How do I soften butter quickly without melting it?

Softened butter means around 18 to 20°C — cool to the touch, holding its shape, but taking a fingerprint easily. That specific state matters because creaming works by dragging sugar crystals through solid-but-plastic fat to cut air pockets into it. Melted butter has no crystals to cut and cannot hold air at all.

What you'll need

• A coarse grater, a rolling pin or a microwave, depending on method (optional)
• Baking parchment (optional)

Step by step

1. Know the target.About 18 to 20°C. It should hold its shape, dent under gentle finger pressure, and look matt rather than shiny. Shiny or slumping means it has started to melt and the emulsion is already compromised.
2. Method one — cube and spread. Fifteen minutes.Cut the block into 1cm cubes and spread them out on a plate. Surface area does all the work. The slowest of the fast methods and by far the least likely to go wrong, so use it if you have the time.
3. Method two — grate it frozen. Two minutes.Butter straight from the freezer on the coarse side of a box grater. The shreds come to temperature almost instantly and cream beautifully. Counter-intuitive and the best method there is. Hold the block in the wrapper to keep your hand off it.
4. Method three — flatten it. Two minutes.Put the block between two sheets of baking parchment and roll or bash it out to about 5mm. Thin butter warms fast and the mechanical work already begins softening it. Peel it off in sheets.
5. Method four — the warm bowl. Five minutes.Fill a mixing bowl with boiling water, leave a minute, tip it out and dry it, then invert it over the cubed butter on a plate. The trapped warm air softens it evenly with no direct heat. Excellent and hard to overdo.
6. Method five — the microwave, carefully. One minute.Cubed butter, on the lowest power setting or defrost, in five-second bursts, turning between each. It goes from cold to molten in the middle with almost no warning, and the melted middle does not recover. This is the fastest and the most likely to be regretted.
7. Check it before creaming.Press it. It should dent cleanly and not stick to your finger or slump. If any part is liquid, that part has lost the crystal structure and the cake will be denser for it.

Tips

• If the butter has partly melted, refrigerate it for ten minutes and let it come back to a uniform cool plastic state. It is not as good as never melting it but it is much better than creaming a mixture that is half liquid.
• For pastry you want the opposite — butter as cold as possible. Do not confuse the two jobs. Only creamed methods want soft butter.
• Take the butter out when you take the eggs out. Getting into the habit of setting both on the counter when you start reading the recipe removes the problem entirely.
• In a very warm kitchen, butter can pass through the useful window in half an hour. Cube it and watch it rather than leaving it out all afternoon.
• A stand mixer will cream slightly cooler butter than a wooden spoon will, so if your butter is a touch too firm, the machine can cover for it.

Common mistakes

• Melting the butter and letting it cool — Butter is an emulsion of fat, water and milk solids. Melting breaks it and it does not re-form on cooling — the crystal structure that traps air during creaming is gone. Cakes made this way are dense and greasy.
• Microwaving on full power for thirty seconds — Microwaves heat unevenly and butter has almost no thermal buffer. You get a molten core and cold edges. Low power, short bursts, or another method entirely.
• Softening butter in warm water in its wrapper — It softens unevenly, water gets in past the wrapper, and it is hard to judge. The inverted warm bowl achieves the same thing without any of that.

Questions people ask