Thursday, November 29, 2012

Another Food Gift Idea for the Holidays: Homemade Cultured Butter!

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All week long we've been sharing edible gift ideas, from savory granola to herb-infused honey, from homemade condiments to homemade tea blends. Here's one more gift you can offer from your kitchen: homemade cultured butter!

When it comes to butter, people often don't know what they're missing until they've had cultured, or European-style, butter: after that butter goes from being a waxy refrigerator staple to something craveable. Super soft, creamy, slightly tangy, a truly "buttery" butter, cultured butter is distinctly different from the sweet cream butter you find in most American grocery stores. This is why we think it makes a good gift: who wouldn't want to receive a little bit of this "special" butter, especially when it's expensive to buy?

Get a Recipe:
How To Make Cultured Butter America's Test Kitchen
Homemade Cultured Butter Food52

To make it extra special as a gift, you can buy a butter mold ($24.95 from Williams-Sonoma, as Janet from Simply So Good did, seen in the top photo) to give it shape, then wrap it in wax paper or parchment with a piece of baker's twine. Or you could gift it in this marble butter keeper ($24.38 from Amazon). Melissa Clark swears by them.

Have you ever given homemade cultured butter as a gift?

Related: Is European Butter Really Better for Baking?

(Image: Simply So Good)


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