Let’s say you’re reading a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, such as the one on the back of the bag of chocolate chips. It’s likely that you will see butter in that recipe, but typically it will be specified that the butter needs to be softened or sometimes room temperature. What does that mean, and is that important?
I hate to say it, but it’s important, and you should absolutely do it.
The Role of Butter
Usually when baking, one of the first steps to the cream the butter and sugar together. (More on that to come!) When the butter is cold and straight of the refrigerator, this is difficult. The butter can spread in the mixing bowl for the sugar to be mixed into. When the butter is softer, then the sugar crystals are able to sort of cut into the butter and create an emulsion. We are also working on whipping air into this mixture, and the trapped air helps to create a lift into our baked goods. If the butter is too cold, this doesn’t occur properly and your mixture will be lumpy and have random butter chunks sprinkled throughout.
How to Tell if Your Butter is Softened
So if cold butter is bad, and melted butter is not what was called for, how are we supposed to know if our butter is the right temperature. I suppose you can poke a thermometer in there to see if it’s the magic room temperature of your house (probably around 68 degrees or so). But most of us aren’t going to do that, I certainly never have! Essentially, you want your butter soft enough for your finger to leave an indention if you press on it. I like to give it a little squeeze in the wrapper and see how much “give” it has. I’ve seen all kinds of tips and tricks to speed this process up, but I’ve never tried one. Maybe we should do that one day and see what works the best!
Generally this takes a couple hours, although it can go faster if you cut the butter up into chunks. I just take the sticks of butter from the refrigerator and set them on the counter for an hour or so and then check to see how it is progressing. Sometimes in winter it takes a little longer than it does in the summer.
Let me know your thoughts on butter!