European Style Butter Cookie Taste Test Results

The mad cookie baking seems to have taken a breather, but I'll start on a new round this weekend, I think.

I did my taste taste of butter cookies made with European style butters last Monday. To my surprise and somewhat to my disappointment, I found that the very best cookies were made with Organic Valley Unsalted European Style Cultured Butter, which I bought at Metcalfe's here in Madison. I say "surprise," because I didn't think any of these European style butters would stand out very much over the others. I say "Disappointment," because this is definitely the most expensive butter of any I found, costing over $7.00/pound at the time I bought it. But there really was no doubt in my mind, it made the very best butter cookies. If I was making cookies for a party or some special event, I think I'd take the trouble to get this butter, expensive or not.

Second place was a tie, between regular Land o' Lakes Unsalted Butter, which I included for comparison purposes, and Wuthrich European Style Butter, purchased at Whole Foods. Those butters are the same price; the Land o' Lakes butter is widely available. I really couldn't tell a difference between the cookies made with these two butters.

Fourth place was Plugra European Style Butter, fifth place was Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, and sixth was Crystal Farms European Style Butter. The Crystal Farms cookies had an off flavor. I wonder if somehow the butter had somehow gone a bit bad at some point. I didn't notice it when I baked them, but in contrast it was obvious. The Kerrygold cookies were on the thin side and without much flavor, but OK. The cookies with Plugra butter turned out poorly when baked on a "hot" pan like my non-stick Wilton Everglide pan, but were pretty good on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Cookie Sheet. The Wuthrich and Land o' Lakes cookies were excellent, and the Organic Valley cookies were simply out of this world.

I have no idea how widely available these butters are. I hope it's of interest to folks outside of Wisconsin! I suppose it should be, because these are by no means all made in Wisconsin.

Oops...

Goofed today!

I made the Land o' Lakes version of the butter cookies for my taste test with cookies made with European style butters. I accidentally used the Shurfine flour instead of Pillsbury Best - again! At least this time I didn't actually buy the wrong kind. :-) It was in the flour container and I used it instead of the right stuff in the bag. I'm sure it could have happened to anybody, right?

I also left the butter out since yesterday, figuring I actually wanted it to get warm this time, since I'm making all of these cookies with butter warmed to 74-75 degrees. I was going to make them yesterday, but didn't have time and I just left it out for today. It seemed like a good plan, and indeed it was 74.8 degrees when I opened it to make the cookies, but the cookies came out a little oddly. The are crispier than usual, and flatter than usual with Land o' Lakes butter. The cookies baked on both pans look unusually similar, too. Actually I would say they are all good cookies, but the texture isn't the way the usually come out. I think it has more to do with having left the butter out at 75 degrees for a long time.

Between the butter and flour difference, and the cookies coming out differently from usual, I don't think these are the ones to compare against. The flavor would be fine for the comparison, but I actually want to pay attention to texture, too. So guess I gotta do it again! dang. Maybe tomorrow.

Organic Valley Unsalted European Style Cultured Butter

Taxes done! In celebration, I baked some cookies!

Actually, I baked the last cookies with European style butter. This last butter was the most expensive butter I bought, Organic valley Unsalted European Style Cultured Butter, at $7.38 per pound. Better be pretty darned good, huh?

This is another butter that showed a pretty good consistency even at 75 F, not at all on the verge of melting. The cookies I baked on the Williams-Sonoma pan were incredibly good! Melt-in-your-mouth to an extreme. The cookies baked on the Wilton pan aren't as good. Baked for seven minutes on the Wilton pan, they were a little soft, not fully baked. At seven-and-a-half minutes, the four cookies at the center of the pan were OK, but the eight cookies at the edge were over-baked and a bit hard. At eight minutes, a couple of the cookies showed pitting, and most were significantly overbaked.

The cookies on the Wilton pan were somewhat spread, but not too bad. The ones on the Williams-Sonoma pan were higher than usual, really just about perfect, to my mind. I think some of the cookies with Land o' Lakes butter creamed for six minutes looked about like this, but these were perhaps a tad higher.

