Our Butter Tasting

Our Butter Tasting

If you're afraid of butter, use cream! ~Julia Childs

I have been in love with butter since childhood. My mum went through a margarine phase, believe it or not and I was horrified even as a girl. I think that phase lasted as long as it took for the parents to realise the flavour was not there. (The marketing spin on margarine was incredible in the 60's...yes, I am that old!)

So recently, in a fit of curiosity about the difference that butter can make in both taste and baking I decided to hold a butter tasting and to video the entire experiment. we were shooting Insider videos with French pastry chef, Louis Boeglin, so it seemed appropriate to rope him in to butter tasting. He is an expert at using butter in all of his wonderful creations afterall...

Happily I was able to source a lot of butter from around the world in a relatively easy way. I did a couple of trips away from my suburb to specialist grocery stores, and I had sourced some amazing butter from Pemberton on a recent foodie weekend with my family. Even the morning before our butter tasting video shoot, I opened up my instagram feed to find a post on a local butter maker from the Swan Valley here in Western Australia and I reached out and Kylie from The Homemade Kitchen rocked up with some of her beautiful butter to add to our already impressive list.

Watch the video to see who our favourites were. Needless to say my two faves, Pepe Saya and Lurpak are right in there!

If you are into making your own butter, (and why wouldn't you be?) then actually spring time is the best time to make as much butter as you can and store it away as the cows are happier in greener pastures and so the colour of the butter will be a more golden colour. By the way, older cream will also make more yellow butter. But I digress.

The other thing we did with all that butter, was to make the same recipe, my classic Butter Shortbread, over and over and over. (Which wasn't the hardest thing we have ever had to do!) We literally smelt like the best bakery ever. It was fantastic. Shortbread freezes really well too, so if you are in the mood to get organised way ahead of needing it, go for it and freeze away!

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Tenina Holder

Tenina Holder is a wife, mother of five and grandmother of six, who started cooking in the olden days before Thermomix was even a thing.

Tenina has become the premium go to source for all Thermomix expertise and of course fresh and easy recipes that work. Her cooking classes and foodie trips are sold out in literally hours, her cookbooks appear on the Australian best seller lists and her social reach is in the millions. Her Insider Club is the most fun you can have with a Thermomix and you really should join her! She believes chocolate, butter and salt are health foods. Her food positivity mantra is, eat everything, just not all at once!

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