Search

I'm Like Butter, You Said?

Anita
Feb 18, 2015
2 min read

Butter. Smooth, rich, creamy butter. Nothing can take it's place, particularly when it comes to baking cookies or spreading it on warm, straight-out-of-the-oven bread. However, it wasn't always that way in my house.

When I was growing up, my mother almost always bought margarine. Not only was it cheaper than "the good stuff", but it could be spreadable straight from the fridge. Besides, wasn't cholesterol in food The Enemy? And margarine, being made from vegetable oil and water, had no cholesterol.

That was in the days before we knew much about transfats and how harmful they were for our bodies. It was before margarine became even more dilluted with water and became almost impossible to bake successfully with. It was also (and I'm ashamed to admit it) the days when I gave no thought to substituting Crisco for butter or margarine in a recipe and thought the results were equally tasty.

It has only been over the past six or seven years that I have really developed an appreciation for Real Butter. Now that I am used to baking with it, I can never go back. And I don't want to. Making a great cookie has a lot to do with chemistry: you have to combine the right molecules in just the right way and heat them at the right temperature for the right amount of time... and BAM! It's like magic. It really is a chemical reaction, and there's just no substitute, no matter what the health food bloggers say. If you change the ingredients, you change the product. End of story.

Now don't misunderstand me. I like a healthy eating hack just as much as the next person. And there are many times I will work on improving or changing recipes, just so I can make them lower calorie or add good nutrients. But there are just some things you can't do without reducing the quality of the end result. I am not likely to make a low-fat or sugar free cookie or pie. But I might make it with whole wheat flour. Or reduce the sugar. Or use organic ingredients. If I want to limit my calories or eat healthy, the best thing I can do is... wait for it... control my portion size and avoid using ingredients that come from a chemistry lab.

And so, I use real butter. I use sea salt. I grind my own wheat flour. I avoid things with high-fructose corn syrup, MSG, or chemical names that I don't recognize. And for me and my family, that is enough.

Apparently, I am not the only butter-lover in my house. I found my toddler hiding under a chair and eating a stick of butter he snagged from the fridge. This is a little more "butter-love" than I'm okay with.