Does Using “Fancy” Butter Make a Better Cake? We Tested Four Kinds to Find Out

Aside from being a luscious addition to hunks of freshly baked bread or warm pasta with a sprinkle of Parmesan, salt, and pepper, butter is an integral part of baking recipes, imparting structure, tenderness, and richness to cakes, cookies, pastries, and more. 

What Kind of Butter Should You Use in Your Baking Creations? 

With so many butter styles to choose from, you might have wondered if it matters which you grab, not only for a dining table accoutrement, but also for baking. It used to be that you only had to make one decision: salted or unsalted (hint: in baked goods, it’s best to use unsalted so that you can control the salt content of your sweets). 

But today, the choices in the dairy aisle can feel overwhelming. Should you use American style? How about Amish? Then there’s cultured butter, and what about all of those European butters? What’s the difference? And most importantly, which one should you use?  

To see if one kind of butter works best in baked goods, we conducted a tasty experiment: We made Grandmother's Pound Cake recipe and tested it using American, cultured, Amish, and European butters to see if there’s one that makes a better cake. Let's explore each kind of butter before we reveal the results of our taste test. 

First, How Are Butters Categorized? 

Butters are identified by the amount of fat they contain. Most butters land somewhere in the 80 to 85% butterfat range. Generally, the higher the butterfat content, the richer the flavor.

The Four Butters We Tested 

American-style Butter: If you grew up in the States, these are the butters that you probably had at home. Their flavor is generally mild and neutral. Per USDA standards, all American butters must be at least 80% butterfat.

Amish Butter: Amish butter has a higher butterfat content than American-style, typically around 85%. That’s pretty high, and it explains why Amish butter, which is also usually slow-churned, is so smooth and has a delightfully creamy mouthfeel.

Cultured Butter: Cultured butter is made by adding live cultures to cream before it’s churned. The cultures initiate the fermentation process resulting in butter with a tangy flavor. Think of it as similar to what you get when you consume yogurt. 

European: Standards for butterfat are different for European butter. The minimum requirement for butterfat is 82%. These butters tend to be cultured, contain less water than American butter, and have a rich, creamy taste.

Our Butter Taste Test Results

Using Grandma’s Pound Cake recipe, we tested each of these four butters to see how they stacked up as far as structure, flavor, and tenderness. Here are the results:

1st place: It’s a tie between the Amish, cultured, and European butters. That’s right, a three-way tie for first. We love the richness and creamy mouthfeel of the European butter in pound cake, but we also love the little hit of tanginess that we detected in the cultured butter loaf. The Amish loaf was a happy blend of both European and cultured butters. All three were so good, it had to be a tie.

2nd place: American butter. Not to say anything was inherently “wrong” with this loaf; It just wasn’t as rich and interesting as the other three. And we’re not certain we would have noted these differences had we not been testing these butters against each other. 

The Bottom Line

The butter you choose for baking matters somewhat. While we liked the results with Amish, cultured, and European butters best, the loaf made with American butter was also good. Fancy butters can be expensive and may not be a practical choice for baking, says Ashley Manila, blogger and baker at Baker By Nature. She uses unsalted American-style butter because it’s readily available, affordable, and provides consistent results. So buy the fancy butter, but to really enjoy it, save it for spreading over your toast or English muffin.