Before I do the taste test with all five kinds of European style butter, I need to make one more batch with Land o' Lakes butter to compare against. If I don't have time to do that tomorrow, it will be on Monday. If Land o' Lakes is pretty close, I wouldn't ever spend $7.38/pound for butter again, but if this is clearly "the best," I'll report it and people can all make their own decision.

Here are the numbers for the Organic Valley Unsalted European Style Cultured Butter:

Starting Temperature:
74.9 F.

Ending Temperature:
74.2 F. (change of -0.7)

Weight of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
201g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
28.3%

Weight of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
230g

Percent volume increase during through mixing step:
5.7%

Kerrygold Butter

Today I baked cookies with Kerrygold Butter from Trader Joe's, which is one of the European Style butters with higher butterfat content. I warmed the butter to 74.5 degrees - actually, I overshot and it went up to 75.5 degrees - and then creamed for two minutes and mixed in the flour for two minutes, as with the other European style butter experiments.

The butter is interesting. Like the Plugra brand Eurpean style butter, it was not at all goopy even at the high temperature of 75.5 degrees. Unlike the Pflug butter, the cookies baked on the Wilton Everglide pan were not at all pitted. However, the cookies did spread a fair amount. Surprisingly, they even spread quite a lot on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet, perhaps more than with any other butter I've used. Spreading isn't necessarily bad, certainly not for all recipes, but I like these cookies better when they keep their shape, which includes retaining the air pockets within the dough.

Now, there's a small problem - I ran out of Pillsbury Best All-Purpose Flour, and when I bought more I accidentally bought Shurfine All-Purpose Flour instead. Guess I wasn't paying enough attention. I didn't have enough money today to go buy the right flour, so I used the Shurfine flour. I doubt it had any impact at all, but I guess I can't prove that right now. I'll have to use this flour with the remaining European style butter as well. I noticed the Shurfine flour feels a little "heavier" somehow when I was using the whisk to stir it up in the bowl. But of course, I measured the same weight of flour out as always. Hopefully it isn't skewing my results. I'll know for sure when I make an additional batch with Land 'o' Lakes butter.

The resulting cookies aren't quite as good as some of the best of the others. They aren't quite as "light" and melt-in-your-mouth. I think that's related to the spreading and loss of air pockets. They were fairly dense. Not hard, but it took a stronger bite to get a mouthful. They are very good, but at this point I wouldn't choose it over Land 'o' Lakes butter, especially considering its cost. But I do need to do a final taste test making a direct comparison.

I've misplaced my paper with the measurements for kerrygold butter. I'll report them later when I summarize my experimental results with the European Style butters - if I find the paper!

A Few European Style Butters

A Few European Style Butters

Well, it's been a heck of a week at work. A heck of a couple of weeks, actually. Cuts into the cookie-baking time, you know? If anyone has been eagerly awaiting new reports on cookie experiments, sorry, I didn't get a whole lot of baking time in.

But I did get a little time in since I finished the temperature experiments with Crystal Farms butter.

Earlier today I posted information about European style butters I found. Actually, I've been able to make cookies with three of them since I bought them. I thought I might as well give my partial report now, and then another report after I've finished with the last two. The differences in flavor are bound to be subtle, so as I make each batch I'm freezing a few cookies, and I'll do a full comparative taste test when I'm done with all five brands.

For my tests, I am baking the butter cookies after warming the butter to about 74.5 degrees. This is a pretty stringent test. Of Weyauwega, Crystal Farms, and Land o' Lakes brand regular unsalted butters, the Land o' Lakes butter is the only one that was able to make good cookies when the butter was warmed to that temperature. The European butters are too expensive for me to want to do many experiments with using the whole list of brands, and if I were to select one experiment to separate the men from the boys, it has to be one that causes many experiments with regular butter to fail. So, 74.5 degrees it is.

