I have a problem and I hope someone can help. I am ready to start baking my sons birthday cake and noticed it needs 1/3 cup vegetable oil. Can I use canola oil instead or will the cake (french vanilla) taste funny? Could I use butter instead and if I can, do I use 1/3 cup or more?. The cake is a 9" vanilla cake torted with chocolate mousse, it will be frosted in buttercream and then I am going to drizzle chocolate ganache on top and down the sides. This is the cake he asked for.

Butter would be great! This actually makes the cake taste better in my opinion. Just use the same amount of softened butter as oil.

I've never tried softened butter instead of oil in a box mix, but I do use canola oil for box mixes and it always turns out fine. Canola oil is just one more type of vegetable oil. And its better for you than other oils...

Good luck and try to post a picture when you're done!

Ali in MA

I too have always used canola oil instead of vegetable oil. Comes out great.

I usually use canola oil too, but recently ran out after I already had all the other ingredients in the bowl, so I substituted part butter to make the 1/3 cup I needed. The cake turned out great!!! Thanks to all these wonderful people here at CC I knew I could substitute without a problem.

I always use 1/4 cup of canola oil and 1 stick of softened butter. I use DH golden butter recipe most of the time. But this works for all the DH's mixes.(I only use DH) with the extender.