What To Do With Buttermilk?

I hate when you need to buy an ingredient for a recipe, and that particular ingredient only comes in a size in which you will have a ton leftover after you prepare the recipe. That is always what happens to me with buttermilk. I love cooking with buttermilk because of its unique tangy flavor, and if you use it in baked goods, it can cut down the amount of fat (i.e. butter) you need to use.

I got buttermilk for the Broccoli Slaw dressing that I prepared, and I was left with a majority of the container. This time, instead of just letting it sit in the fridge until it goes bad, then feeling incredible guilt as I pour it out, I decided I would find recipes to try to use it all up.

I went to my trusty cookbook staple, The Joy of Cooking, and came up with:

Buttermilk Pancakes (I also sliced in some ripe bananas I had on hand to make then into Banana Buttermilk Pancakes):

Delicous - fluffy, light, and not too much butter in the recipe. There were too many pancakes for just me and my husband to eat in one sitting, but the good news is that these pancakes freeze beautifully. A few days later, we defrosted the pancakes and warmed them up in a pan with a teensy bit of butter and they were still delicious.

Wheat Quickbread:

You can totally taste the molasses in the recipe, and it makes for a slightly sweet, dense bread.

Peach Blackberry Cobbler:

The actual recipe calls for fresh peaches and frozen or fresh raspberries. It is still a little early for fresh California peaches. The first batch just rolled into our local Whole Foods this past week, but they looked like exactly what they were, the first harvest. I can't wait until the season truly gets into full swing - I love all stone fruits! So, I used three cans of peaches (sacrilege!), and some frozen blackberries I had on hand. I sprinkled way less sugar on the fruit than what the recipe calls for, since I used canned peaches which are already sitting in sweetened juice. It still tasted awesome. The crust was cake-like light and crisp on the outside, tender on the inside.

And in the end, the buttermilk was all used up!