The first one I tried was Crystal Farms European Style Butter. When I unwrapped it, the aroma was pleasant. When I open Crystal Farms regular butter, it smells like the artificial butter flavoring you get on popcorn. I actually don't like that smell very much - it seems like an obvious artifical aroma. The European Style Butter has the same aroma, but somehow it didn't seem so raw. That's pretty subjective - could be my nose wasn't working as well that day, too. Anyway, that's what I thought. I made the cookies, and they came out just great. In other words, they were superior to the cookies made with regular Crystal Farms Unsalted Butter, because those weren't so great when the butter had been warmed to 74.5 degrees. I thought that they were equal to the cookies I made with Land o' Lakes butter. I had a few of the Land o' Lakes cookies sitting there, and I did a little taste test. I could tell no difference between the cookies made with Crystal Farms European Style Butter and Land o' Lakes regular butter, either in texture or flavor. So, although the cookies were excellent, I didn't see a reason based on this to pay extra for the Crystal Farms European Style Butter, which is almost twice as expensive. That's not to say the extra fat might not be a benefit in some other recipe! But I didn't see a difference in my quick taste tests.

The next butter I tried was Wuthrich European Style Butter. The 'u' actually has a German umlaut over it, leading one to think it might actually be imported from Germany, but actually it's made right here in Greenwood, Wisconsin by Grassland Dairy Products Inc. Apparently their regular Unsalted Wuthrich Butter won the U.S. Championship at some point. I'm sure it's good butter. When I warmed it to almost 75 degrees, the butter became very soft indeed. I thought maybe the cookies would be bad, but actually they came out great. I didn't notice anything in particular about the flavor, but it didn't seem unusual. The cookies seem as good as the Land o' Lakes cookies, but I won't know for sure until I do the direct comparison taste test in a week or so.

The third butter I tried was Plugra European Style Butter. Plugra is made in the US by Keller's Creamery. Their Web site lists a production plant in Texas. Keller's also makes Breakstone Sour Cream, which a Russian friend of mine said is "the best," meaning the most like the sour cream she remembers from Russia. Nothing wrong with the food! However, it didn't pass my stress test. The cookies baked on the Wilton Everglide pan were extremely pitted, and there were minor signs of pitting even on the cookies baked on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet. Interestingly, the butter clearly had a different quality to it from any other I've used. Even at 75 degrees it wasn't remotely goopy. It was certainly soft, but if the degree of softness of Land o' Lakes is a 6 at 75 degrees, and of Wuthrich European Style is an 8, the Plugra was only about a 3, about the same as normal butters at seventy. I would have said that sign portended well for the results, but the butter just doesn't work out that well for butter cookies, whatever the reason. I wonder if that means it's important for the butter to become soft beyond some certain point to be able to make good cookies?

And here's my standard measurements for these butters. The temperature tends to fall after the initial measurement because the room temperature is below what I'm heating the butter to. There are big differences in volume increase during creaming, but I don't see any correlations between this data and the way the cookies come out.

CRYSTAL FARMS UNSALTED EUROPEAN STYLE BUTTER

Starting Temperature:
74.2 F.

Ending Temperature:
73.2 F. (change of -1.0)

Weight of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
220g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
17.2%

Weight of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
229g

Percent volume increase during through mixing step:
7.9%


WUTHRICH EUROPEAN STYLE BUTTER

Starting Temperature:
74.7 F.

Ending Temperature:
72.2 F. (change of -2.5)

Weight of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
197g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
31.0%

Weight of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
238g

Percent volume increase during through mixing step:
3.8%


PLUGRA EUROPEAN STYLE BUTTER

Starting Temperature:
74.7 F.

Ending Temperature:
73.2 F. (change of -1.5)

Weight of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
198g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
30.3%

Weight of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
231g

Percent volume increase during through mixing step:
6.9%

Looking at European Style Butter

I have never bought anything but just regular butter or oleomargarine. When I started all this cookie baking, though, I was looking over the butter selection at the store and saw Crystal Farms European Style Butter. "Huh? Whazzat?"I never heard of it before. Something new?

Then a couple of weeks ago I was at the grocery store and a couple came up to where the butter was, and the guy said, "Huh. No Xyz European Style Butter! They sell it all over. I thought sure Woodman's would have it. There's Crystal Farms European Style. I don't want that. Let's find some Xyz." Of course he didn't say "Xyz." I forget what it was he did say, exactly. I asked his wife, "Out of curiosity, why are you looking for that particular butter?" She said, "It reminds us of the cookies we got in France. It has a different taste."

Of course, I have to investigate that. And what better sort of cookie to investigate it with than butter cookies?

