You can incorporate an extra virgin olive oil in baking recipes that call for butter and it will automatically make your recipes healthier because olive oil is lower in saturated fat than butter. Additionally, incorporating olive oil into your recipes enhances the final product and offers the food a nuanced flavor that will leave your guests clamoring for your baking secrets.
Yes, you can use olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and it’s a substitute you should try and make often. This is because the nutritional value in olive oil is substantially higher than that of vegetable oil. The key difference between the two oils is that vegetable oil is a refined oil, meaning that it is a blend of various vegetables that undergoes much more processing and chemicals to create a smooth product. Contrary to Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which is simply produced by cold pressing the olives without the aid of any heat or chemicals.
This is important to the nutritional value of the two oils, plants & vegetables at their core are packed with micronutrients and healthy antioxidants and polyphenols. When you then use heat to extract oil from the plants, like you would do with vegetable oil, these healthy nutrients disappear as they cannot withstand the heat. However, olive oil will retain all these nutrients as no heat is needed when extracting it. Read more about the health benefits of EVOO here.
So, not only will the flavor improve when you substitute vegetable oil for olive oil, but you’re also enriching your food and baking with healthy nutrients that will benefit you more in the long run! Read more about swapping Olive Oil for vegetable Oil