What’s Cooking at Mom’s?

Fancy Butter Pats

A really nice touch for a dinner party or buffet is to make pretty butter pats. They are very easy to make and can be made in variety of shapes. You can do this several ways:

• make butter curls with a butter curler
• make butter balls with a melon baller
• press butter into decorative candy molds
• use a pastry bag with a large star tip to pipe softened butter into small bowls or onto individual butter dishes
• use a cookie press to make shaped butter pats
• use a cookie or fondant cutter to cut shapes out of chilled butter

I’ll be using a fondant cutter to make flower shaped butter pats. Here’s how to do it:

Soften several sticks of butter. This is real butter NOT margarine! We like to use sweet cream butter that is lightly salted. Generally you can estimate you’ll need 1-2 pats of butter per person if you are serving dinner rolls or bread. My husband and children are real butter hounds so I’ll be making a lot more pats than that!

While the butter is softening, line a baking pan with waxed paper.

Use a knife to spread the softened butter evenly into the baking pan. Make sure the butter is filling the pan evenly and completely; butter tends to leave pockets of empty space, even when you feel like you’re filling the mold solidly. Use the edge of a frosting spatula, knife or other straight edge to level the butter in the pan. Chill the filled pan until the butter is firm.

When firm, use a cookie or fondant cutter to cut shaped pats of butter. Line a pan or baking dish with waxed paper. Layer the butter pats in the pan, with a piece of waxed paper between each layer to keep the pats from sticking together. Try not to handle the butter pats very much so they don’t soften and distort the design. If the butter starts to soften too much while you are cutting out the pats, put it back into the refrigerator to firm back up.

Refrigerate (or freeze) the molded pats until you’re ready to serve them. I plan to freeze my pats. That will allow me to put the pats on my serving dish just prior to dinner, the butter will be soft enough to spread on rolls without them getting too soft to pick up with the butter pick. Pack the leftover butter “scraps” in a small plastic container and refrigerate to use later.

At serving time, place the pats of butter in a beautiful serving dish or tray. I’ll be using this pretty silver dish and butter pick to serve my butter pats.

If you were going to put your butter pats on a buffet, you could put some crushed ice in the serving bowl and place the pats on top of the ice to keep them cold.

If you make more pats of butter than you end up using, the extra butter pats can be frozen for up to 4 months. Violet would be thrilled to get one of these flower shaped butter pats on a stack of pancakes or waffles at breakfast one morning.

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