Nothing Says Happy Birthday Like Fancy Butter!

For my husband's birthday, I wanted to cook a really special dinner.

He's such a wonderful guy, and 30 is such a big birthday, I wanted to go really fancy. Well, not really fancy (we don't eat sweetbreads or snails around here), but friendly-fancy.

I sent him some dinner options, and he chose his favorites - baked potatoes, steak on the grill, fresh salads, red wine (for the non-pregnant among us...) and pistachio cake for dessert.

To jazz things up a bit, I added a few tweaks to the meal to make it 30th birthday worthy. The easiest? Chive pepper butter!

Ten years ago I worked as the bar pianist at a gourmet dining place in northern Wisconsin. It was a blast (summer tourists give great tips!), and I loved watching all the fancy food head out of the kitchen on its way to the diners. One of the things that always fascinated me was the fancy butter.

The restaurant served all kinds of butter - rosemary-thyme butter, dill-sea-salt butter, cilantro-lime-butter. They were always beautiful and always served in these pastry bag piped balls that made them look like beautiful, white chocolate candies.

I wanted to make a special butter for our baked potatoes, but didn't know where to start. It turns out that making fancy butter is as easy as 1-2-3!

So, without further ado, my recipe for Chive Pepper Butter.

Ingredients: 
1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
1 T. black pepper
2 T. fresh chives

Directions:
1. Soften butter on the countertop
2. Finely chop chives.
3. With a fork, mix chives and black pepper into butter.
4. Pipe onto plates with a pastry bag, or serve in a fancy bowl.

My husband and I were both surprised at the lovely zing these chives gave our steak and potatoes. Without being much work, it added a nice fancy touch to the meal.

If you want to be extra fancy, you can pipe little daubs of fancy butter on everyone's plate. As for me, I thought the butter-in-bowl version worked just fine!

What's your favorite birthday meal?