The best things to come out of my kitchen from last year’s strawberry madness were without a doubt the strawberry pop tarts and the supremely creamy frozen strawberry yoghurt that I made over and over again (and I don’t think I can ever get enough of. Ever.)
Just when I thought nothing could possibly outdo these favourites of mine, I was in for a pleasant surprise in the form of strawberry butter. Strawberry Butter! How could I not have thought of this sooner? My favourite fruit + butter, lots and lots of butter, come together to give me straaaaawberry buttttaaah! Okay, enough of the dramatisation, but I cannot tell you how this ridiculously simple butter will change the way you have your ho-hum butter on toast. Heck, I’m not even a butter on toast kind of person, but with this strawberry butter, I’m a convert.
I made bite-sized buttery (more butter!), flaky biscuits from Dorie Greenspan and dolloped a generous amount of the butter on top . Warm biscuits, crisp on the outside, and melt-in-the-mouth soft inside, heavily scented with the strawberry butter. Betty couldn’t make a better butter breakfast.
While I’m off to pull out the butter from the refrigerator to spread on some toast (you don’t need to wait for it to soften! It’s soft and spreadable!) , I’ll leave you with the recipe.
Strawberry Butter
Note: It is important to have all the ingredients at room temperature, otherwise you might end up with a strawberry butter that looks like ricotta cheese, which I actually prefer over the uniform texture, but it won’t have the smooth buttery texture you set out to achieve. If you do end up with the ricotta-like butter and want to smoothen it out, place the bowl with the butter over a water bath on a low heat and keep stirring it so that the heat is evenly distributed at all times. Soon you will see that the butter and strawberry puree come together to give you a homogeneous mixture.
100g butter
30g Philadelphia cream cheese (optional, use butter if you don’t have it)
30g icing sugar
60g strawberries, washed, hulled and pureed
- In a bowl, whip the butter and cream cheese until it looks light and fluffy. Add the icing sugar and mix until evenly incorporated.
- With the mixer still on, pour in the strawberry puree and mix together. You can either go for the marbled look and not mix it up entirely, or go the whole hog.
Buttery Biscuits
Adapted from: Baking From My Home To Yours, Dorie Greenspan
Yield: 12 biscuits
Note: Super easy to make and comes together so quickly. Just make sure to sift the flour with baking powder; nothing can be more nasty than getting a piece of biscuit concentrated with the flavour of baking powder. I wish I weren’t talking from experience.
2 cups / 250g all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
3/4th stick / 80g butter
3/4th cup / 175ml light cream (25% fat)
- Line a baking sheet with parchment or Silpat and preheat the oven to 425F/220C.
- Sift the flour and baking powder together. Whisk in the sugar and salt.
- Working quickly (don’t want the butter to melt), with a pastry blender, cut the butter into the dry ingredients. You will have irregular shaped chunks, flakes, pebbles and whatnot. This is how it should be.
- Pour the cream over the mixture and lightly knead together, until everything has come together. Dust extra flour if required.
- Dust a work surface and roll out the dough to a ½ inch thickness.
- Using a 2 inch cutter (in my case, I used a 1 inch cutter for bite-sized biscuits) cut out as many biscuits as you can. Use the scraps to roll out the dough for the second time.
- Transfer the cut out biscuits to the baking sheet and bake for 14-18 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown. Serve warm with the strawberry butter!