Woodman's Grocery Store had only Crystal Farms European Style Butter. That guy had said they have this other kind all over, so I wondered what brands of butter they have in the other grocery stores around. I took a couple of hours and made a grand tour of the grocery stores on the west side of Madison, checking out the dairy counters for European style butters. Here's what I came up with - store, butter, and price:

Woodman's
Crystal Farms European Style Butter
$1.59 for a half-pound (two sticks)

Trader Joe's
Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter
$2.69 for a half-pound (two sticks)

Metcalfe's (Hilldale)
Organic valley Unsalted European Style Cultured Butter
$3.69 for a half-pound (two sticks)

Whole Foods (University)
Wuthrich European Style Butter
$2.39 for a half-pound (two sticks)

Whole Foods (University)
Plugra European Style Butter
$2.19 for a half-pound (two sticks)



I was a bit surprised - every store had a different kind! The only kind that was at more than one store was the Crystal Farms European Style Butter. I forget which other stores had it - maybe Copp's or Cub Foods. Trade Joe's, Metcalfe's, and Whole Foods are all smaller than the mega-grocery stores and had something different to offer.

To offer for a pretty penny, that is. These butters are darned expensive, aren't they? The cheapest one is $3.18 for a pound, and the most expensive $7.38 for a pound. Compare that to $1.50 for a whole pound of Roundy's Unsalted Butter at Copp's. I wonder if they really taste that different?

One significant difference between these butters and regular butter is the percent fat. Regular butter is 80% fat. European Style Butter is usually 83% fat. Another difference is that regular "sweet cream butter" is made from pasteurized fresh cream. The European Style butters may be made from pasteurized fresh cream, but then with certain fermenting bacteria added, or may be made from slightly soured cream, in which fermentation has already taken place. There's interesting information on butter on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter. Check it out.

A couple of Web pages give me the information that European style butters, with their lower moisture content, are especially good for flaky pastries like puff pastry and croissants. Cookies are usually just about the opposite, and that would make one think they would not offer much to cookies. On the other hand, to the extent there might be a different flavor, they could be good in certain recipes.

I checked out the labels on each of these butters, and wouldn't you know it, the ingredients and even listed fat contents per serving are not all the same:

Crystal Farms European Style Butter
Cream, Natural Flavorings
Total fat 12g, Saturated fat 8g

Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter
Cultured Pasteurized Cream
Total fat 12g, Saturated fat 8g

Organic Valley Unsalted European Style Cultured Butter
Pasteurized Sweet Cream, Swiss cultures
Total fat 12g, Saturated fat 8g

Wuthrich European Style Butter
Cream, Natural Flavorings
Total fat 12g, Saturated fat 8g

Plugra European Style Butter
Pasteurized Cream, Natural Flavor
Total fat 11g, Saturated fat 7g


I noticed one interesting thing about these, right off the bat. Unlike the less expensive regular butters we buy, these are all encased in foil wrappers. That's great! Butter has a strong tendency to take on the aroma of whatever you have in your refrigerator. Some cheap paper wrappers are a poor barrier. Some butters claim to have a better paper wrapper that forms a more effective barrier to refrigerator odors. The best barrier of all is foil. I was glad to see that for the price of these special butters, at least they give you the best sort of odor barrier!

The 11g fat in Plugra European Style Butter is the same as on a package of normal butter with the Roundy's brand, but a Web site says they have 82% fat compared to 80% in normal butter.

I'm engaged in trying these butters out, and will post information as I make the cookies.

Land o' Lakes Butter Quality is No Urban Myth

In reading on the Internet about cookies, I have seen numerous posts from people who say they do all their baking with Land o' Lakes butter. Who are these people? Do they work for the Land o' Lakes company, or what? It sure sounds like an urban myth to me. Why would one brand of butter be better than another?

Land o' Lakes butter tends to be a little more expensive, and so I started these cookie experiments using butter manufactured by Weyauwega Star Dairy. As you know, if you've followed my experiments, Weyauwega brand butter is no good for butter cookies. I switched to Crystal Farms butter and saw far better results. Crystal Farms gives good butter cookies with a long creaming time from 69 F. or so, but it fails in difficult situations such as being warmed to 74 degrees before creaming. That would make it pretty difficult to use in the summer, when the room temperature air is always above 74 degrees. You'd have to keep an eagle eye on it after you take it out of the refrigerator and make sure you are ready to proceed with the cookies as soon as it gets to 68-70 degrees. Not very practical.

