Goat Milk Butter Is a Game-Changing Swap for Baked Goods

We've partnered with Meyenberg to share some delicious ways to use their European-style goat milk butter—it's rich, creamy, and uber-delicious—in your baked goods, and mix up your kitchen routine.

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I’m not much of a baking fan. A weird thing to admit at the beginning of a story about baking, I know, but it’s the truth.

For me, baking has always felt too much like science: so regimented, so measurement-focused, so dependent on the exact right amount of baking powder (or else). Where regular cooking felt experimental and playful, baking seemed like a band relegated to playing their greatest hits—milk, sugar, eggs, flour—night after night.

That said, I’ve always loved to eat baked goods. There’s no denying the power of a chewy-crisp chocolate chip cookie still warm from the oven, or the first moist bite of a carrot cake slathered in icing. So I figured it was my task to find the fun in baking, to use new approaches and ingredients to keep things from feeling rote.

Enter: goat milk butter.

I love goat cheese, whether it’s crumbled into a salad or smeared onto a grainy cracker with a dollop of blueberry jam. Goat milk butter, on the other hand, is a new frontier for me, even as someone who makes it her mission to try pretty much everything. This dairy product isn’t just a gimmick, though—it's a worthy addition to any kitchen (and it has a few benefits old-school butter doesn't).

For starters, it has a lower melting point than butter made from cow's milk, so it softens more quickly, meaning it’s great for spreading on toast, a fresh batch of muffins, you get the idea. In baked goods, goat milk butter makes for the perfect swap: Substitute it in your favorite recipes, be they sweet or savory, using a one-to-one ratio and you'll notice a difference in flavor and texture (both improved, in my opinion).

Recently, I experimented with subbing in goat milk butter for regular butter in a few already-stellar baking recipes. The results? Well, they made me a believer.

First, it gave the all-buttah pie dough in my bourbon-apple galette an incredible flakiness and made it easy to roll out. Plus, it gave the taste of the syrup I drizzled onto the apples a new, nutty richness.

It added an earthy adjustment to my buttermilk pound cake. The texture was dense but still velvety-smooth, and the flavor had a tang that, mixed with the silky sourness of the buttermilk, pushed this recipe beyond the ordinary. The next time I make this, I'll top a slice with blackberry preserves and fresh whipped cream.

The luxuriously chewy blondies I baked had a complexity that made them feel like more than the sum of their parts. The goat milk butter played perfectly with the chocolate chips and pecans, with its earthiness taming the sweetness of the overall recipe. I went off-script a bit and added in some butterscotch baking chips—they, too, were complemented by the goat milk butter. (My boyfriend just shook his head and kept saying between bites, "Oh boy. Oh boy.")

This article was updated 11/27/23.

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Have you tried baking with goat milk butter? Let us know in the comments!

In partnership with Meyenberg, we’re sharing how their goat milk butter can be a baked goods game-changer—whether you're making cookies, rolling out dough, or cooking up a killer cake. With an earthy, nutty tang, goat milk butter gives a whole new flavor profile to special sweet treats and everyday dishes alike. Bonus: It's a bit easier to digest than products made from traditional cow's milk, thanks to goat milk's smaller-size fat particles and lower lactose content.