grew up with my head in prairie kitchens, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and wishing I could make snow candy, mix lemonade in a barrel and drink fresh buttermilk – just like Laura and Carrie in the Little House books do when Ma churns cream, dyed yellow with carrot, into butter. I never made butter with my mother, but buttermilk, it made perfect sense to me, was the milk from making butter: the watery liquid that separates from the fat in the churning and tastes subtly of both milk and butter. I take any chance to make it myself - nothing beats homemade butter, and there’s no other way to get that liquid, a wonderful thing to bake with. But what making butter does not give you is the unpalatably tart, watered-down-yoghurt-type stuff you buy in cartons for making pancakes.
Why the confusion? Well, a 2012 Slate piece on the subject – by LV Anderson, for whom Ingall’s Little House in the Big Woods was clearly as formative a culinary read as it was for me – explains that it’s because “buttermilk” describes not one but two other dairy products. One is the old, soured milk most butter was made from before fridges – the milk for butter, if you will. The second is the cultured sour milk commercial dairies began to make from low-fat milk and lactic acid – no butter involved – in the 1920s, marketed primarily for health and slenderness, and the acid needed when baking with bicarb.
Whichever buttermilk you do use though, you definitely want to bake with it, as your recipes here prove. It gives a smooth, rich crumb; counters overt sweetness and, much like lemon, enhances saltiness; and it’ll marinade anything into tender bitefuls.
The winning recipe: Spiced buttermilk cakes
Everyone’s eyes lit up when I brought these out at a makeshift picnic on Friday night. They paired as well with hot chocolate as they did with a sharp goat’s cheese. Crunchy with sugar, and rich in unexpected fruit, DetoutcoeurLimousin’s scone-rock-cake hybrids are a delight.
Makes 12
300g plain white flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp quatre epices (or mixed spice)
A pinch of salt
125g butter
90g sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
150g chopped dried fruit (sultanas, apricots, cherries, blueberries)
1 egg
125ml buttermilk
1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6 and grease/line a couple of baking sheets. Sieve the flour, baking powder, spices and salt into a large mixing bowl.
2 Cut the butter into small chunks and rub into the flour mix until it resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar and dried fruit. Lightly beat the egg with the buttermilk before adding it to the dry ingredients. Be careful not to over-mix – it’s ready as soon as everything comes together.
4 Put tablespoons of the mixture on to the prepared baking tray, leaving some room for them to spread. Bake for 15‑20 minutes, or until they are a light golden brown. Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Sprinkle with sugar before serving.
Buttermilk dressing
Fadime Tiskaya uses the actual buttermaking byproduct here in a toothsome dressing for a split wheat salad. I drenched roast buttersquash and pulses with it, to excellent effect. Traditionally, Kurdish butter, Tiskaya explains, is made from yoghurt, much like Indian makhan – which, as my 80 minutes whisking yoghurt into froth made painfully clear, is only possible when your yoghurt is made with raw whole milk straight from a cow. The pasteurised stuff we can buy simply doesn’t have the requisite fat content – so do your arms a favour and make butter with double cream instead.
Makes 1 large cupful
250g buttermilk
50g plain yoghurt
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
2 garlic cloves, finely crushed
2 tsp dried mint
1½ tsp dried thyme
2 tbsp fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
Salt and black pepper
1 Whisk all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
Walnut, honey and rosemary buttermilk rolls
Lauren Kisby uses the buttermilk here to soften both the nuts and the crumb of her bake.
Makes 8-12
50g walnuts, finely chopped
280ml buttermilk
500g strong white bread flour
1 tsp salt
7g (1 sachet) fast-action yeast
4 big sprigs rosemary, leaves removed and finely chopped
2 tbsp honey
3 tbsp butter, melted
1 egg
1 Soak the walnuts in 2 tbsp of the buttermilk, cover and refrigerate (ideally overnight) in a small bowl .
2 Put 250g of the flour into a large mixing bowl. Add the salt, yeast and rosemary and stir well to combine.
3 In a small pan, heat the remaining buttermilk until just warm, then remove from the heat and whisk in the honey, 2 tbsp of the butter and the egg. Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and combine to make a thick, stiff batter. Add the remaining flour until a soft dough is formed. Don’t worry if it looks a little dry.
