Jennie Schacht's Profile

I find that a good butter does make a difference in taste (not so much texture) in a butter cookie. You can see it in people's reaction when they bite into a cookie. I love Kerrygold, too, but even better is finding a local, organic cultured butter. As far as pastry, I thought it was the evaporation of the water in the layers of butter that separates the layers as they bake into crackly-crunchy pastry. The butter holds the structure in place until the flour is baked, and then the evaporating water leaves a little air pocket that creates flakiness. I think the problem with too much water in pastry comes from over-developing gluten in the flour. I'm no food scientist, that's just what I understood. Happy baking, whatever butter you use (or even not)!

One of my favorite (though also one of the fussiest) recipes I developed for my book, Farmers' Market Desserts, is Baked Apple Dumplings with Cinnamon Caramel. A little cream cheese in the crust along with butter keeps the pastry easy to handle. You can find recipe tester extraordinnair Rachel Boller of Scratch making it here:
http://tinyurl.com/2bqr8ys