When that recipe calls for softened butter, and your butter is still cold in the fridge, you’ll be happy you know how to soften butter quickly using this simple trick.
You may try to keep the butter dish on the counter full most of the time so you have room-temperature butter for spreading on bread and toast, but that’s not always quite enough when your recipe calls for creaming softened salted or unsalted butter with different sugars. That’s why I’m always glad to know how to soften butter quickly with this trick that’s saved me when we’ve run into this situation more than a few times.
If you’ve ever found yourself in this predicament and haven’t set your butter out ahead of time, then you know you usually have two options: Either take the stick of butter out and wait for an hour or so to let it to come to room temperature before you can actually start with your recipe, or pop it in the microwave, which usually leads your stick to melt in some areas and others being still hard and pretty much useless to you. When your recipe calls for soft butter, it’s important not to use melted butter for proper distribution within the batter and the final texture of the finished baked goods. Some recipes, like buttery pie crust, usually call for cold butter, but with chocolate-chip cookie dough, for instance, softened butter is often very important.
This little butter-in-a-glass trick is one that you will use over and over again and (hopefully) pass on to the next generation so they don’t end up having the same butter issues that we do whenever we want to whip up a tasty treat for our families!
So here’s what you do!
Another one of my favorite tips for baking: How to Make Your Own Baking Powder When You Run Out
How to Soften Butter With a Glass
Start with a fresh stick of butter from the refrigerator. If you’re wondering how to soften frozen butter, this same method will work just as well as it does on refrigerated butter, no need to thaw it out before. If you want to keep the wrapper on instead of taking it off as shown, that shouldn’t affect things too much.
This method is also really effective for making softened cream cheese, margarine, lard, or shortening if your recipe calls for creaming any of these fats evenly into a fluffy mixture and they’re currently too cold.
Pictured above: Strawberry Almond Thumbprint Cookies
To make your own DIY butter softener, take a large glass, one that’s big enough to fit over the stick of butter, and fill it up to the top with hot water. You can use very hot water tap-water, or you can boil water on the stove. Microwaving the water works as well. I use water from the insta-hot tap on my water dispenser.
Leave that to sit for a minute or so, and then dump the water out.
Turn the empty, but still warm, glass upside down and cover the stick of butter with it. Like this:
Now, leave it for a few minutes and keep an eye on it to ensure the butter doesn’t start melting. Soon, you’ll have a perfectly-softened stick of butter!
I know! It’s a revelation. It’s a little thing, but it’s also kind of a big deal for people who like to bake a good muffin recipe, cakes, or cookies, or if you want to make compound butter, herb butter, or cinnamon sugar butter.
The warm glass slowly and thoroughly radiates heat into the stick of butter from all angles, softening it perfectly without overdoing it and melting it. Check for softness using your finger. You should be able to leave a dent in the butter with just a small amount of gentle pressure.
How to Bring Butter to Room Temperatures Using Other Methods
I very much prefer using the butter in the glass trick for softening butter over all others, no matter what creaming method my recipe calls for, even if I’ll be using my stand-mixer. I just find it quick, painless, tidy, and less finicky than many others I’ve come across. That being said, sometimes, for whatever reason, using a glass and hot water just won’t be appropriate, so here are a few other options.
One method you can try is grating the butter with a cheese grater. This solution is a bit labor intensive, but it works by increasing the surface area of the butter that interacts with air, helping it come to room temperature much more quickly. If that sounds like a lot of work, you can also chunk it into small cubes with a knife and spread them out a bit to achieve almost the same effect.
Another method that can be a lot of fun is to place your stick of butter between two sheets of wax-paper or parchment-paper, then flatten it using a rolling-pin to achieve a greater surface area. You can also put your stick of butter in a thick, resealable plastic bag to cut down on the risk of butter squishing out. When you increase the surface area of your butter with any of these methods, you should find that it’s soft enough to be creamed in 20-30 minutes.
Now you’ll always have softened butter available in a flash when your recipe calls for it! You’ll save yourself a lot of frustration and a little time, bringing you one step closer to those delicious baked goods.
Pictured above: Cake Mix Pudding Cookies
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.