Butter Alternatives for Baking Pastry

There are good quality vegan margarines (Earth balance, Alsan) on the market nowadays, often they are of the interesterified instead of the hydrogenated variety. They are designed to behave and taste similar to butter instead of (as many cheap margarines seem to do) staying spreadable at temperatures where butter would be very firm. Unlike pure coconut or palm oil, they do not act very brittle when cold, and also they soften gradually instead of suddenly melting like eutectic solder. These should be on the top of the list of things to try...

Also, some recipes recommend using more than one type of fat in pastry, for more interesting texture (eg such margarine, and smaller flakes of a hardened coconut fat).

In the UK we don't have Earth Balance, and often DF margerine on it's own is too soft, even when chilled: I find a mix of dairy-free margarine and vegetable shortening works - I've not made pastry yet, however for "buttercream" icing I do a 50/50 mixture. Hope this helps!

I have read applesauce could be a great substitute for butter in baking. Its 68 calories per 100g, which is less than a tenth of the calories you would get from margarine and without the trans fat. The ratio from what I have read is 1:1 to butter.