I have a recipe for a butter-batter pie that's a favorite this time of year. In the past, I've tried making it with European-style butter and found that the batter ends up too thick and heavy.
I'm contemplating adding about 7% of the weight in milk to reduce the fat content to be closer to what the recipe expected, but I'm wondering if anyone here has had experience with making this sort of substitution and can offer advice. I know there's a difference in fat content, but European butter is also churned a bit more and also cultured, and I don't know what effect that has.
I don't know if this will help you, but sometimes I do a "spreadable butter", where I use: butter, water, and/or oil (like olive oil for taste), if I add a lot of liquid I need to use some xanathan to stabiliyse it.
I mix everything at room temperature and then cool it in fridge. The result is a light, easy to spread butter. So yes, I am sure you can add some milk or even water, you can mix it together and cool it back if you need. Just take into the account that some liquids will slowly sip out.
Are you doing a pie crust or some other kind of pie batter?
If you are near the border I suggest trying French butter. The consistency and taste is definitely different although I have never compared the fat content, etc. Plus there is a huge variety, you can easily find 10+ brands in a Carrefour compared to the one or two available here across all stores.
But good luck in finding the real cranberries here, that is more the challenge than the butter in my view. Only a few of the big Coops tend to have it for a few weeks this time of year and the quality is not always what you desire.
You should be able to find cranberries about now. In larger coops and definitely Globus. Maybe topCC or aligro. I usually buy 3-4 bags and throw them in the freezer. Suprisingly, they’re still good after a year. But you have to pick through them. Most of the cranberries here come from Canada.
I'm not sure if it is the butter that makes it too heavy ... I've basically given up baking since I moved here as the flour is too heavy for the recipes I want to make. Does your butter batter contain flour? Hope you can figure it out...I used to source American flour from wherever I could, but that has become more difficult in recent years.
In Asian stores you can find cake flour. Lower gluten and protein I think, but more important, more finely milled and lighter. Another trick might be to sift your flour using a sieve or sifter. This is especially important if you measure by volume rather than weight, but it’s good practice anyways, no matter.
I see the recipe above calls for one cup of flour... easy to pack that in. One cup of all purpose flour weighs 120 g. Here’s a weight chart...
Swiss butter is possibly giving you a different taste to what you're expecting but it's not affecting the consistency. You need to change the flour for one with less protein and adjust the amount.
Yes, this is what all the US cookbooks say and this is what I do when I haven’t any cake flour. The interesting thing about cake flour from the Asian store is that it’s all wheat, no cornflour (starch). I can’t remember if cake flour in the US has cornflour in it as well.