Butter icing

Butter is a dairy product made from butter icing whole milk or cream into fat and buttermilk. The fat is compressed and chilled into blocks of butter.

Butter can be bought salted or unsalted. Salt is used for preservation and flavour, but varies according to the breed of cow and its feed. Butter is around 80 per cent fat and for this reason, many people prefer to use alternatives. Low-fat spreads are generally not suitable for baking so read packaging carefully.

Some cake recipes replace butter with a mild-tasting oil such as sunflower oil, which is ideal for those with a dairy intolerance or allergy. Cakes made in this way tend to be moister and last longer, but don’t have the rich, buttery taste. It can be used directly as a condiment or melted for frying or coating. Butter is also used in baking, such as in classic sponges and pastries, or for enriching sauces. In a simple pasta dish try a delicious brown butter linguine or chilled as a coating on radishes dipped in brown butter.

French butter is prized for its superior quality, but can be pricier than others. It’s best to buy the right type to suit your needs, most sweet and baking recipes call for unsalted butter, but salted butter is better for spreading onto toast and croissants. Keep it away from pungent foods as it has a tendency to pick up the flavours. For rubbed in cake mixtures, use butter straight from the fridge. This website is published by Immediate Media Company Limited under licence from BBC Studios Distribution. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream.

Most frequently made from cow’s milk, butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. Butter is a water-in-oil emulsion resulting from an inversion of the cream, where the milk proteins are the emulsifiers. It generally has a pale yellow color, but varies from deep yellow to nearly white. Churning cream into butter using a hand-held mixer. Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in microscopic globules. Churning produces small butter grains floating in the water-based portion of the cream. This watery liquid is called buttermilk—although the buttermilk most common today is instead a directly fermented skimmed milk.