Remembering the numerous references to Land o' Lakes butter, of course I tried a batch of cookies using Land o' Lakes unsalted butter, warmed to 74 degrees before creaming for two minutes, then mixing flour for two minutes. Wow, what great results!

And so I have to say, people who say Land o' Lakes butter is outstanding for baking are speaking more than an urban myth. It's truth, pure and simple. Its cost is slightly higher than "generic butter" such as from Weyauwega Star Dairy, but about the same cost as Crystal Farms butter, and its qualities produce great results when many other butters do not.

I am not one to find something that works and say "I'll never use anything else." I don't say that about Land o' Lakes butter, either. I plan on experimenting with some other butters. But Land o' Lakes is the standard against which I will measure other butters, from this point forward. If I find something better, I'll use it if I want, and I'll post it. But I am extremely impressed with Land o' Lakes butter!

The cookies I made were melt-in-your-mouth delicious, even the ones baked on the Wilton Everglide pan. That's a major breakthrough. With the cookies I made with six minutes' creaming from 69 F. with Crystal Farms butter, the cookies baked on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet were great, but the ones on the Wilton pan were slightly harder. Still good, but definitely a different quality, and to my mind not as good as the ones baked on the Goldtouch pan. These cookies made with Land o' Lakes butter creamed from 74 F. for two minutes were even top-notch when baked on the Wilton pan! The cookies on the Wilton pan were flatter and "bumpier", but the texture was exactly the same as the ones from the Goldtouch pan. That's an absolute first, and the overall results were a huge improvement over the cookies made under exactly the same conditions with Crystal Farms butter.

I am not sure if they are better than the six-minute creaming cookies made with Crystal Farms butter. I'll have to make some more of those for a direct comparison in the near future. I think maybe they are a tiny bit better. The main thing about the Land o' Lakes butter is that it seems to provide good results under varied conditions, some of which cause cookies made with other butters to fail miserably. In the winter, I wouldn't mind using Crystal Farms butter and creaming for a long time, since I do have cookie sheets that produce great results with it. But Crystal Farms and Land o' Lakes butter are basically the same price, so unless my direct comparison actually shows Crystal Farms cookies taste better - which is possible, when I get to it - I'd probably just buy Land o' Lakes.

Am I exaggerating about how good the cookies came out with Land o' Lakes butter? I took some of these cookies in to work. A guy sent me an e-mail about them. He wrote, "Dem cookies are damn good. Outstanding, even. But they don't do much for my girlish figure." (Ha ha ha.) I was pleased. :-) I told him they don't do much for mine, either. But it goes to show, yeah, those cookies are pretty darned good!

For the mundane measurements:

Starting Temperature:
74.2 F.

Ending Temperature:
72.7 F. (change of -1.5)

Weight of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
204g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
26.5%

Weight of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
229g

Percent volume increase during through mixing step:
7.9%

Since the next several experiments are going to follow exactly the same procedure, here's what I did for today's experiment and the last experiment with Crystal Farms unsalted butter. It's the same procedure I've been following since I started in January, so you can use it for reference for earlier experiments as well, except for where they note explicit procedural variations.

