How To Soften Butter In A Hurry

We've all been there. You're in the mood to bake, but just when you've figured out if you need baking powder or baking soda for our cake, cookies, or muffins, a terrible realization hits: The butter you need is stone cold. When it's happened before, at best we'd have twiddled our thumbs and grumbled for however long it took to warm up. At worst, we'd have cleared away our baking accoutrements and stomped away, sulking that we weren't going to get cake. Not any more! Bring on that chilled butter, baby, because we've got the smartest way to go from a rigid brick to soft as, well, warm butter. All you need is a bowl and a microwave.

You start by taking the stick of butter and cutting it into several chunks. You don't have to be pretty or exact about it, but it can help if they're more or less an even size. Pop a couple of those pieces in a bowl and nuke them until they have completely melted. Next, drop in the remaining chunks of butter and let them sit for a few minutes, then slowly stir them into the warmed liquid. Before you can reel off our list of genius ways to reuse that butter wrapper, the fat in your bowl will be smooth and soft, the perfect texture for most impromptu baking adventures.

Ordinarily, using a microwave to soften cold butter can be a recipe for disaster, particularly if you're baking, because you don't want it too soft. Many recipes call for the butter to be creamed with sugar, which introduces air into the mixture and makes the result light and fluffy. Many home cooks keep their butter on the countertop for a while to reach this state, but there's more to room temperature than meets the eye for butter. Sticks that are too hard obviously won't easily combine with the sugar (and could even break your mixing bowl if you're using a glass one and going really hard). On the other hand, butter that's been warmed too much will be overly wet and oily to cream correctly, spelling curtains for many types of cakes or cookies.

There are several ways to make a chilled stick of butter more malleable, including grating it (we've found it's brilliant for scones) or even beating it to a mushy pulp in a plastic bag or between sheets of parchment paper with a rolling pin. But there's one other benefit to the divide, microwave, and conquer hack: you can turn the result into near-instant cowboy butter or really any kind of compound butter. Chop up your favorite herbs and spices, throw them in the bowl, give the whole thing a stir, and boom: compound butter. It's perfect for topping a freshly seared steak or transforming a bland salmon fillet into a flavorsome dinner.