maître d' butter

We celebrated my mom's birthday last weekend and I got the very challenging task of bringing bread and butter. :o)  Since I lucked out on getting the easy thing to bring, I figured I'd get a little creative.  I bought some bread at Trader Joe's and decided to jazz up the butter at bit.

All I did was put 2 softened sticks of butter in my mixer (with the paddle attachment). I added about 3/4 cups finely chopped parsley, the zest of one lemon and about 1/2 a lemon's worth of lemon juice.  I added a pinch of salt (since it was unsalted butter) and mixed it all together.  Then I took a piece of foil, put a piece of plastic wrap on top of it and then dropped the butter into a long log on top of the plastic wrap.  I then wrapped up the butter (making sure it was completely surrounded by the plastic wrap - the foil would stick to the butter) in the plastic wrap and foil.  I then twisted both both ends of the foil (like you'd twist a candy wrapper).  This helped smush all the butter together in a cylinder shape.  I let it re-harden in the fridge for a couple hours (if you aren't planning on using it right away, you could put it in the freezer, just defrost it before you need it).

The verdict - it was so yummy!  It was such as simple (and cheap) way to make the boring bread and butter a little more special.  The best part is the possibilities are endless!  You could replace the lemon and parsley with pretty much anything.  Garlic! Sun dried tomatoes! Red Pepper flakes!  Or for pancakes and waffles you could go the sweet route.  Chocolate shavings! Cinnamon!  Berries!  Berry butter on pancakes sounds delicious! 

The 2 sticks made plenty for the 12 of us. If you are making this for more than 15 people, I would definitely add another stick of butter.

As a side note, I had no idea this was called maître d' butter.  I thought of it because I remembered seeing it on a blog or pinterest somewhere and just made up my own version.  My sister, who is a chef, informed me that this is what it was called.  Who knew I was so fancy!?!