1. Get 4 sticks of unsalted butter warming up from refrigerator temperature.
2. Measure 405 grams (about 2 cups) of C&H Granulated Sugar.
3. Stir 4+ cups of unsifted Pillsbury Best All-Purpose Flour in a bowl.
4. Weigh out 495 grams (about four level cups) of the stirred flour into a second bowl.
5. Add 0.5 teaspoon baking powder to the weighed flour and stir about 40 times briskly with a whisk.
6. Sift the weighed flour and baking powder into a third bowl using the trigger-handle triple sifter. 7. When the butter has come to 74 degrees, record the temperature and proceed.
8. Using my Sunbeam Mixmaster, beat the butter in the large bowl at Level 2 (folding dry ingredients) for 15 seconds.
9. Beat the butter at Level 7 (creaming speed) for 30 seconds.
10. Add sugar. Beat at Level 2 for 15 seconds.
11. Cream butter and sugar at Level 7 for two minutes.
12. 60 seconds before the end of the creaming time, add 1 teaspoon Durkee Imitation Vanilla.
13. Measure the temperature of the butter/sugar mixture at the end of the creaming period.
14. Measure the weight of one level cup of the butter/sugar mixture at the end of the creaming period.
15. Add about two cups of the flour to the butter. Mix at level 2 for 20 seconds.
16. Add the remaining two cups of flour. Mix at level 2 for 2 minutes.
17. Measure the weight of one level cup of the dough.
18. Divide the dough into several equal portions. (Three equal portions by weight is about 435 grams each).
19. Form each portion into a roll about 9 inches long, wrapped in plastic wrap.
20. Refrigerate all the rolls for at least 1 hour, not longer than three hours.
21. 30 minutes before baking, turn the oven on to 350 F.
22. Slice the rolls into quarter-inch slices.
23. Bake on my Wilton and Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet pans to the point of crispness.
24. After the cookies are cooled, save several samples in a plastic bag in the freezer.
25. Take notes on the resulting cookies.

Creaming Crystal Farms Butter and Sugar from 74 Degrees

I made a batch of butter cookies to wind up the most recent series of experiments, which has used Crystal Farms unsalted butter creamed with sugar for two minutes, with the flour mixed in for two minutes plus twenty seconds (twenty seconds with the first two cups, then two minutes with all four cups of flour). This experiment used butter that had been warmed to just over 74 degrees before creaming. The butter at that temperature was amazingly plastic!

I am presenting here the data for the whole series for comparison. Each set of four numbers is the results from warming butter to temperatures of 68.4, 70.2, 72.0, and 73.9 degrees respectively:

Starting Temperature:
68.4 - 70.2 - 72.0 - 73.9

Ending Temperature:
68.9 (change of 0.5) - 70.9 (change of 0.7) - 71.8 (change of -0.2) - 75.9 (change of 2.0)

Weight of one level cup of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
200g - 204g - 214g - 203g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
28.0% - 26.5% - 20.6% - 27.1%

Weight of one level cup of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
247 - 239 - 241 - 226

Percent volume increase during creaming and mixing:
0% - 3.4% - 2.5% - 9.3%

The increase in volume during creaming was the same as at lower temperatures. From this data alone, it seems like maybe the lower increase in volume at 72 degrees may have been an exception, but I wouldn't know without doing the same thing a number of times. The volume increase during mixing was the most in this series of experiments, and I might have thought that would be a good sign, but see the next paragraph.

The key observation is that the cookies didn't come out very well. The cookies from the Wilton pan were quite flat indeed, and pitted. The cookies baked on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Cookie Sheet were pretty flat as well, and even a few of them were pitted, which is very rare on the Goldtouch pan.

Thus, from this series of experiements, the only starting temperature that produced very good cookies was 72 F. At 70 they were too flat, and at 68 they were very badly pitted and even deformed. Above 72, the cookies are again too flat and pitted.

The cookies at 72 degrees showed small increase in volume through the mixing step, and showed the least volume increase of all during the creaming step. Having the lowest volume increase isn't really the key factor, though - cookies that are cremed for six minutes have a much higher volume increase than any here, and come out quite well.

That's all pretty interesting. I would say that with Crystal Farms butter, the procedure using two minutes of creaming is simply too touchy. It's not very practical to try to get the butter to a certain temperature within a degree one way or the other. I've been doing it all the time, but it is definitely no fun, and since the butter doesn't really "go back" to the correct state if it gets too warm but is then cooled again, trying to pursue a highly temperature-dependent recipe like this carries too big a risk of overheating the butter and being just plain out of luck.

But tonight I did precisely the same experiment, warming the butter to 74 degrees and creaming for two minutes, using Land o' Lakes butter - and the results were amazing. More tomorrow. Suffice it to say that my conclusion about the procedure here applies only to Crystal Farms butter.

If using Crystal Farms butter, you want to warm the butter to only around 68-70 degrees, and then cream for perhaps six minutes, or long enough to raise the temperature of the butter to around 71-72 degrees. That procedure makes great cookies using Crystal Farms butter. Nothing seems to work well with Weyauwega brand butter.

