Why Skim Milk Deserves a Place in Your Fridge, According to an Expert Baker

If you dabble much in the food world, you’ve likely heard the phrase “fat carries flavor.” Though true enough in a general sense, this mantra has also encouraged the fat philosophy that more is always better. For starters, that’s simply false—there’s a reason we don’t pour cream over our cereal in the morning. But even when used judiciously, fat doesn’t always carry flavor; sometimes it can dull, mute, or outright obscure it. Just imagine a scoop of lemon sorbet versus lemon gelato.

So when a friend told me she was thinking about dumping the skim milk left in her fridge by some holiday houseguests, I threw myself between the jug and the drain. While skim milk may not be everyone’s first choice as a beverage, it’s a remarkable actor in dessert. That’s because milk is rarely a primary source of fat in a recipe, making the difference between whole and skim almost negligible in the face of heavy hitters like butter, chocolate, cream, and egg yolks.

To put that in context, the difference between whole and skim milk is eight grams of fat per cup, working out to +/- 0.66 grams of fat per serving in recipes for muffins, cake, or pie, which typically serve 12. Which is to say: no big deal either way. There are certainly recipes that rely on whole milk for fat, flavor, and body (think ice cream and flan), but for general-purpose baking, it’s not nearly as essential as you’d suppose. To better illustrate that point, here are eight of my favorite recipes that don’t really care what kind of milk you have on hand.

To reiterate, my affection for skim milk has nothing to do with cutting calories—did you see how many whipped cream recipes I’ve published?! Rather, it’s about acknowledging milk’s role as a water/lactose delivery system rather than a source of fat in most desserts. Sure, there will always be ice creams and oven-baked custards that depend on every last gram of dairy fat, and such recipes will surely make that clear by calling for “whole milk.” But when a recipe of mine calls for milk, know that I’m not making a concession when I say that “any percentage will do.”

January 2017