Nut Pastes and Butters – Understanding Ingredients for the Canadian Baker (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between nut butter and paste? ›

Pastes are generally products that are finely ground, and contain sugar and other ingredients. Nut butters are produced using primarily the nuts and nut oils, sometimes with sugar and emulsifiers added.

If you haven't tried baking with almond butter, you're missing out on a super ingredient that's packed with protein and healthy fats. It lends a sweet, nutty flavor to any recipe and helps hold your baked goods together.

What is the difference between almond butter and almond paste? ANSWER:Almond butter is a spread made from finely ground almonds, offering a smooth and creamy texture. In contrast, almond paste has a coarser texture and is akin to almond candy dough, similar to marzipan but with less sweetness.

Butter enriches baked goods by contributing tenderness and moistness, and is responsible for the flakiness in biscuits, pie crusts, and puff pastry. Because of its superior flavor, most bakers select unsalted butter over all other fats for use in baking.

Cashew butter is one of my favorite ingredients for baking. It is the most neutral in flavor and has a naturally sweet, vanilla flavor to it. It is also light in color, so it won't make your baked goods dark.

Usually, when substituting butter with nut butter, a 1:1 ratio is applied. Although almond and peanut butter have higher overall fat content than dairy butter does, the quality of the fats differ greatly. Unlike dairy butter, nut butter is mainly comprised of monounsaturated fats.

Avoid nut butters with added sweeteners such as sugar, corn syrup or molasses. Avoid nut butters with added oils such as hydrogenated vegetable oils.

Nut butters are loaded with heart-healthy monounsaturated fats. These fats help increase HDL cholesterol—the good kind—while keeping LDL cholesterol—the bad kind—in check.

Almond paste has twice the amount of almonds in it compared to marzipan, making it coarser in texture and less sweet than its counterpart. Their consistency also differs as marzipan is smooth and pliable, almost clay-like, while almond paste is somewhat gritty and spreadable, almost like a cookie dough.

Frangipane is a rich, cream-based filling, while marzipan is a thick paste mostly used for decorative purposes. The main thing they have in common is the almonds required to make each one, but beyond that, they're wildly different — especially in consistency — meaning you'll find them used differently, too.

Why do you use almond butter instead of peanut butter? ›

It also provides fiber, calcium, iron, a few B-vitamins, potassium, and zinc. The flavor of almond butter is comparable to peanut butter only nuttier and slightly richer. It's a tasty alternative for those with peanut-only allergies.

Baking powder is mixed with the flour. When water is added to this flour to make dough, baking powder undergoes a chemical reaction during which carbon dioxide gas is produced. This carbon dioxide gas gets trapped into the dough and bubbles out which causes the cake to rise making it soft and spongy.

The job of butter in baking (besides being delicious) is to give richness, tenderness and structure to cookies, cakes, pies and pastries. We alter the way butter works in a recipe by changing its temperature and choosing when to combine it with the other ingredients.

Butter is the favoured fat to use in cakes and bakes and we use unsalted butter for all of our cakes in the bakeries. It is made from churned cream, a process that separates the butterfat from the buttermilk. It is typically made from cow's milk and is yellow in colour.

Differences Between the Paste and Butter of Pistachio

In addition to pistachio, flavoring has been used in the composition of pistachio butter. But in pistachio paste, you see 100% of pistachios. This purity is the advantage of pistachio paste over pistachio butter. That is why it is used as a natural flavor.

Almond butter is a great substitute for almond paste as it is made from ground almonds and has relatively the same consistency.

Peanut butter is a food paste or spread made from ground, dry-roasted peanuts. It commonly contains additional ingredients that modify the taste or texture, such as salt, sweeteners, or emulsifiers.

Nutella is usually described as a hazelnut chocolate spread. But, in reality, it comprises of just 13% hazelnuts, the rest being refined white sugar, palm oil, milk powder, and cacao powder. Nutella is not a nut butter. It is a sweet palm oil spread perfumed with a small amount of hazelnut and cacao.