A Midpoint in Butter Cookie Experiments

I think I am about at a midpoint in my experiments with butter cookies, and it might be a good time to summarize the important things I have learned about them so far.

First, the results of my last experiment. I made butter cookies with Crystal Farms unsalted butter, warming the butter to 72 F. before creaming for two minutes and mixing the flour in for two minutes plus twenty seconds. (Add half the flour, mix 20 seconds, add the remainder, mix two more minutes.) I will report three numbers for each value. First, the averaged results from warming the butter to 68.4 degrees. Second, the results from warming to 70.2 degrees. Last, last night's results, warming to 72.0 degrees:

Starting Temperature:
68.4 - 70.2 - 72.0

Ending Temperature:
68.9 (change of 0.5) - 70.9 (change of 0.7) - 71.8 (change of -0.2)

Weight of one level cup of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
200g - 204g - 214g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
28.0% - 26.5% - 20.6%

Weight of one level cup of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
247 - 239 - 241

Percent volume increase during creaming and mixing:
0% - 3.4% - 2.5%

(I chalk the lower temperature when done creaming in tonight's experiment up to a combination of the short creaming time, a room temperature that was probably below 72 degrees, and to the bowl being a little bit cool and absorbing some of the heat from the butter.)

Last night's cookies, creamed at the highest temperature, turned out the best so far of these three batches at increasingly higher temperatures. The cookies from the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Baking Sheet were pretty much the same as the ones I made earlier after six minutes' creaming, except they don't seem quite as sweet. The cookies from the Wilton pan are insignificantly pitted, but are flatter. However, they are not hard and not crispy. I probably didn't bake them quite long enough - they might have gotten a little crispier. I only made one pan's worth.

Last night's cookies seemed to want a little bit longer baking at 350 F. than did cookies I mixed at lower temperatures. The reason why is one of those unfathomable mysteries.

I noticed something different about this batch. One thing I didn't mention before is that the dough from the two batches I made at lower temperatures wanted to climb up the beaters. It would fill the insides of the wire cages and actually go up above the wire cages. I would stop beating half-way through and clear them out, particularly the dough that climbed over the top of the beaters, because it was hardly mixed at all and would have been two globs of mostly just butter in the middle of the refrigerated rolls. That was kind of a pain. The batch I made today didn't climb above the beaters at all. That was consistent with my discovery of the big mistake of trying to cream butter that was too cold, when it would just glom onto the beaters and not cream at all. I have not had the problem with dough climbing above the beaters with any of my experiments until those two. In all the previous experiments where I was mixing in flour and baking cookies, I was creaming the butter for six minutes. That raised the temperature of the butter a fair amount before the flour was added. Those two batches were probably the first ones I made where I added the flour at a bit lower temperature. I don't think this observation has anything to do with how the cookies turn out, but it's interesting! Besides the cookies coming out differently, it's another manifestation of the dough actually being different between the batches, and it's a difference that can be explained by a higher temperature.

The photo shows two cookies in the foreground, both from the Williams-Sonoma Commercial Quality Baking Sheet. The one on the left is from today, i.e. butter warmed to 72.0 degrees before creaming for two minutes. The one of the right is from the previous experiment, butter warmed to 70.2 degrees before creaming. Otherwise, everything was the same. You can see how much higher the cookie on the left rose than the one on the right. Both cookies are representative of all the cookies on the pan. The munching texture was equally different, better in the cookie on the left, in my opinion.

Here's the "stock" of results so far:

- the brand of butter I use makes a big difference. If I use unsalted butter from Weyauwega Star Dairies, they come out far too flat and pitted. If I use Crystal Farms unsalted butter, problems with pitting are nearly eliminated, and the texture is much nicer. Also, the taste seems slightly better due to the flavor of the Crystal Farms butter. I still need to try out Land o' Lakes unsalted butter, European style butter, and margarine.

- the amount of air introduced during creaming is not very important, except that there has to be some. The process of mixing in the flour beats almost all the air out of the creamed butter, but the amount that remains is extremely important. If I add the flour to creamed butter whose temperature is on the low side (below 70 degrees), there is not really any air left after mixing and the cookies will be far too flat and hard. If the butter is just a little warmer, there is a little air left in the dough, and that allows the cookies to rise slightly and not be hard. If it was too warm, the creaming wouldn't introduce enough air in the first place, but I'm not sure what would be "too warm."

