Compound butter is one of those secret kitchen hacks that looks complicated to make and impressive to serve, but it’s actually the easiest trick in the book. You can make honey butter for your dinner rolls by whipping the two ingredients together or you can flavor your steak with a quickly mixed knob of compound garlic butter. But what about breakfast where butter usually has a starring role on toast, scones, biscuits, muffins, French toast, pancakes, and waffles? Berry-flavored butter is the answer.
Sweet, rich, and buttery, berry compound butter is the brightly colored complement to all your breakfast favorites. But simply blitzing fresh berries together with a stick of butter has a few pitfalls. First, you need to add sugar to bring out the sweetness of the berries. Second, all berries contain a good bit of water, which can be a challenge when aiming to create that perfectly spreadable butter consistency. For a sweet, subtle, fruit-forward flavor, the secret is to use berry jam instead.
To create perfect berry-flavored butter in seconds, simply blend together a stick of butter and two tablespoons of your favorite berry jam or jelly, like raspberry, blackberry, or marionberry, for 30 seconds in the food processor until smooth. The resulting mixture will be firm but easy to spread, delightfully colorful, and subtly sweet with a strong fruit flavor. Swirl your concoction into a serving dish for breakfast today or place your mixture on a layer of plastic wrap, shape it into a pleasingly shaped log, and store it in the freezer for future slicing and serving.
A few fun jam-flavored butter ideas
By using jam rather than fresh fruit, you can get seriously creative with your compound butter combinations without hitting the grocery store. Seriously, anything you have sitting in your fridge can work. Do you have a jar of lemon curd sitting on a long-forgotten shelf? Make a tart-sweet lemon compound butter for your next batch of blueberry pancakes. Did Paddington inspire the purchase of orange marmalade? Orange-butter sounds perfect for a batch of cranberry scones. Or, for a more flavorful addition to your favorite biscuits or cast-iron skillet cornbread, mix spicy red pepper jelly with butter for a hotter version of sweet honey butter.
If you love berry compound butter but want to level up the flavor profile, add other fresh herbs and seasonings to your mixture. Blackberry jam pairs perfectly with a few sprigs of fresh mint or rosemary, while raspberry jam benefits from a few basil leaves. Even adding a few warming spices, like ginger and cinnamon, to your marionberry mixture can bring a bit of heat to the mix. All of these easy upgrades are waiting for you in your pantry.
