Coconut oil cookies

I'm always looking for innovative butter replacements. I'm pretty unsatisfied with margarine, or at least the hard, tasteless cheap margarine I buy at Supersol. Sure there are softer, tastier (and more expensive) margarines on the shelf, but I haven't experimented much with them because a) they are more expensive than regular margarine and b) they probably contain emulsifiers and other polymeric stabilizers which I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH PHILOSOPHICALLY but might mess up my cookie dough.

Anyway I subscribe to a blog that's all about parve desserts, and here is a link to it: http://www.couldntbeparve.com/ The blog reminded me about coconut oil, which I had been thinking about some time already. It is solid at room temperature and is supposed to have a buttery taste.

Here's where I'd normally go off on a tangent about solid fats for baking and shortening and trans fats and how now they make shortening with no trans fats and how you can't get shortening here except maybe in Jerusalem, Efrat or Ramat Beit Shemesh. But I won't.

I'd seen coconut oil before in the organic food store, but never bought it because it's super expensive. But I decided to take the plunge and buy a small jar after seeing a recipe on the aforementioned blog for sugar cookies using coconut oil (I'll leave you to search for the recipe if you want).

Another reason I wanted coconut oil was because I read online that if you make popcorn in coconut oil it tastes like movie theater popcorn, because that's what movie theaters pop their popcorn in.

Lastly, I had a sneaking suspicion that coconut oil was a secret ingredient that imbued certain baked goods with delicious flavor, namely Green's babka and Marzipan's rugelach.

Our verdict on the cookies - good, not great. We wanted crispy sugar cookies but we rolled the dough a little thick, so they came out soft. We tried putting them back in the oven but that just made them sort of hard/burnt.

I could taste the flavor of the coconut oil, and it was an improvement over margarine, but it wasn't as good as a butter cookie. But it was only a first experiment, and I have ideas for more. For example, I have a knockout hamantaschen dough recipe that includes orange juice and zest, the acidity of which makes the cookies irresistible. I think a coconut oil sugar cookie with orange zest may make waves...

We've made at least 3 batches of coconut oil popcorn. It's good, but there's no noticeable movie theater taste. I'd have to try it side by side with popcorn cooked in canola oil or something. Plus, I still haven't perfected my popcorn technique - the stovetop pot method still comes out a tad soggy...