I am the queen of the baking shortcut, for despite my deep and powerful love of all things sweet, I’m impatient and awfully fond of instant gratification. I gravitate toward recipes with short ingredient lists and instructions that don’t require any heavy equipment (stand mixer, I’m looking at you) and can be assembled using only one or two bowls.

So, although I enjoy the texture achieved by creaming together butter and sugar in a mixer for a fluffy yellow cake or a chewy sugar cookie, what I really dig is a baked good that calls for oil rather than butter.

Baking with oil not only requires less work, and results in fewer dirty dishes, than butter, but it also produces tender, moist baked goods that get better with age and boast an impressively long shelf-life. As such, I not only search out baking recipes calling for oil, but when developing such recipes myself, which I do for a living, I try to create those that are oil-based.

Below is a breakdown of some of the impressive attributes of an oil-based baked good, as well as tips for substituting oil for butter in your favorite baking recipes.

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