How To Soften Butter: Quick Tips

Making Butter Curls Is A Quick Way To Soften Butter

You decide to squeeze in some baking when you realize: uh-oh, the butter is rock hard. Time is short and you don’t have enough of it to wait for the butter to soften. Here are a few quick ways to soften that butter up so you can get back to baking:

• Grate the butter into a bowl, it will come down to room temperature quicker than being left in block form. Good technique for butter that has been frozen.
• Cut a square of butter in the amount that you need then microwave it in a bowl for a few seconds at a time. You’ll need to watch carefully, the butter will melt fast at a certain point.
• Cut butter into small squares and place in a glass bowl. Fit the glass bowl of butter into a pan filled with warm (not hot) water. The warm water will heat the glass bowl enough to cause the butter to soften.
• Arrange the amount of butter you need on a small plate. Take a glass bowl that will fit over the plate and fill it with boiling hot water. Let the water sit for a couple minutes to heat the bowl. Dump the water and fit the heated bowl over the butter. After a few minutes the butter will be softened.
• You can soften butter by beating or creaming it with a mixer.
• If you have a butter curler, heat it under hot water then use it to make butter curls. The butter curls will soften quickly since they’re thin strips of butter.

Don’t let rock hard brown sugar hold you back either, see 10 Ways To Soften Hard Brown Sugar.

A few of the tips above were previously mentioned in 50 Quick Tips For The Kitchen and 25 Vintage Baking Tips.

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