goodday ladies,

i'm a girl from holland and i am a regular visitor of this site and i like to try out new recipies but i do not know what SHORTENING means

can someone please explain what it is and mayby how it looks like?

thanks in advance!

najat

Welcome to CC, the most adicting cake site in the world.
It is a white solid cooking grease. It looks like butter without the yellow color. It is firmer than butter, so it holds up better for decorating. It doesn't really have any flavor but greasy. It is NOT lard. Lard is fine for pie crust, not for frosting. It is sold in 3 pound cans.
Mary

You can get shortening (Crisco brand) from this store in The Hague. Hopefully, this is an option for you:

Van Dijk
Ursulaland 80
2591 HA, 's Gravenhage (Den Haag)
Telphone: 070 385 64 65.
Fax: 070 385 47 19

In most recipes you can use margarine or butter in place of shortening.

In Europe, shortening is sometimes called white fat or vegetable fat. In the UK, a common brand is Trex Pure Vegetable Fat.

Rae

Shortening is a vegetable based fat that is solid at room temperature.

Traditional American b/c's were made with butter, but the invention of hydrogenated shortening (Crisco and now hi-ratio) created a b/c that was more stable:

http://www.pohlmanscakes.com/wedcakes.htm

Everything you wanted to know about pantry fats:
(From Sarah Phillips of baking911.com.)

http://tinyurl.com/2j9k37

(The only exception would be the use of melted butter for liquid oils [in cake mixes] as this has been popularized by The Cake Mix Doctor.)

HTH

Here you can get Crisco, too:

http://www.americangoodies.nl/catalog/index.php?cPath=87&osCsid=2453f34232e6861e5ac182781d570aad

Groetjes,

Tina

Here's another AU shortening thread:

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-290533-.html

HTH