Sweet inspiration with butter

Sweet treats and butter are best friends, for good reason. 

Naturally creamy butter makes for the smoothest mouthfeel and most complementary taste to other flavours when creating desserts, baking and confectionary. Trends come and go but real butter rides the wave. Thinking of what's trending on the sweet front, here are a few sweet ideas to get you reaching for the butter

A little less sweet:

As our collective sugar craving wanes a little with all the press about the white stuff, toning sweetness down and experimenting with different types of sweet ingredients like coconut sugar, maple syrup, rice bran syrup, muscavado and rapadura sugars can go down well. Butter is the perfect partner to those darker types of sugars as demonstrated in these ideas:

• Homemade crumpets topped with Mainland Unsalted Butter and maple syrup and nestled up to a helping of fresh seasonal fruit.
• Deliciously rich chocolate chip cookies made extra special using Mainland Unsalted Butter, chestnut flour, dark muscavado sugar and artisan dark chocolate and cacao nibs.

Savoury meets sweet

Another trend we’re seeing is the blurring of sweet and savoury to create dishes that can satisfy on both fronts. Give these ideas a whirl:

• Dark rye-based buttery pastries spiked with tangy Kapiti Kiorangi Blue Cheese, honeycomb, rosemary and toasted walnuts.
• Pizza dough spread first with Mainland Unsalted Butter then topped with blobs of Perfect Italiano Ricotta, butter-glazed slices of peach, apricot or pear, prosciutto and pine nuts, then baked to sizzling, puffed perfection.
• A classic buttery-crusted pumpkin pie topped with salty-sweet butter-fried chopped crispy bacon.
• Take the all-time brunch fave French toast to new, exciting heights - start by making your own buttery brioche spiked with rum-soaked raisins, and then dipping slices in vanilla pod-spiked egg wash then caramelizing in butter in a hot pan. Top caramelized brioche with a gooey slice of Kapiti Ramara Cheese, crisp grilled bacon, fresh blueberries and thyme leaves and drizzle the whole thing with a little rum butter sauce.

Butter + popcorn + sweet

Buttered popcorn is always a winner and integrating into sweet dishes like the following might just attract a cult following:

• Crème brulee made with Anchor Fresh Cream and topped with a two-fold brulee; first a layer of coconut sugar bruleed with a torch, then a little pile of of coconut sugar, Himalayan pink salt and Mainland Salted Butter-coated popcorn gone over with the torch again.
• Banoffee pie or salted caramel pie topped with Mainland Salted Butter and caramel popcorn and a scoop of Kapiti Gingernut or Vanilla Bean Ice Cream.
• Perfect buttery choux pastry eclairs or profiteroles dipped in rich chocolate then buttered and salted popcorn and let to set.