Ingredient spotlight: butter

What makes your pancakes so gloriously golden and crisp around the edges?

Butter does!

What takes your grilled cheese sandwich to the whole next level?

Butter does!

What makes your chocolate chip cookies so irresistibly chewy and delicious?

Butter does! Butter does! Butter does!

I just want to take a moment and apologize ahead of time to all my vegan readers out there. I love you and I love vegan food. I really do. And, I love healthy desserts. Angela’s blog makes me drool and coconut milk ice cream gets me every time.

But I also love butter.

Because, with butter, you can get superior baking results such as delightfully crisp edges, chewy cookie interiors and rich golden crusts.

Plus, there’s just so much you can do with it! You can spread it on bread, whip it into frosting, beat it into cakes and even spread it on burns.

That’s what man handling a five hundred degree walk-in oven in the middle of the night will do to you….I’ll tell you what.

And there’s really not much more in life that I hate more than the “m” word. I think we all know what I’m alluding to here but let’s just say it starts with aarrrrrr and ends with riiiiiiiine.

(margarine)

It just doesn’t taste right! Sorta like those fake sugar frappacinos from Starbucks, or like iced tea sweetened with Equal. Like everyone else, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of diet soda and candy corn, but when it comes to baking there’s no turning back.

I usually try to buy local butter when I can from cows not treated with any growth hormones. Typically, I’ll buy salted because I like that little extra punch it gives my baked goods. Once upon a time, I worked for a chef who made me do a butter tasting. It might sound gross (are you even still reading?), but, really, the quality of your butter does make a difference!

I’m not trying to go all Paula Deen on you…but it’s true.

The last thing I’ll say is that our grandmas baked with butter. And their grandmas did, too. There was nothing fake in great-grandma’s bundt cake and desserts were celebrated and shared by family and friends.

Amen