Tuesday Tip!

I think that probably the most difficult thing about writing these Tuesday Tips is to refrain from thinking, "Oh, everybody already knows that!" and then not even attempting the topic flirting in my mind.

The most fun thing I can see for this blog (still in it's infancy), is to have a few pages. Some would be dedicated to "Tuesday Tip", while another would be dedicated to recipes, still another to any awesome wrecks from my kitchen, and the main page would be the landing site...and so on.  That way in the future, any new visitors would simply click on a tab and find any previous hidden goodies.

So without further waiting for my loyal ten followers this week...here we go.

Butter.

There is so, so, so, so much I could write about this velvety smooth beauty but I'm going to stay very basic this week.  The question I used to ask all the time was: salted or unsalted?

When a recipe was not specific, I honestly had no idea which would be better in my desserts and I had been creating for YEARS!

Now part of it may be that I didn't pay enough attention to my culinary professor (Yeah, I was 19 and only completed four months of formal training. I'll blame it on "teenage short attention disorder". HA!) The other part is that I probably didn't want to store two different types of butter in my fridge. So I always went back and forth between the two.

Ummm...ask me today how many different types of butter I have. Usually no less than three. That's no lie.

Eh, hem...Moving on.

Your best choice for baking is UNSALTED butter. That way you can control how much salt you use in your recipes and it delivers a more consistent end result because there is no variation in the store bought salted item.  And when I say "butter", I mean real butter.  Unless you have an allergy to dairy, "stick" to the truest form of buttery goodness. Just leave the salted butter for your morning toast.

I know there are so many other things about butter you may have questions over. For instance:

• cold vs room temperature
• melted vs softened
• slow churned vs regular
• why real butter over margarine or oil spread?
• generic vs national brand
• ...and so on

If you would like me to give you my suggestions on any of these OR you have something else you've been wondering about, leave a note in the comment section and we'll go from there.

Happy baking!