Here in Singapore, buttermilk is a foreign concept and usually found in atas (‘high class’) supermarkets. Luckily, there’s always a quick, easy and chin chai way to make buttermilk – just add lemon juice!
Today whilst making red velvet cupcakes (post to come soon), I added the juice of half a large lemon to 1 1/2 cups of semi-skimmed milk, as per instructions from dubdew. Cue panic when I tasted it – it was curdly and lemony! Luckily after a frantic phone call to dubdew, I learned that:
- the lemony taste will dissipate after letting the milk stand for a while in room temperature.
- it is best to use full fat milk (although I used skimmed milk and it was fine).
- the acid in the lemon juice will react with other ingredients (the baking soda?) to create carbon dioxide.
About that last point: this means that buttermilk is important because it helps the batter rise better and creates lightness in the cupcakes. I used to think that buttermilk was basically half and half; but since it needs to be acidic, I guess I was wrong.
Half and half, by the way, is a milk product popular in North America and Canada (I think). It’s a very light cream, kind of in between milk and cream, and usually put into coffee. I remember when I bought half and half accidentally when I was studying in New York; I poured it over my cereal, ate a spoonful and nearly choked. I could feel the butter-fat coating my tongue and back of my throat – fattalicious, but also so strange!
So the question is: what would happen if you used half and half in a cupcake recipe? Would the finished product be indeed denser?
actually, buttermilk can be found quite easily in most cold storage outlets! the only reason i can never bother to buy it is cos i don’t have any use for it other than baking and it usually doesn’t keep long enough to last to my next recipe.
half and half is, as its name alludes, half cream and half milk. it doesn’t have the acidity levels of buttermilk (or your milk+lemon mix), so if you substituted buttermilk with half and half, it would be a LOT denser. as you wrote, the acid reacts with the baking soda to produce carbon dioxide, which then gives the lift that cakes need to make them fluffy (and the bubbles are essentially lifting the structure of the cake once the batter is cooked and solidifies).