Just about anything that you can cook or bake with butter can be prepared using olive oil instead, so long as you know how to substitute it properly in different recipes.

Replacing butter with olive oil is easier when cooking as you can use a 1:1 ratio. For baking purposes, use three parts of olive oil for every four parts of butter needed.

If a recipe calls for one cup of butter, you'd need ¾ cup of olive oil, and if it asks for ¾ cup of butter, you’d need to add ½ cup plus one tablespoon of olive oil.

Baking is a science where each ingredient works with others in a chemical reaction, so before you go ahead and make changes to the equation, it's important to know butter's role.

For example, pound cake’s delicate structure is due to air pockets created by creaming butter and sugar together, so using olive oil would result in a denser texture.

It’s easier to swap olive oil into recipes that use melted butter. If you’re using a recipe that calls for whipped butter, it’s better to substitute half of it with olive oil.

Butter promotes more browning, so you may not get the same golden hue from olive oil. Olive oil also has more flavor than neutral-tasting butter, so use a delicate, buttery kind.