Amp Up Your Next Batch Of Cookies With A Special Kind Of Butter

The secret to extremely flavorful cookies lies in the butter. To better understand how we can be putting butter to its best and highest use, we reached out to Sofia Schlieben, corporate pastry chef for JF Restaurants. "Butter is a great vehicle for adding flavor to cookies because fat loves flavor," Schlieben told The Takeout. 

The fat in butter makes a great vessel for extracting flavors from herbs and spices, which is to say you can impart those flavors without tossing the herbs directly into the dough. "The butter acts as a base, infusing the cookies with those flavors while keeping the texture smooth and cohesive," said Schlieben. "Infusing butter adds complexity and a unique twist to the flavor profile." This results in fragrant, savory cookies.

Schlieben warned that some recipes depend on solid butter for durability. Those recipes may not be the best candidates for using infused butter. "If you melt the butter, you would need to chill and re-emulsify it," she explained. If you want to try it anyway, don't worry. "This can be done easily by padding the cooled butter together again, much like creaming, but without adding sugar."

To start, "I would heat the butter and add my flavor, then let it sit at room temperature to infuse," Schlieben said. "Depending on what you're infusing, you'll want to let it sit for different lengths of time." Stronger, aromatic herbs like rosemary require less infusion time while delicate, barely-there spices like thyme will need more. "Earl Grey tea should infuse for only 10 to 15 minutes, as tea can become bitter if steeped too long." Similarly, "Lavender... needs just a light infusion to bring out its summer notes, as a longer infusion can taste soapy."

As for adding herbs, Schlieben said, "I recommend setting a timer and checking the flavor every 15 minutes." Taste the butter first before you decide to continue steeping. If the flavor is faint, reset the timer. "Once the flavor is where you want it, strain it through a fine sieve." If the butter is slightly solid, warm it up before straining. Put the butter in an air-tight container to chill until it solidifies. "Cream it until it returns to an emulsified consistency." Follow the recipe, bake the cookies, and allow the aroma of infused flavors to take hold of your senses.