Fixing over-softened butter

Here’s a quick tip from America’s Test Kitchen, via the Kitchn, that should come in particularly useful during this period of intense cookie baking. When a recipe calls for softened butter, and we’ve forgotten to leave it at room temperature, most of us go to our microwave to do a quick fix. But it’s hard to calculate exactly how much to heat the butter and over-softened butter can be a result.

While you can’t correct totally melted butter, it turns out there is a way to correct over-softened butter: 

“Place it in a bowl with a few ice cubes and stir. In less than a minute, the butter will quickly cool and solidify to the soft texture you are looking for. Simply remove the ice cubes and proceed with the recipe. (The small amount of water that has melted into the butter won’t affect the finished product.)  For full information, watch the video. 

And while we’re on the subject, we wanted to remind you that the EYB library stands ready to help you find the perfect recipes for Christmas cookies – whether in any of these Christmas cookie cookbooks or these online recipes that the authors have identified as perfect for the holidays. Santa will be pleased.