Quick ways to soften butter

Among the most notable pet peeves in a kitchen has to be this overlooked description in a recipe: “butter, softened” – and all you have is cold, hard butter. So here’s some quick ways on how to solve this problem with minimal angst:

• Cut the butter into small chunks and set out at room temperature
• Grate the butter (especially good with frozen butter)
• Put the butter in a plastic bag and pounding it 2 or 3 times with a rolling pin

And then there’s microwaving. A quick research indicates all sort of formulas, but we’ve stil found that too often you end up with a hard core of butter surrounded by a pool of completely melted butter. However, there’s one suggestion that we haven’t tried which we’ll throw out for general testing:

• Take the entire stick of butter and stand it on one end. Make sure it’s on a turntable that’s revolving and blast for about 10 seconds. This apparently ensures evenness. 

And once you’ve got that softened butter, well, we couldn’t resist finding an EYB 5-star recipe to use it in, so try out these Peanut Butter Chip Cookies from Two Peas and Their Pod.