sweet buttery goodness

One of my favourite things that I do that is apparently considered remarkable is, I make my own spreadable butter. You know the Land O' Lakes blended stuff? It's like that, only much, much better.

The thing is, I sort of hate margarine. I prefer by far to cook with butter; butter tastes right, margarine doesn't. But I really like the spreadability. And then one day, someone posted a recipe to omnomnom and I ran with it because I'd tried the Land O' Lakes stuff and found it somewhat more spreadable than straight butter, but not really enough so to be worth it -- it still need to warm up a bit.

So, here's my personal recipe:

1 lb. butter
1 c. canola oil
.5 c. safflower oil

Let the butter sit out until it's softened up; beat until fluffy. You can do that with a stand mixer or a hand-mixer, either works. I use a stand mixer, because I'm lazy. Once all fluffy, turn your mixer on low and pour in the oil, slowly. Beat it until you get a nice, liquid slurry. Once thoroughly combined, pour into an appropriately sized container (or containers) and stick in the fridge. It will set up into a nice consistency in a hour or so.

The canola oil and the safflower oil are both sufficiently neutral in taste that you really don't get any kind of altered flavour -- it's pure buttery goodness. Only it spreads cold, straight out of the fridge! The safflower's what really does it. But you can use most kinds of oil; the recipe I originally found suggested olive oil and canola. I settled on canola and safflower based on what I know of oils and what I wanted out of it.

The recipe halves down or sizes up pretty damn well too; I actually just made a half batch today.