Powdered Buttermilk

I spent some time in South over the Christmas holidays visting Ming's family. I found out that all the supermarkets carry powdered buttermilk and I've always been intrigued by it. Powdered buttermilk is a harder to find ingredient in the west coast and you need to go to a specialty store to find it (and pay a specialty store's prices.) Even though our suitcases were bulging (we hit the max weight limit!) I decided to buy it anyway.

I gave the powdered buttermilk a test run on New Year's Day. I made buttermilk pancakes. I've used this recipe forever and have always been completely satisfied with the results. This time I used the powdered buttermilk in lieu of normal buttermilk. The taste was fantastic as always but the consistency was different. These pancakes were much thinner and less fluffy than the pancakes made with normal buttermilk. The ease of making the pancakes was amazing though. It was such a relief not to need to worry about going to the store to buy buttermilk ahead of time for something as simple as pancakes. I'll definitely use the powdered buttermilk again in pancakes but every so often I'll go back to the real stuff since I do miss the taller, fluffier texture of pancakes.

The next test of my powdered buttermilk will be in cakes. Stay tuned ...