4 Retrieve the buttermilk-soaked walnuts from the fridge, add to the dough and knead on a floured surface until it is no longer dry and forms a soft ball. Continue to knead for 5 minutes. Add more flour if it becomes too sticky.
5 Split the dough into 12 pieces. For the tear-and-share style roll, form into 12 balls and arrange in a 22cm wide, well-oiled baking tin. Brush with a little of the remaining melted butter, cover and leave somewhere warm to prove for an hour, or until doubled in size.
6 Set the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5, brush with the remaining melted butter and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through.
Buttermilk fudge
Buttermilk, rather than the conventional cream or condensed milk, lends this toothachingly sweet treat a sourness as welcome as that hit of sea salt. This might just be my new favourite fudge, Rachel Kelly.
Makes 16-20 squares
350g demerara sugar
240ml buttermilk
4 tbsp golden syrup
¼-½ tsp sea salt flakes
110g butter, cubed
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Line a baking tin (23 x 23cm) with greaseproof paper.
2 Combine the sugar, buttermilk, golden syrup, salt and butter in a medium saucepan. Warm over a medium heat, stirring occasionally until the butter and sugar have melted – about 2-3 minutes. Then gently simmer for about 10-15 minutes, stirring continuously, until a sugar thermometer reads 116C/240F.
3 Remove from the heat, add the vanilla extract and beat well (by hand or with an electric beater) until it has thickened and is a pale golden brown – it will smell of toffee and have a grainy, slightly crystallised texture. Scrape into the lined baking tin. Set aside to firm up for a couple of hours. Cut into squares and store in an airtight container in a cool place.
Chocolate orange buttermilk brioche loaf
A silken breakfast slice from ColonialCravings, just the right side of sweet, and pleasingly aromatic.
Makes 1 small loaf
250g strong white bread flour, plus more for dusting
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
A pinch of ground cinnamon (optional)
2 tsp dried yeast (about 1 sachet)
Zest of 1 very large orange
70g dark chocolate chips
2 eggs
75ml buttermilk
50g butter, melted
1 Whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, cinnamon, yeast and orange zest. Stir through the chocolate chips.
2 In a separate bowl or jug, beat together the eggs and buttermilk. Set aside 2 tbsp of this for glazing the brioche. Add the melted butter to the remaining egg mixture.
3 Pour the wet ingredients into the dry mixture and mix it together with a butter knife, to obtain a nice soft dough. Turn this out on to a lightly floured work surface and knead for a few minutes, until springy. Wash the bowl and lightly oil it. Put the dough in the bowl before covering it with oiled clingfilm. Set aside somewhere warm for one hour, or until doubled in size. Lightly brush a small loaf pan with a little oil.
4 Once risen (it should be quite soft and spongy), turn the dough out and knead briefly. Shape into a loaf, put in your loaf tin, and re-cover with the clingfilm. Leave to rise for another hour. Then preheat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7.
5 Once risen, remove the clingfilm, brush with a little of the reserved egg wash and bake for about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Leave to cool a little on a wire rack before removing from the tin.
Buttermilk oregano chicken wings
As any good platter of southern fried chicken will prove, buttermilk as a marinade tenderises chicken with unbridled gusto – and the longer you leave it before cooking, the better. Justine Wall’s use of oregano here is inspired.
Serves 4-6
1kg chicken wings
360ml buttermilk
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tsp sea salt
Black pepper
1 garlic clove, grated finely
A handful of fresh parsley, chopped
Zest and juice of ½ a lemon
For the sauce
30g salted butter
Small handful parsley, chopped
1 Combine the buttermilk, oregano, salt, pepper, garlic, parsley, zest and juice of the lemon in a bowl. Massage the marinade into the meat. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight.
2 When ready to roast, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4 and allow the wings to come up to room temperature. Put the wings with all of the marinade in a medium-size ovenproof dish – they should fit snugly – and roast for 45 minutes. If using a fan oven, cover with foil for the first 20 minutes, so they don’t dry out.
3 Turn the wings regularly so that they brown evenly. Once cooked, remove the wings and keep warm. Scrape the remaining marinade into a small saucepan, and add the salted butter. Bring to the boil, and then turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes, whisking every now and then, to reduce to a sauce consistency.
4 To serve, stir in the chopped parsley and pour the sauce over the wings.
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