Weyauwega Butter Creaming Experiment - Series one, Part 4

On February 11, I posted results from a series of creaming experiment. The six-minute time seemed way out of line. In all my subsequent experiment, I chose to cream for six minutes in order to get a firm handle on six-minute creaming data. First, here are the results I posted before:

minutes - change in temp F. - wt. ingredients - %volume increase

0 - NA – 258 - 0
1 – -0.5 - 226 - 14.2%
2 – -0.5 - 194 - 33.0%
3 – 0.8 - 189 - 36.5%
4 – 0.7 - 173 - 49.1%
5 – 1.1 – 171 - 50.9%
6 – 2.4 - 182 - 41.8%
8 – 2.0 - 166 - 55.4%
10 – 4.5 - 169 - 52.7%
13 – 7.0 - 165 - 56.4%


Here are 6-minute creaming results since - weights, including the cup, followed by temperature start and end (sometimes I forget to record the end temperature):

243 - 68.6
228 - 69.3 - 71.0
226 - 68.7
225 - 68.7
229 - 68.4 - 70.6
228 - 68.9 - 70.5
233 - 69.1 - 72.3
234 - 68.5 - 70.9
218 - 69.5 - 72.0
237 - 70.3 - 73.8
228 - 68.5 - 71.5

Looking at temperature changes only, six minutes of creaming raised the temperature by these amounts - starting temperature first (in degrees Fahrenheit), followed by temperature change, ordered by temperature change:

68.9 - 1.6
69.3 - 1.7
68.4 - 2.2
68.5 - 2.4
69.5 - 2.5
68.5 - 3.0
69.1 - 3.1
70.3 - 3.5

That's quite a lot of variation in how much the temperature rose during creaming, isn't it? Is there any correlation between temperature change and starting temperature?

The greatest rise in temperature happened when the starting temperature of the butter was also the highest. In addition, three of the four experiments with greatest temperature change have starting temperatures above 69.0, while of the four experiments with least temperature change, only one has a starting temperature above 69.0.

It appears as though the higher the starting temperature, the more the temperature rises during creaming. Warmer butter behaves differently. Specifically, it is easier to beat air into, but it also loses the air that is beat into it easier. Warmer butter probably coats flour grains more easily. From a practical standpoint, it's nearly impossible to bring butter or anything else to a given temperature within a tenth of a degree, so about all one can do is make some observations. Since the procedures following the creaming step in making the cookies varied, I can't really say what the effect of a warmer end temperature is on the cookies.

Here is the weight and temperature data again, sorted by final weight, followed by the final temperature when it was recorded:

218 72.0
225
226
228 71.0
228 70.5
228 71.5
229 70.6
233 72.3
233 72.3
237 73.8
243

There seems to be some correlation between final weight and final temperature. I am going to throw out the highest and lowest weights - probably something unusual happened with those experiments, such as there was a huge bubble of air in the cup buried in the butter while I weighed it, or something was touching the edge of the scale. That leaves the data as:

225
226
228 71.0
228 70.5
228 71.5
229 70.6
233 72.3
233 72.3
237 73.8

It's too bad I forgot to record the end temperatures with those lowest two weights, but from what is left we can clearly see that a higher temperature results in a higher final weight, meaning less air being whipped into the butter - or perhaps, less air being whipped in means a higher final temperature. I don't think that means if we warm the butter to 120 degrees it will get way more air whipped into it! But at temperatures near room temperature, this looks to be a true statement.

Those were the weights with the cup. The weights without cup and the percent volume increase assuming a starting weight of 213 grams were:

171 - 50.9%
172 - 50.0%
174 - 48.3%
174 - 48.3%
174 - 48.3%
175 - 47.3%
179 - 44.1%
179 - 44.1%

The averaged data for 6-minute creaming of Weyauwega brand butter is:

Percent Volume Increase = 47.7% +- 2.47%

The "+- 2.47%" is the standard deviation, which indicates how variable the number is. 68% of all results will fall within one standard deviation of the mean, so in other words, 68% of all creaming efforts for six minutes with Weyauwega butter and my mixer starting between 68 and 71 degrees Fahrenheit will whip enough air into the butter and sugar to yield a volume increase of between 45.2% and 50.2%.

Temperature change = 2.5 F. +- 0.67 F.

Going back to the original creaming results of all times, I can use this figure for the 6-minute results, yielding:

0 - NA – 258 - 0
1 – -0.5 - 226 - 14.2%
2 – -0.5 - 194 - 33.0%
3 – 0.8 - 189 - 36.5%
4 – 0.7 - 173 - 49.1%
5 – 1.1 – 171 - 50.9%
6 – 2.5 - 174.8 - 47.7%
8 – 2.0 - 166 - 55.4%
10 – 4.5 - 169 - 52.7%
13 – 7.0 - 165 - 56.4%

So that's kind of interesting. The volume increase is still lower than every other time from 4 minutes onwards. The thing to do would be to get averages for the other times as well in order to get equally accurate numbers to compare with. However, I'm focusing on butter cookies and have decided that Weyauwega brand butter makes lousy butter cookies following my procedure, so I'm not going to do that at this time. I'll get some results with Crystal Farms and Land o' Lakes butter at some point, but I have some other things to do first.

I have data from two 6-minute creaming efforts with Crystal Farms butter:

Crystal Farms: final weight not including cup, start temperature, end temperature

193 - 69.6 - 72.5
180 - 70.1 - 72.3

Assuming the same starting weight of 312 grams, those yielded volume increases of 61.8% and 73.3%. Compared to Weyauwega butter's 47.7%, that's quite a difference!

That raises a really interesting question - do the Crystal Farms cookies come out better than the Weyauwega cookies because of some quality of the butter that cannot be reproduced with Weyauwega butter, or do they come out better because there is more air being whipped into them for whatever the reason?

CORRECTION: After first posting this, I see I made a big goof - a starting weight of 312 grams includes the weight of the cup, and the number I needed to use in the volume calculations is 258 grams. So the two crystal farms experiments yielded volume increases of only 33.7% and 43.3%. The second measurement is not much different from Weyauwega butter. A future post gives more accurate measurements.

Well, every single time I have made the cookies with all sorts of variations, the Weyauwega cookies come out poorly unless an egg is added to them. I think I could do an experiment of creaming without sugar, to get the volume up to what it was with the Crystal Farms butter, and then add the sugar and go from there, which would isolate the effect of the amount of air whipped in. I really doubt that the results will be any different, though. It's possible, but I doubt it very much. I think the thing to do is to go with my gut feeling that Weyauwega butter simply does not make good butter cookies, and forget about doing further experiments with it. It's not like anybody will die if I make the wrong decision! If anyone wants to do that experiment and let me know what happens, I'd be delighted to report the results. For me, onward and upward with better butter!