Give Baked Goods A Tangy Upgrade With This Type Of Butter

The best recipes for sweet and savory baked goods often feature an ingredient or technique that sets them apart from the rest — a secret addition, an extra step, or a je ne sais quoi that keeps you going back for bite after bite. Swapping out butter made from cow's milk for goat's milk is one such simple change that can transform your baked goods recipe.

Lindsey Chastain, writer and homesteader behind The Waddle and Cluck, is a fan of using goat butter in her baking because of the unique tasting notes it brings to the table. "It's more like a cultured butter than what you generally buy at the grocery store," Chastain told The Takeout. "It's a clean, tangy flavor." According to Chastain, the butter has a milder flavor than goat cheese, so it's not as gamey. It also has a lighter color — goat butter is nearly white rather than yellow.

"You can use goat butter anywhere you would use cow butter for baking," Lindsey Chastain explained, but she did advise that its melting point is lower than what you're likely used to with cow's milk butter — it will soften or boil more quickly.

Start with a 1-to-1 substitution ratio when cooking with butter made from goat's milk, though Chastain did share that you may need to use a bit more when making doughs. "Goat butter has less fat, so it doesn't hold doughs together as well as cow butter," she explained. "I generally stick with cow butter for anything with a dough."

For a surer bet, make this swap with batter-based baked goods, like sweet and savory maple cornbread, or recipes with less finicky doughs. "Goat butter works great for muffins, biscuits, flatbreads, and shortbreads," Chastain said, as well as pound cake, blondies, and soft, chewy, bakery-worthy cookies.