Butter candles are – as the name suggests – candles that are made of butter. They are a popular trend on social media in 2022 and 2023, with which people surprise their guests at a dinner party.
Like a normal candle, a butter candle also has a wick with which you can light the butter candle. However, the special thing about butter candles as opposed to candles made of wax is that butter candles are edible. Because they are made of butter. By lighting the butter candle, the butter becomes softer and so spreadable.
How to make butter candles? Instructions, recipe
Butter candles are not particularly difficult to make and can be produced relatively easily at home. To make a butter candle yourself, in addition to butter, you will need cooking twine, a cup or other elongated container such as a jar, and possibly wooden sticks for attaching it. Cooking twine can be found at most drug stores or supermarkets.
To make a butter candle, you must first melt butter in a saucepan over gentle heat. If you like, you can enhance your butter candle with spices such as chili, rosemary, thyme, basil or garlic. These spices are mixed with the butter once it is completely melted in the pot.
Now, cut the cooking twine so that it is a little longer than the jar, cup or container you want to use for your butter candle. It needs to be a little longer because of this, so that it will later stick out of the top of the butter candle like a wick and reach almost to the bottom of the candle. This wick of cooking thread is then attached to a wooden stick and placed over the vessel that you want to use for the candle. You need to place the stick over it so that the cooking twine hangs into the center of the jar or cup as much as possible.
Next, take the pot of liquid butter with spices floating in it, if desired. If you have added spices to the butter, you should now stir well once, so that the spices are not just floating at the bottom of the pot, but are evenly distributed in the butter.
Then pour the liquid mixture of spices and butter into the container in which the wick is already hanging.
To make the butter candle nice and solid, the container with liquid butter, spices and wick is now placed in the refrigerator. Ideally, the future butter candle should remain overnight in the refrigerator. However, at least four hours in the refrigerator is recommended to ensure that the butter is completely hardened.
After the butter candle has completely hardened, you can remove it from the container. To do this, it is best to briefly run hot water over the outside of the jar so that the outermost layer of butter swells slightly. Now you can hold the jar with one hand and carefully pull the stick with the wick with the other hand to remove the candle from the jar. Alternatively, you can turn the jar upside down and let the candle slide out.
How to serve butter candles?
Butter candles can be served and enjoyed in a variety of ways. There are several ideas circulating on social media on how to use butter candles. For example, a butter candle can be placed in the center of an entire loaf of bread, lit, and the bread served. Guests can now either wait for the liquid butter to spread throughout the bread, or tear off pieces of the bread and use them to pick up some of the butter.
Alternatively, you could place the butter candle in a wide, shallow container with a rim, light it, and dip it into the melting butter with different types of bread, similar to a fondue.
Still other people on social media create very small butter candles, which are then placed on a dish like an element for decoration. After they are lit, the dish is served and the butter slowly melts as you eat, spreading over the meal.
But of course, many more ideas for enjoying butter candles are conceivable. Thanks to the flexibility of butter, there are almost no limits to the imagination when it comes to the shape of butter candles. Butter candles can also be refined as sweet variants, with spices such as cinnamon or cocoa powder and are excellent as additions to desserts such as rice pudding or pancakes.