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.