Mary Berry's 10-Minute Solution For Softening Butter Quickly
Every ingredient you need to make your famous pound cake is arranged neatly on the counter, but there's just one problem. The butter is rock solid. While the organized ones among us may always remember to remove the butter from the fridge in advance so it can come up to room temperature, there are others who like to fly by the seat of their pants and figure it out later. Luckily, British cook Mary Berry has a fantastic solution for softening fridge-cold butter that takes only 10 minutes.
Soft butter is a vital ingredient in frostings because it creates dreamy icings that are light, fluffy, and smooth. It's also easier to cream together with sugar and traps more air bubbles, which produces lighter bakes that are airy and tender. While you could toss firm butter into your stand mixer and let it run until it softens, this method can take time and is a noisy option. Berry's solution is to chop it into cubes before placing it in a bowl full of warm water and leaving it for 10 minutes. After this period, simply pour away the water and use the softened butter in your recipe as normal. Bear in mind that the water should be lukewarm rather than hot, or you'll end up with a batch of butter soup.
Other ways to soften your butter in less than 10 minutes
If the thought of giving your butter a bath doesn't sit right, you can use the double-boiler method, a similar strategy that also uses water by stacking two saucepans on top of each other — the bottom one containing boiling water, and the top filled with butter. However, you need to be vigilant with this technique, which is often used to melt chocolate, because your butter can melt into a liquid quickly if you don't catch it at the right moment.
Other hacks for softening butter you'll wish you knew sooner include shredding it with a grater or microwaving it on the defrost setting. You can even soften your butter quickly with a glass hack – fill a glass with hot water and pour it out after a minute, then dry the glass. Turn the glass upside down and place it over a vertical stick of butter, allowing the residual heat to soften the stick for five minutes.
If you're an impatient baker, use the time it takes for the butter to soften to crack your eggs, weigh your dry ingredients, and preheat the oven. Before you know it, 10 minutes will have flown by, and you'll be fully prepared to continue with your recipe. Of course, soft butter isn't used only in baking recipes; you can slather it over a roast chicken before popping it in the oven, mix it with herbs and garlic to make a yummy spread for toasted ciabatta, or combine it with maple syrup to add flavor to a stack of fluffy pancakes.