- if I cream for six minutes, the temperature of the butter rises a fair amount during creaming, so if I start with the butter at 68 or 69 degrees, the flour is added with the butter at a much warmer temperature and the resulting cookies are great. If I only cream for two minutes, I have to warm the butter to a higher temperature before creaming, otherwise the butter isn't warm enough when I add the flour.

- warming the butter to a higher temperature before starting creaming keeps creaming from incorporating as much air into the butter as when creaming from a lower temperature, but that's not a key issue, as long as there is "enough" air introduced from creaming. However, the cookies made with only two minutes' creaming are generally not quite as high as those with six minutes' creaming, so it is possible two minutes' creaming is not quite "enough", although the cookies actually come out more or less OK.

- pans that don't heat the dough too quickly produce better butter cookies, i.e. not as hard

- longer creaming seems to increase the sweetness of the cookies

- two minutes of mixing flour with the butter at my Sunbeam Mixmaster's Level 2 is enough, but nothing less will give adequate mixing. Too bad, because less would not cause as much air to be lost from the dough.

I think that about sums it up. Here are the things I see doing in the near future:

1. Do one more creaming temperature experiment, at about 74 degrees. See if the Wilton pan cookies are then the same as the cookies from six-minute creaming.

2. Try creaming for four minutes, starting at a couple of different temperatures.

3. Try increasing the amount of baking powder from 0.5 tsp to 1.0 tsp, and see what that does for the cookies creamed for two minutes.

4. If the "best" procedure turns out to be two minutes of creaming, try it with superfine sugar.

5. Make the cookies with the "best" procedure, using unsalted Land o' Lakes butter, a European style butter, and margarine.

6. Try a larger amount of vanilla, and different vanillas.

7. Investigate what happens if I bake the cookies at 325 instead of 350, but for a longer period of time, with the Wilton or other dark non-stick pans.

8. Try adding lemon zest.

9. Try different brands/kinds of flour and see if they affect the results at all.

10. Make the cookies with baking soda instead of baking powder.

That will keep me busy for probably three more months. I have to admit I'll be glad to move on to other cookies! But I'm sure learning a lot, nonetheless. Luckily, I still think the butter cookies are delicious!

Two Minutes Creaming and Mixing, Starting Temperature 70.2 F.

Very interesting - I did the two minutes creaming, two minutes mixing with Crystal Farms butter that was at 70.2 degrees at the start of creaming. The result wasn't quite what I expected, but was still improved.

The data was:

Starting temperature:
70.2 F.

Ending temperature:
70.9 F. (change of 0.7 F.)

Weight of one level cup after creaming, not including the measuring cup:
204 grams

Increase in volume with creaming:
26.5%

Weight of one level cup after mixing with flour, not including the measuring cup:
239 grams

Increase in volume after mixing (relative to a weight of 247 grams):
3.4%


The resulting cookies were flat and still spread on both baking sheets I tested on, but there was only the tiniest hint of pitting in the cookies baked on the Wilton EverGlide sheet, not noticeable unless you were looking for it, and there was no problem with the cookies from the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Cookie Sheet.

I find that these cookies really look just fine. Unlike the cookies made starting at 68.4 degrees, they are not too hard; they are simply crispier and thinner than the butter cookies I have made after creaming for six minutes. Personally I prefer the ones made with a longer creaming time, but I wonder if some people would actually prefer these?

I was thinking these might come out exactly like the ones I made with six minutes creaming time and two minutes mixing, but they are flatter. Next I think I'll try two minutes of creaming starting between 71.5 and 72.0 degrees and see how those cookies come out.

I think it's amazing that the volume increase for the last three creaming experiments including this one is identical - the weights of a level cup after creaming were 204 grams for all three experiments. This experiment started at 70.2 F., and the last two started at 68.4 F. I have definitely seen where starting at a warmer temperature reduces the amount of volume increase with creaming, but apparently the temperature difference here was not great enough to affect creaming results. But it was enough to affect the volume after mixing the flour! And it was enough to affect how the cookies turned out.

Fascinating, just fascinating!