Australian vegetable shortening

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PerthMobility

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Could some kind person please advise me on which Australian vegetable shortening that I should be using. I know Crisco is available in Aus but I have no idea as to whether it has the same specifications as Crisco marketed in USA.
 
Crisco is a liquid vegetable oil (sold in Woolies in the oil aisle) and copha is coconut oil sold in the butter section.
 
Thank you so much. I have seen it at Woolies and Coles but was not sure if I can rely on the specs. Now I know I can. Cheers and thanks.

My confusion comes from thinking that Copha is made from coconut while I understood that Crisco is made from Soybean and Palm Oil. If that had been correct it would have made the hardness and INS quite different, I think.
 
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Crisco is a liquid vegetable oil (sold in Woolies in the oil aisle) and copha is coconut oil sold in the butter section.

Yikes- pay no attention to my post. That just goes to show that the lady in post 2 on my link wasn't wrong afterall, but actually correct- Copha is different from Crisco. I definitely would not use it as a sub for Crisco when soaping then. It sounds that it's a good Crisco sub for baking cakes, though.


IrishLass :)
 
I think I found an outlet in Victoria called "USA Foods" that will sell me Crisco All-Vegetable Shortening, at a price. But I can not find a locally made equivalent, if I am to discount Copha.
 
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I think I found an outlet in Victoria called "USA Foods" that will sell me Crisco All-Vegetable Shortening, at a price. But I can not find a locally made equivalent, if I am to discount Copha.

You have to discount Copha because it is 100% coconut oil. In case you need CO in a pinch, you can pick up some Copha. It would be hydrogenated to the point that it has a little more stearic than the 76 degree version, but the bubbly stuff you get with CO would be exactly the same.

The Crisco shortening is crap for soap regardless what anyone says. It has so much linoleic acid that usage should be limited to no more than you would use soybean oil or sunflower oil. It seems like a hard oil due to a chemical trick done with soybean oil and a little fully hydrogenated palm oil to make something solid with no trans-fat, but in reality it's NOTHING like palm oil or lard. Not remotely a substitute or a good soaping oil.
 
My sincere thanks for sorting this out for me "topofmurrayhill". I shall remove it from my "wish list" immediately. I used Coconut Oil for the first batch and it has come out just fine, so I see no reason whatsoever for Cohpa either.

I am still not sure what to use in Australia as vegetable shortening, but I shall keep exploring and experimenting. It could be that no such thing exists in our super markets.
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/member.php?u=18700
 
I did some further snooping around on the cake forum and ran into a few Aussie cake bakers that use a 'creaming shortening' product called Solite. The only place they seem to be able to find it is in a few different cake decorating supply stores. It looks to be similar to our Crisco, but the ingredients are not exactly very specific, plus there's 'flavor' in it: "Animal fat, vegetable oil, emulsifiers (435, 471), antioxidants [(320, (40mg/kg), 310 (12mg/kg)] and flavor." That sent me on a further search, and I hit upon this Aussie company that supplies all kinds of different shortenings to Aussie cake businesses: http://www.eoibakery.com.au/catalogue/creaming-shortenings/

IL, copha is usually used for things like slices that don't need baking, you put it in a biscuit base or an aussie fav is chocolate crackles.
http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/8407/chocolate-crackles.aspx

Thanks, Relle. Ooooh, those Crackles sound yummy! I looked up 'Rice Bubbles' and found out that our Kellogg's Rice Krispies over here are the exact same thing, but it looks like the equivalent of Copha will be harder to find in my area. On the bright side, though, I was able to find a good handful of recipes for Crackles that use melting chocolate in place of the cocoa powder and Copha. I think I might give that a try. (sorry for the hijack)


IrishLass :)
 
I am still not sure what to use in Australia as vegetable shortening, but I shall keep exploring and experimenting. It could be that no such thing exists in our super markets.

A vegetable shortening that can be used in place of palm oil doesn't exist in your supermarkets or ours, but you can get something that might be useful. What you need is a flaked soybean shortening. This is normally only sold to industry, but certain types are popular for candlemaking and are sold as "soy wax." You need the highest melting point you can find so that it contributes hardness without too much DOS-prone linoleic acid left over.
 
Thanks, Relle. Ooooh, those Crackles sound yummy! I looked up 'Rice Bubbles' and found out that our Kellogg's Rice Krispies over here are the exact same thing, but it looks like the equivalent of Copha will be harder to find in my area. On the bright side, though, I was able to find a good handful of recipes for Crackles that use melting chocolate in place of the cocoa powder and Copha. I think I might give that a try. (sorry for the hijack)

IrishLass :)[/QUOTE]

If you can get cocoa powder, use that, rather than chocolate and use CO instead of copha.
 
Certainly not opposed to lard. I can not find tallow and I will not support anything but sustainable palm.

I once spent a miserable three days in Singapore hardly able to see across the street because of the fires several hundred kilometres away in a neighbouring country all done for the sake of palm oil production.

I am not a radical greeny but I am certainly concerned about the environment. Enough about that ..
 

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