Fair point. In this context, I'm referring to the butter you get in the U.S. It's a few percent lower in fat, not quite as well churned, and not cultured.
The recipe I'm using needs a batter-like consistency rather than a dough-like consistency, and I observed that using higher-fat, cultured butter gives a markedly denser result that doesn't quite taste right.
There are some really great tips in this thread, including several I wasn't aware of in terms of differences in flour here.
I'll look at playing with the temperature a bit as recommended above, and probably just adjust the batter thickness by adding cold milk as needed.
That's weird. I have a mousse recipe that calls for whipped cream. I found that the 35% stuff (vollrahm) was just toooo buttery, so I tried halbrahm (25%?? or so?) from Coop. It whipped up beautifully!
BTW, Austria makes flour even more difficult by offering 2 millings: you can buy each kind (percentage of gluten) in either glatt (smooth, or fine) or griffig (coarse). It makes things very challenging. OTOH, their Type 405 glatt is almost like Wondra (the wonderful US flour in a round Pringles-like tin that makes gravy impossible to lump).
I also had a lot of problems when I moved here, I guess it is because they are mostly UTH and I was used to fresh cream. UTH needs more time to start to thicken and than goes very quickly, so it is easy to overdo it.
- keep everything as cold as possible, in summer it helps if you cool the bowl and even the whisks
- I use stand mixer, as it takes so much time, lower the speed to medium helps not to miss the "done" time
Never had any problem whipping the usual full cream found here in nearly every store. I always make sure it's properly chilled though. Seems to be equivalent to the 'heavy cream' in US per my experience.
That must be it ... I thought it was the UHT, but tried different kinds and it still wouldn't whip properly. I haven't tried it with my new stand mixer as I was using just a normal hand mixer for awhile. Now I know what I'm doing this weekend.
If you feel that it's taking too long, add a few drops of lemon-juice. It won't affect the flavour, but does speed up the whipping, so watch carefully to avoid getting butter.
Plan ahead, so that if you do get butter, you can use it for some other purpose. Yummy.
I use full cream, and either a stand mixer or a stick blender. Works ok. I’ve also made butter (mostly cultured) from putting a little yogurt in with full cream and letting it sit for a day or two and then beating it till it separates. But you can make uncultured butter from just over whipping full cream.
FWIW, I actually encountered the issue in the states, using either Kerrygold or Plugra butter. That was the only significant difference from previous times I've made it, so I attribute the problem to that change. It's conceivable that it was actually an unnoticed difference in egg size that caused the problem, though, as someone else mentioned.