butter

I can't remember how I got a hold of this article, but to whoever shared it with me: thank you! I found it pretty interesting. I have come around to the idea that butter is not so bad. I don't really eat a lot of it directly, though I buy myself slightly expensive President slightly salted butter for my toast (it is the ONLY salted butter in the grocery store in Bulgaria, even though there are about 12 different kinds). I do use butter quite often in cooking, and then I go for the cheapest saltless butter. I don't know if we have margarine here, but I wouldn't use it if we did. Even before reading this article, I figure it was better to just use real butter and try to exert some self control towards how much I actually ate of what I made (I am still working on it, somewhat successfully).

The article is on the New York Times and is about butter and cookies, two things the world agrees to love to eat. Through my brief experience as something of a cook, I have definitely learned to follow the directions in recipes. So often I am complimented on what I cook, and almost every time I feel like I have cheated people a bit because all I did is what I was told, and sometimes not even too well in that I skip some ingredients because they are unavailable or I forgot them or what have you. I have learned that the biggest challenge in most cooking endeavors is just getting the ingredients and doing the damn darn thing. Once you do that, things likely work out pretty well. But one key part of following the recipe instructions is doing exactly what it says to do with the butter, at least as far as its original condition entering the recipe. And it is better to just give it a minute than to put it in the microwave.

So, some fun facts from this article [Butter Holds the Secret to Cookies that Sing, by Julia Moskin]:

• The most common mistakes made by home bakers, professionals say, have to do with the care and handling of one ingredient: butter. Creaming butter correctly, keeping butter doughs cold, and starting with fresh, good-tasting butter are vital details that professionals take for granted, and home bakers often miss.
• Butter is basically an emulsion of water in fat, with some dairy solids that help hold them together. But food scientists, chefs and dairy professionals stress butter’s unique and sensitive nature
• For mixing and creaming, butter should be about 65 degrees: cold to the touch but warm enough to spread. Just three degrees warmer, at 68 degrees, it begins to melt.
• Warm butter can be rechilled and refrozen, but once the butterfat gets warm, the emulsion breaks, never to return
• For clean edges on cookies and for even baking, doughs and batters should stay cold — place them in the freezer when the mixing bowl seems to be warming up. And just before baking, cookies should be very well chilled, or even frozen hard.
• Butter should be creamed — beaten to soften it and to incorporate air — for at least three minutes. “When you cream butter, you’re not just waiting for it to get soft, you’re beating air bubbles into it.”  When sugar is added, it makes more air pockets.
• And those air bubbles are all that cookies or cakes will get. “Baking soda and baking powder can’t make air bubbles. They only expand the ones that are already there.”

I definitely don't follow all the rules well, but I have learned to use butter at the consistency described in the recipe. I also have learned that butter will turn into something soft and fluffy if you just trust the automatic blender. Yes, you put in ever so slightly soft butter into a bowl with some sugar and set it on mix, and you just see clumps of butter flinging itself around with sugar crystals and think my laptop will soon be forever ruined this will never become a light and fluffy mixture. But keep it up, tiger, and three minutes later, it is ready to rumble and continue on its way to being a delicious cookie or icing or cake or whatever.