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.