For A Richer Cake, Add Goat Milk Butter To Your Batter

Butter is the backbone of many baking endeavors. It creates flakiness in pastry and pie dough and adds structure to cookies. But traditional cow's milk butter isn't the only butter out there: To achieve even richer textures and flavors in your next cake, try using goat milk butter instead of cow milk butter.

Butter from a goat has a tangy, earthy quality that adds a little zing to many familiar flavors, like chocolate, vanilla, and cinnamon. It tastes like a hybrid of cow butter and goat cheese, with grassy notes and a creamy texture. Goat butter has a higher fat content and a lower melting point than cow butter, which will help to make the texture of your cake tender and silky. The lower melting point means that baking with goat butter is similar to baking with softened or even melted butter, and will have the same effect on the texture of your cake — it will make it denser, moister, and richer-tasting. 

The softness and pure white color of goat butter also make it similar to shortening. The difference comes in the taste. Shortening will add nothing to the flavor of your cake, but goat butter will still impart that buttery richness, with the benefit of a little added tanginess. Goat butter will also level up the appearance of your baked goods: For a pristinely white buttercream frosting try goat butter instead of opting for a vegetable-shortening base.

Because goat butter doesn't contain casein, the ingredient that causes allergies for some lactose intolerant folks, it can be enjoyed by a greater variety of dessert lovers. It's also easy to work with, because of its soft and silky texture creaming your butter and sugar to the perfect fluffiness has never been easier. And it's simple to make the switch, no math needed. If your recipe calls for a cup of cow butter, just use a cup of goat butter instead.

However, be aware that goat butter is more costly than cow butter, so you might want to reserve it for those extra special bakes. It's more expensive because goat milk has less butterfat than cow milk, so goats produce less butter per gallon of milk. It's also not guaranteed that your local grocery store will carry goat butter. Some locations of Whole Foods keep it stocked, but you should check online before you venture out. Your best bet for getting your hands on goat butter is to link up with a local farm or farm stand in your area, or you can opt to order online. Fortunately, people are catching on to the advantages of baking with goat butter and it's becoming much more widely available, allowing more people to make rich, mysteriously delicious cakes that have that little something extra.