How to Soften Butter at Room Temperature
Not sure how long to soften butter? Keep an eye on it, but the easiest way to soften butter is to remove a cold stick from the refrigerator and let it hang out at room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes until it becomes room temperature or until just spreadable. The timing will vary depending on the room temperature and how cold the butter is to start with. If the butter starts getting quite soft but is not yet melted, place it back in the refrigerator for a few minutes to keep it from melting before you are ready to use it. This is easily our favorite way to soften butter for baking cookies because it guarantees consistency. Plus, when it comes to times like holiday baking, we need that long time to go find our cookie cutters, sprinkles, and other baking tools.
How to Soften Butter Quickly Four Ways
If you’re on this page, there’s a good chance you probably need a way to soften butter fast. For the baking sessions where the traditional sit-and-wait route isn’t an option, these methods for softening butter will speed up the process. Here’s how to soften frozen butter or refrigerated butter without melting it. Test Kitchen Tip: If the butter you are softening for cookie dough melts, use it for another purpose and soften new butter for your cookies. Once melted, the butter reacts differently with the dough and will give your cookies a different consistency.
Dressed-Up Softened Butter Recipes
Not only is softened butter ideal for baked goods, it’s also great for mixing in other flavors to create compound butters or seasoned butter like this lavender butter recipe for later. Try this mouthwatering herb butter or experiment with adding your own mix-ins. Softened Butter Tip: These flavored butters are also a great way to use butter that got too soft if you tried something like microwaving butter to soften it, but didn’t use our defrost setting tip. Though softening butter seems like a step that could be easily skipped for the sake of time, it really only takes a bit of thinking ahead. Trust me, those few extra steps of prep work will pay off when you bite into that perfectly-baked chocolate chip cookie.
