First, thanks for stopping by! Great question! Well, from my travels you can freeze butter, so I would imagine that freezing brown butter wouldn’t be an issue either. So freeze away. That said, you should keep a couple of things in mind when freezing this as well as other things, like dough, that bakers would like to keep on hand. While it’s doubtful that the butter will ever go rancid if frozen, it may pick up flavors/odors from anything else you have in your freezer unless you WRAP IT TIGHTLY. Also, it will lose moisture in the freezer, so I wouldn’t recommend keeping it there longer than a couple of months.

Yes you can use it in cakes. However, it’s not a one to one substitution. I decided to go to the authority on this one and according to Rose Levy Beranbaum, “Butter is only 81% fat. The rest is milk solids and about 15.5 water. So you’ll need to add water and decrease the amount of clarified butter. Best to do it by weight.” That answer left me a little perplexed as I hadn’t mentioned “clarified” butter and I asked for some clarification for substituting actual solid butter but haven’t received any as of yet from Rose. Someone did mention, “I have tried just substituting clarified ghee and/or plugra for regular butter in pound cake recipes and they have NOT turned out well. I think the water content of the regular butter is missing and they were heavy and ‘fallen’ looking in the middle no matter how long they baked.”

So, it would be a little precarious changing recipes that only call for regular butter. If you’re pretty comfortable changing things up in your baking and own a scale, have at it. Otherwise what I would do is try to find a recipe that already has brown butter going for it. Personally, I’m not afraid of experimenting and a scale has been in my possession since Christmas of 2010 *thanks Mom!*. With Rose’s specifications it’d be interesting to explore the possibilities. I hope this helps!

I am so, so, SO sorry for not getting back to your question in a timely manner. If you’ve manage to have the patience to take a look at some of my other posts in my blog (specifically in June 09), you may have gained some understanding as to the delay. There’s no real excuse for it, but I’ve just been away from my computer for the last months. Anyways, I hope you can forgive me, and I hope you did find some answers to your questions in the meantime.

If not, then if I could give you some more info and reassurance. From what you’re telling me, it sounds like you did everything perfectly. As to the foaming, yes. And depending on the level of heat, you may get some snaps and crackles as you brown the butter. The lower the heat, the less crackles, AND the longer it will take, BUT the easier it is to brown instead of burn. Sometimes I get a bit impatient and turn the heat higher and it foams, snaps, and crackles like crazy. The foam of course impedes getting a visual on how brown the butter is, so I urge you to be patient and brown it on a lower heat, something like a medium-low (you don’t want it completely low, otherwise I don’t think it will brown).

As far as foam disappearing, I do think it dissipates as you brown it. As I recall though, I think it will need to sit for a bit for the foam to completely disappear. One way or the other, foam or no foam, as long as you get that nutty aroma you’re all set to go. Swirling is key, at least from my experience. This helps inhibit the crazy crackling regardless of how high the heat is, and helps preventing the butter from going from browned to burned too quickly.

And finally, seeing milk solids are perfectly normal. In fact it wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t. According to Michael Ruhlman, “Butter becomes brown when it’s cooked till the water evaporates and the milk solids, which separate from the clear butterfat, can turn brown.” The solids are separating, not necessarily evaporating, so you should expect to see brown colored solids in your pan. If they’ve turned black, that’s a sign that you’ve burned your butter. From my own experience, all is not lost as long as it still smells nutty. You have to use your own judgment, but again, be careful. You walk a fine line when browning butter, but it is so, so worth it.

Again, I’m sorry for the delay, and I hope that this helps you in some way, albeit belatedly.

Take care,
Aimee

I’m glad that you found this helpful. What’s sad is that this actually wasn’t an “experiment” – I was really trying to bake a recipe (HA!) But hey, this is how we learn. I’m so happy that this was a help because that’s a big reason why I started this blog. I hope to help others avoid my pitfalls.