Buttermilk

Oh buttermilk, how I love thee, let me count the ways! Every baker has a secret ingredient in their arsenal they use to make their baked goods stand out. I have many, but one of those is buttermilk.

Buttermilk has the right amount of tang to really bring out the flavors of citrus, but it also works wonders on a chocolate cake too. However, I use buttermilk in my cake recipes in place of milk because I find that it creates a moist, tender crumb that doesn’t fall apart when cut. I like to work with dense cakes because it makes them easier to decorate, and while buttermilk is only part of that process (sorry folks, I ain’t giving away all my secrets!) it is one part that I can share.

I bake a lot of cakes, but even with that, I don’t like to have that much buttermilk in the fridge. So, what I do is buy the powdered buttermilk in the baking aisle and add it to the dry ingredients, giving it a good whisk before adding the wet. This still has to be kept in the fridge, but one 12oz container will make 15 cups of buttermilk, which is almost a gallon. To make fully reconstituted buttermilk, it takes 4 tablespoons per cup of water. However, depending on the recipe, I use anywhere from1 – 4 tablespoons buttermilk powder per batch.

What else can you use buttermilk for? Pancakes, waffles and cornbread benefit from buttermilk. Biscuits are a natural choice as well. You can also put skin-on-bone-in chicken pieces in buttermilk overnight before breading and frying for an incredibly tender fried chicken. I encourage you to try this rarely used product if you don’t already. You can usually find non-fat and low-fat varieties in the dairy section by the cream, and some markets even carry the full-fat version too. I’ve used them all, and have found no noticeable difference between the three, except in the caloric increase in the fat-positive varieties. But hey, are you really counting calories if you’re consuming cake, biscuits and fried chicken?