My grandma sent recipes to my mother when she was a young bride. Following the ingredients and directions was a note, "maybe not so much milk". Having hand written the recipe, my mother never understood, why not edit early on. 😆 just the way my grandma rolled!!

I have been using organic shortening that isn't hydrogenated for pies - with a little butter for flavor. It seems to work up as well as Crisco, but hopefully healthier. I have been looking for an organic lard, but so far, no luck.

My favorite - from a 1937 Rumford baking powder cookbook - "butter the size of an egg". Eggs come in many sizes, especially fresh off the farm eggs.

Amazon carries organic lard, but it is easy to make your own. My folks used to save scraps of pork fat and render them over very low heat. The lard was pure white. Store brands of lard are often hydrogenated to be longer lasting.

Peppernuts are a Christmas tradition in my family. The recipe is rather involved with boiling and then cooling the sugar, corn syrup and margarine. Then the rest of the ingredients are added--including 8 cups of flour!!. Then the dough is chilled. Then one rolls the dough into ropes about the diameter of a nickel and freezes them. Finally the frozen ropes of dough are sliced about 1/8 inch thick and baked.

It is a lot of work and makes a huge recipe. My DD tried substituting butter for the margarine one year. Total disaster!!! I buy a pound of margarine once a year--just for this recipe.

I grew up on a farm where we butchered our own pigs and rendered the fat for lard. We used lard in all our baking. I still use lard for my pie crusts.

Irishrose2, what brand is your organic shortening and what are the ingredients?

I have a recipe from my grandmother that reads :"Use butter the size of egg"! Guess chickens I only laid one size egg back then! 😆

I found this site for very old recipes, maybe it will give some one a taste of the past. They publish a book each year, get out the butter and real ingredients.

https://www.we-energies.com/recipes/...oks/index.htm?

How do you define shortening as organic?

Organic shortening
 

According to https://www.amazon.com/Spectrum-Natu.../dp/B000WDPBV8
Made from palm oil
Organic Shortening has no hydrogenated fats
0g trans fats per serving

Janey - Neat people never make the exciting discoveries I do.
Not affiliated with off-site link(s)

"Organic Shortening has no hydrogenated fats
0g trans fats per serving"

Thank you. That definition of organic is different than the one I know. Learned something today.https://cdn.quiltingboard.com/images/smilies/boy.gif