegetable oil, the rest being mostly water and a touch of coloring and flavoring.

Shortening is essentially 100% hydrogenated vegetable oil.

That means that to truly substitute shortening versus margarine, you would need 5 units of margarine, versus 4 units of shortening plus one unit of water.

However, in many, many applications substituting 1:1 is well within the tolerance of recipes. This applies to almost all savory cooking, and most baking including breads, quick breads, cookies, and cakes.

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I do not use margarine in any cookie recipes since the margarine is not what it used to be. The cookies that have margarine in them do not hold their shape and spread all over the cookie sheet. I use real butter.