When Your Butter is Not Soft

It happens to all bakers. You decide to try a recipe but you have not planned ahead and taken your butter out of the refrigerator so that it is at room temperature.

This is not a problem for me as my kitchen does not have a microwave (my choice), but please resist the urge to  try and soften your baking butter in the microwave (unless your recipe calls for melted butter).  It is too easy to melt it to the point of being unusable. Most cookies are at their finest with butter creamed, not melted, into sugar. The state of your butter impacts the cookie texture, moisture and its rise.

One option to get softer butter is to put the butter in a glass dish over a pan of very warm, not boiling, water.

You can also pull out your cheese grater and shred it. Today I tried this using my vintage “8 in 1 Lightning Shredder,” a garage sale find that notes on its metal front that the “patent is pending.” I have no idea of its age, but this grater came with a set that has to be at least 50 years old and they are still sharp and in very good working order.

Be good to your butter.

More butter tips from Land O’Lakes.