About Those Buttery Sticks…

After being very pleased with the buttery sticks and their performance in this weekend’s cake, I needed to put the remaining sticks to the test in several different ways.  I wanted to see if they truly performed like butter, and how the flavor compares.

I started with chocolate chip cookies. It behaved just like butter when mixing, and baked up comparable to using margarine in a cookie.  With chocolate chip cookies I find that butter based cookies spread more than margarine based cookies- so these cookies were nicely dense and had a great texture.  Flavor wise they were good- but I could taste that real butter had not been used.  I’m going to be trying these again soon when I get more Buttery Sticks, but my one thought was that next time I should use dark brown sugar instead of light brown.  It was that caramel flavor that was missing from these cookies, and I think a darker brown sugar would cover up that non-butter flavor.  Overall, I was very happy with the cookies.  Unless you were picking apart the cookie, you probably wouldn’t know that I hadn’t used butter.

Next, I used the Buttery Sticks to caramelize some onions for a frittata.  Onions caramelized in oil just aren’t the same as the ones made with butter, so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to see how the Buttery Sticks behaved in a saute pan.  The onions turned out perfect.  They were perfectly caramelized and buttery.  Someone with a trained palate may be able to identify that I didn’t use real butter, but in this instance, I certainly couldn’t tell.

I used the sticks in a cake, cookies, and in a saute pan, for my last test, I wanted to see how the buttery sticks behaved as butter.  To accompany the frittata last night I decided I had a craving for some simply cooked green beans, so I got them out of the freezer and simmered them in water.  I drained them well, and then added a few tablespoons of Buttery Sticks to the pan with some pepper and a pinch of salt.  If there was one place where the non-butter was going to rear it’s ugly head, I figured this would be it.  And actually, I was very pleasantly surprised.  It didn’t taste completely like the beans had been buttered, but it also didn’t taste fake like margarine.   As a substitute for butter in this case, the Buttery Sticks more than passed muster.

Overall, I’m thrilled with the Buttery Sticks.  They work very well, and among their list of accolades they are a vegan butter- so no dairy whatsoever, there are no trans-fats of any kind as the spread is not hydrogenated.  There is also no gluten, and no genetically modified ingredients.  Buttery Sticks are also Kosher.  My only problem with the product, really is the cost, but in the grand scheme of things, if we’re cutting back a little on dairy anyway, that means less butter as a whole, so in the end, the price difference I think, would be a wash.  Next I’ll be trying out one or two of their spreadable buttery products as well as their shortening sticks.  If you want to know more information about Earth Balance and their products, their website is full of good information.