In baking, try oil. In general eating (but not baking), try light cream cheese.
You can use shortening, butter or margarine, or even mayonnaise or lard in some recipes. Actually, many chocolate cake recipes call for mayonnaise instead of oil or butter. Just keep in mind that margarine has a higher water content than butter, so you may want to use all butter or half butter/half margarine if that's the substitution you choose.
Several groups of people don't eat lard. Lard is made from pig fat. This prevents vegetarians, vegans, Muslims, and Jews from eating products made with lard. A good substitute is vegetable oil shortening.
do you want a salty cake
You can, but your pretzels won't taste nearly as good. It's like using shortening in cake frosting, as most bakeries do. That's why their frosting is not very good. It's much better to use butter or margarine if you want to produce the tastiest result.
4 oz
In many things you can use margarine, lard, or shortening instead of butter, or a combination of any of them. I actually use 1/3 butter, 1/3 shortening, and 1/3 lard for the fat in my homemade pie crust, which gives excellent results. Just keep in mind that margarine has a higher water content than butter, so depending on what you are baking, the results may be just a little different than with butter.
I always use butter. You may want to adjust the salt in the recipe if not using unsalted butter.
Yes, or any solid fat. Butter, margarine, peanut butter, lard even. Any nut butter will make it healthier. You can experiment with replacing half the fat with apple sauce if you want to try something new. I would reduce the sugar by 25% and reduce any liquids by 25%. Maybe even the temp. Depends on which type of oven I'm using.
In baking you can use shortening, in an equal amount. Some folks don't like this texture of pie crusts without lard, but shortening is a bit healthier. It really depends on what you are using it for. I use the following rule of thumb I got from a cooking show (sorry I can't remember which) * Equal amount of vegetable shortening * 25 percent more butter or margarine (for baking) * Equal amount vegetable oil (for frying)
Yes, and it is probably better for you. Shortening is made with hydrogenated fat, which we probably all should try to reduce in our diets. The results will be a bit different. Butter will add a bit more moisture to your recipe. If you are baking your recipe, such as cookies, you might want to add an egg. The egg will prevent the cookies from spreading too much and add a cake like texture to them, similar to the "crisp outside, chewy inside" results from shortening.
Definitely not. You can include some peanut butter if you want the flavor, but peanut butter isn't pure fat like butter so you'll still need most of the butter.
The brand doesn't matter but it has to be lard or shortening....