Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Butter Blunders



This is what happened when I told EmmaLouMoo ...

"I have to go to town and BUY butter."













Its that time of year. I always make Christmas cookies to send to my son and his family. EmmalouMoo has been very generous and has been giving me 1/2 gallon of heavy cream daily, along with 3 gallons of milk. Because of this, I have LOTS of homemade butter in my freezer.
I found that you cannot make cream puffs with homemade butter. I found you cannot make chocolate eclairs with homemade butter. They do not rise. Apparently there is a lot of water in commercial butter, which is what causes the puffs to rise, so just to get by, I borrowed some commercial butter to make them until I have both the time and the patience to experiment with how much water I have to add, and just how exactly I will go about it.
I found that sugar cookies don’t do so well with homemade butter, when I wound up with a couple dozen buttcrack cookies.
Today, I discovered that you also cannot make shortbread cookies with home made butter. I mean...you CAN, but they don’t resemble the intended results at all. They are very wide, flat, shapeless and delicate. They are however, incredibly tasty. There is a definite difference in the flavor between using my homemade butter and commercial butter. Everyone on the ranch has been coming in to grab a cookie. The failures should be gone soon.





I must experiment until I find out wether to add less butter, more flour, or both. Or if something else is needed to stablize the cookies. I refuse to be defeated. After all, there was a time when all there WAS to use was good, homemade butter. There must be a secret.


Meantime, Christmas is coming and my kids are waiting for cookies.











2 comments:

  1. That picture of EmmaLouMoo is priceless - so is that picture of your granddaughter! That really is puzzling. I am glad I read this, as I have a stash of homemade butter in the freezer that I was planning to use for cookie baking. And there's no one around to eat my mistakes but me. And that would be bad...

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  2. someone suggested I try measuring by weight and not by the cup. I have a stick of commercial butter, and my butter does weigh more! That might be the answer, but I don't know yet for sure.

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