Butter is an inevitable ingredient in most of dessert recipes. By definition, ghee is just clarified butter, but to me, the taste is completely different. The taste of butter is more close to heavy cream, while that of ghee is more close to cooking oil (at least to my tongue).
Is it good to use ghee instead of butter in dessert and pastry recipes`? Doesn't it ruin the taste to be far from the original standard?
Best Answer
moved here from a comment:
Ghee does have a different aroma and consistency, so, depending on the use of it in the recipe (wether it is used for frying or in the frosting for example), it will quite likely change the final result.
So in some cases substituting butter with some neutral flavored oil or margarine might be better than ghee. Which, I know, might not help if ghee is all you've got.
Also wanted to include what @rumtscho adds in the comment above:
And as to standards, they can be quite relative (making something that tastes slightly different doesn't necessarily ruin it) ... if you are making the desert for an indian audience, using clarified butter might taste quite normal =)