Making food for people is a very rewarding experience and seeing people smile and enjoy the food we make is the best reaction we can ask for. It is for this reason that we’ve always strived to make the best food we can make whether it’s in studying new baking techniques, learning recipes, and even choosing which ingredients to use.
One of the core components of what makes Craft Dessert Bar is our butter of choice: Irish Butter.
Butter enhances your food and takes it up a notch and Irish Butter is a creamy, rich, and it has a lot of flavors due to butyric acid, a fatty acid that enhances flavors and it’s the key as to why our desserts taste the way they do.
What is Irish Butter?
When we were starting out on our journey in baking, we thought that there were only two types of butter: salted and unsalted. Of course, we don’t think that the average home cook would know the difference either because Irish Butter is a well-kept open secret that only the people in the know were savvy to. It’s not too late to learn what it is, however, as learning how to bake is an endless process where we can improve and add to what we know.
Europe and America have very different standards when it comes to making butter, specifically, the amount of butterfat in European butter is 82% and American butter is typically 80%. Anything less can no longer be considered as “butter” and would be classified as a different type of dairy product. So, what’s the big deal, right? Well, the higher the butterfat content there is, the tastier and richer the butter becomes.
Ever notice Irish Butter’s rich golden color? It’s due to Beta Carotene, a pigment in the grass that the Cows whose milk are used in the production of Irish Butter are fed on. It’s a testament to how healthy the cows are and this is why Irish Butter looks the way it does!
Is Irish Butter Better than Regular Butter?
The short answer is yes and no. Really, it depends on what you’re looking to do with your food. Irish Butter adheres to the European standards of having 82% butterfat and it is for that reason that it is our preference for baking.
The 2% difference in butterfat may seem like an extremely miniscule difference but in the world of flavor, that 2% might very well be the gap between delicious and extremely delicious. This isn’t an exaggeration at all, mind you, as subtle differences make all the difference in the world when it comes to food, more so with desserts.
Irish Butter is delicious, rich, velvety, and creamy because of the way butter is typically made. Butter starts out as cream and then it is churned repeatedly into whipped cream. Churn some more and you eventually end up with butterfat. Butterfat is the pièce de resistance of churning butter. It is the ultimate by-product of cream and having a percentage of 82% butterfat means that a lot more flavor to enjoy.
Yes, the remaining 18% of butter is water and the 2% difference between Irish butter and regular butter doesn’t seem so negligible now, does it? Well, again, the answer is yes and no. It really depends on what kind of flavor profile you want to achieve or present. Personally speaking, we prefer Irish Butter for baking because its lower water content and its higher fat makes our desserts taste richer and velvetier.