Best way to cream butter for cookies?

12 years ago

I found the following article in the December issue of the Cooking Light magazine and it goes against everything I've done over the years with cookies - particularly the amount of time that butter should be creamed with the sugar:

"Baking holiday cookies can go from a labor of love to an exercise in frustration when your gingerbread men come out more bloated than a Macy's parade float. The problem is too much heatÃ¯Â¿Â½but not at the baking stage, at the mixing stage: Your butter is too warm.

The solution: Keep your butter cool, right until baking. Butter starts to melt at 68Ã¯Â¿Â½, and once that happens, its water-fat emulsion breaks and there's no getting it back. Cold, emulsified butter helps give baked goods structure by taking in air when mixed with sugar. For cookies, you want butter well below room temperature; between 50Ã¯Â¿Â½ and 65Ã¯Â¿Â½ is optimal. Cut the butter into chunks, and let it stand at room temperature to soften (nix the microwave idea entirely).

If the butter is still cold to the touch but spreadable, you can start creaming. Butter and sugar need only be mixed (or "creamed") for about 30 secondsÃ¯Â¿Â½much longer and the butter warms up. Chill the dough for 20 to 30 minutes before you bake."

I usually make sure that the butter is creamed very well with the sugar because I want the sugar to dissolve. To cream sugar with butter for no more than 30 seconds goes against everything I have learned about making cookies!

Any opinions?

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Comments (9)

booberry85
12 years ago
I agree with you! I usually pull the butter out of the frig about a half hour to an hour before baking. I don't use the microwave. I cut the butter into teaspoon or small pieces to mix with the butter. Then add the sugar. I put it in the mixer and mix on Speed 2 (?) until I don't see chunks of butter anymore. Sometimes this doesn't take long (30 seconds); sometimes this can take a couple minutes.
angelaid
12 years ago
OK - I switched to UTF-8 and I'm still just getting symbols and squigglies...
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Maybe reading this article will shine some light on the subject: http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/the-food-lab-the-best-chocolate-chip-cookies.html I know it's about chocolate chip cookies, but the science may help you out. Thanks for sharing the oatmeal - fat absorption - factoid. I find that really interesting and will add it to my "Book of Odd Knowledge" for future reference. I don't think it's just better mixing (you always want to keep mixing to a minimum for cookie dough so you don't over-develop the gluten and get tough cookies), but I think it's all about using a liquid fat and refrigerating the cookie dough for 12-24 hours so the flour has time to absorb the moisture, and therefore the cannabutter as well. Recipes for cookies using a liquid fat are less common, but once you have a few for comparison, you should be able to come up with a cookie (with the ingredients you posted in your second request for a recipe with specific ingredients). Just keep an eye out for the ratio of ingredients as your clues to how much liquid fat to flour. Since cannabutter is made by melting the butter, that's another reason to stick to a recipe using a liquid fat. Once butter is melted and resolidified, it doesn't work the same in a recipe. Other recipes you might want to research are those that use ghee, which initially is made with melted butter, as well. Editing to add: liquid fat is absorbed by flour while solid fat coats flour. Be sure to let us know how things work. -Grainlady
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cynic
12 years ago
I totally agree to let it nowhere near a microwave. I agree that beating the daylights out of it with a mixer will warm the butter. But I've never had trouble with the way I do creaming so I see no reason to change. I'll bet if I stick a thermometer in the butter/sugar when I'm creaming it's going to be below 68ÃÂ°. My kitchen is usually cooler when I'm baking.

Angelaid, have you tried a different browser? And have you checked that the encoding is staying set?
Jasdip
12 years ago
Hmmmm, Cynic, when I use UNF-8, I get black diamonds where the degree sign is in your and Janicep's posts.

With Western, I get upside-down question marks.
grainlady_ks
12 years ago
I take the temperature of my butter with an instant read thermometer to see if it's room temperature. Although there are no rules that can't be broken when it comes to baking, I was instructed room temperature butter was defined as 65 to 67 degrees. You can achieve that by letting it sit at room temperature for 30-minutes or so. In the time it takes you to get everything ready to make cookies, the butter should be close to "room temperature".

According to Betty Crocker's Cookie Book - "Perfectly softened butter should give gently to pressure (you should be able to leave a fingerprint and slight indentation on the stick) but it shouldn't be soft in appearance. Butter that is too soft or is partially melted results in dough that is too soft, causing cookies to spread too much."

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sally2_gw
12 years ago
I thought the idea was to cream the butter well in order to incorporate air. I wondered about this heating the butter up too much, but the recipes I've seen that give a time period for creaming butter usually suggest one to two minutes. It might be interesting to experiment with the shorter mixing time to see what happens.

When I bake in the summer, it's hard to keep the butter cool enough, but I don't bake much during the summer.

Sally
angelaid
12 years ago
I get the same thing as jasdip whether I'm using Explorer or Firefox.
ruthanna_gw
12 years ago
If you're happy with the way your cookies turn out with the method you've been using, why change it?
JaniceP
Original Author
12 years ago
Ruthanna, you are right....I always THOUGHT I was doing it correctly, but this article gave me pause. I have had trouble with some cookies that spread out more than I wanted them to even after I chilled the dough...I thought, after reading this article, that overbeating the butter might be the problem.

I thought this was the best place to bring up the issue given that there are so many experienced cooks here!

Best way to cream butter for cookies?

Comments (9)

booberry85

angelaid

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Best way to cream butter for cookies?

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