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It’s an age-old dilemma. You’re in the kitchen, whipping up a delicious cake or batch of brownies. You’ve mixed your dry ingredients, you’re moving onto the next step, and suddenly it’s time to add the butter.
But which butter do you reach for?
As an avid baker, you may have both salted and unsalted butter on hand . . . does it really matter which one you use?
On the one hand, salted butter might lend a nice salty-sweet touch, but on the other, it could be a bit too much.
Such a tough choice!
Well, FEAR NOT! I’m here to clear things up for you. Turns out, figuring out when to use what is pretty simple once you know how the two options will impact your baking. And it all comes down to two components: flavour and colour.
As the names suggests, salted butter contains salt, whereas unsalted butter doesn’t (surprise, surprise).
This means that using salted butter will add a bit of a salty flavour to whatever you’re baking. While it might seem like a minuscule amount to add, consider how much butter you use in an entire recipe – it adds up!
I use 225g of butter in a 20cm mud cake and 620g in my buttercream. With that amount of butter going into a single cake, it can begin to impact the flavour.
Because of this, I always use unsalted butter when making cakes and Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Using unsalted butter allows me complete control over the salt content in my recipes, if I choose to add it at any point!
That’s not to say that I never use salted butter. When trying to strike a sweet-savoury balance, I’ll often reach for salted over unsalted. A few instances of this include chocolate chip cookies, salted caramel . . . you get the idea!
The second factor to consider when deciding which butter to reach for is colour.
Unsalted butter is often lighter in colour, which makes it perfect for creating buttercream. The whiter your buttercream, the easier it is to colour with food colouring.
This makes for true hues and vibrant colours, perfect for cake decorating!
Regardless of which butter you reach for, follow my #1 butter tip to make your life easier: have it at room temperature.
This will make it so much easier to whip up and help you achieve the right texture.
Want more tips, tricks and recipes? Pre-order my upcoming book, Tigga Mac’s Cake Hacks to secure your copy before the 17 September publication date!