Food & Swine

Flavored Butters

I have posted some dinner roll recipes lately and it would be a tragedy if I didn’t share some of my favorite compound butter recipes… savory and sweet.  The truth about compound butters is: with most of them, the bread could be as tasteless as your left shoe, but with a nice smear of scrumptious “Rosemary Roasted Garlic Butter” “Cinnamon Honey Butter” or “Raspberry Orange Honey Butter” the dining experience is greatly elevated!  (Note: I don’t recommend you slathering your shoes with these butters and eating them.)

If you happen to knock your yeast rolls out of the park and serve any of these butters too, just plan on bringing them to every birthday party, cookout, BBQ, holiday… forever, until. the. end. of. time.  They are that good.

Let’s get to it.  And did I mention these are WAYYYYY too easy!?

RaspOrHoneyButter

Raspberry Orange Honey Butter (1st Place Winner “Foods Made with Honey”)

1 C raspberries

3 T sugar

juice of 1 orange

zest of 1 orange

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1 stick of butter, room temperature (add a small pinch of salt if using unsalted butter)

1/2 C powdered sugar

Cook raspberries over medium low heat with sugar, orange juice until thickened (5 min).  Strain seeds, discard them.  Cool raspberry mixture.  When cooled to room temperature, stir in zest of the orange and vanilla. Reserve 1 tsp.  Add remaining puree to butter and powdered sugar into a small mixing bowl.  Whip well until well incorporated.  Pipe with pastry bag and star or round tip into a small serving dish.  Depress top and carefully drip remaining puree onto middle so it looks decorative.  Garnish with raspberries and candied orange peel if desired.  *Variation: Triple Berry Honey Butter: Substitute raspberries with any 3-berry blend, swap orange for lemon.

Cinnamon Honey Butter

1 stick of butter, at room temperature

1-2 tsp ground cinnamon (depending on your taste)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 C honey (I use local Iowa grown honey from Ebert’s)

1/3 C powdered sugar (I know this seems like overkill on the sweetness but it does help stabilize the mixture and incorporates everything so nicely.

small pinch of salt if you are using unsalted butter

Whip all ingredients together until a smooth mixture forms.  Pipe into a serving dish, garnish with a drizzle of honey and a cinnamon stick/sprinkling of ground cinnamon or write the name of the specific butter on a little card next to the dish so people will know which butter it is!

Rosemary Roasted Garlic Butter

1 stick of unsalted butter

2 tsp fresh rosemary, minced very finely

3 cloves of garlic, warmed slowly over medium low heat in 2 tsp olive oil until golden, cooled

1/4 tsp salt

Whip all ingredients together until a smooth mixture forms.  Scoop into serving vessel, garnish with rosemary sprig.

My favorite thing to spread on fresh yeast rolls is: drum roll… BUTTER!  And…

PearJam

PEAR JAM! (top lightest jar) My in-laws have a fabulous OVERproductive pear tree.  They are kind enough to let me have plenty of pears to work with in the fall.  The photo shows Jelly too (darker jars)… but I do love jam much more. I’m not the most efficient canner in the world and I tend to burn my fingers, arms, legs… anything that does not have a protective layer on it.  When I get better and take more pictures I can certainly share the recipe… but I can tell you I just use the steady recipe on the Sure-Jell box and try to cut my fruit very uniformly!

Thank you Harry and Sandi!  (The best in-laws a girl could ask for!)

PearsTote

Previous Post Next Post

1 Comment

  • Reply Josie November 26, 2013 at 9:25 pm

    I love your in-laws too!

  • Leave a Reply