Should You Melt Butter When Making Cookies And Cake? - Kitchen Seer (2024)

FAQs

Should I melt the butter when baking cookies? ›

Using melted butter in cookies helps you achieve a similar fudgy-yet-cooked texture and prevents any unwanted cakiness. Instead of the rise coming from both chemical and physical leavening agents (baking soda/powder + creamed butter), it now comes almost exclusively from chemical agents alone.

“Room temp butter is able to hold onto air,” Szewczyk says. “You can mechanically shove air into it by creaming. Warm butter is not able to hold onto it, so you're going to get a denser dough.” When using warmer or melted butter, cookies will struggle to lift and lighten, resulting in a cakier texture, like brownies.

Beating softened butter and sugar together, which is called creaming, traps air in the mix, giving the cake more lift and a more open structure. Mixing melted butter and sugar does not trap air, so your cake will be more dense and less open.

Using melted butter in cookies helps you achieve a similar fudgy-yet-cooked texture and prevents any unwanted cakiness. Instead of the rise coming from both chemical and physical leavening agents (baking soda/powder + creamed butter), it now comes almost exclusively from chemical agents alone.

Chocolate chip cookies made with softened butter vs melted butter. In terms of flavor and texture, there's no difference. The cookies made with melted butter spread a tad more, but this difference is even less after the dough has been chilled (for a minimum of 1 hour).

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.

Soft butter creates tenderness and lift. Use it in: cakes and soft cookies. For best results: make sure butter is fully at room temperature. If you're in a hurry, cut butter into tiny pieces and it will quickly soften.

Place butter pieces in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave, uncovered, on 100% power (high) until butter is melted, about 30 to 45 seconds, depending on the amount of butter. If you still have just a few small pieces left in the dish, you can stir the butter until they melt.

You might get little chunks of butter that will bake unevenly in cakes and cookies. It is important that softened butter is still cool, and not too warm so it doesn't melt into the batter, but mixes.

Should melted butter be cooled for baking? ›

In just about all recipes, butter should be cooled down to just above room temperature before you use it. Depending on how much butter you've melted and how hot you made it while melting, this could take anywhere from 1 – 5 minutes.

If you're looking for flakiness, cold butter is the way to go. You want the butter to be as solid as possible before working with it in the dough, so that it will keep its shape in layers rather than seeping into the dough and tenderizing it.

Melted or liquid butter will thin out your batter, giving you ultra-flat cookies or cakes that are dense and uneven.

Double Your Yolks Most cookie recipes call for at least one egg. You can try omitting the white of each egg, which tends to dry out when baked, and replacing it with an additional yolk. Plus, egg yolks have more fat than egg whites, which helps to keep your cookies moist and chewy.

For baking purposes, the Test Kitchen recommends using unsalted butter so you can better control the amount of salt that goes into the recipe. Salted butter is best for serving at the table with bread or to flavor a dish, like mashed potatoes.

That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don't overdo it when you're creaming together the butter and sugar.

When cookies are too cakey, there are two main culprits: too much leavening (baking powder or baking soda) or too much egg. If there is too much baking powder or baking soda in the dough, the cookies will rise too much when baking, creating a cakier structure. Eggs also promote a cakey structure in cookies.

Adjust baking time to achieve the cookie texture desired. A little less time produces chewier cookies, a little more time makes them crispy. If you prefer softer cookies, remove them from the oven while they are still slightly under baked. Always check for doneness at the minimum baking time.

“If the butter has only been on the counter at room temperature for a few hours or overnight and has maintained a temperature below 70°F, it should be just fine to place back in the fridge,” says Ryan.

Softened butter should be safe to put back in the fridge

If it has gone longer than that, more than two days, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), your butter may end up rancid.

How do you soften butter in 10 minutes? ›

Pour hot water into a ceramic or glass cup or bowl (something that can fit over your butter). After a few minutes, dump the water out of the vessel and quickly cover your butter. The heat from the cup will soften your butter in just a few minutes.

Don't Over-Bake

If you're looking for a dry cake, simply over-bake it! In all seriousness though, over-baking cakes dry them out. It could only be a 30 second window between perfectly baked and over-baked, so make sure you're keeping an eye on the cake. Begin checking it 1-2 minutes before the recipe instructs.

As a general rule, whenever a recipe starts with creaming butter and sugar, it's a good idea to really let your butter reach room temperature so the final result has the optimal texture. In some cases, though, using melted butter that is then cooled (but still liquid) can have a different but not undesirable effect.

Room temperature eggs are good for baking because they blend more evenly in batters and help the dough rise more easily than cold eggs straight out of the fridge. Cold eggs, on the other hand, can result in lumpy batter, a stodgy texture, and require longer baking times — and no one wants that!

To cream softened butter, beat the butter and sugar at a moderate speed for 2 to 3 minutes and you'll be well on your way to baking perfection! Undermixed butter and sugar will look gritty and chunky. This can lead to dense cookies and cakes. It is possible to overmix the butter and sugar.

If it's not soft enough, the butter won't cream well with the sugar (frequently the first step of baking recipes); it simply won't get to the right light and fluffy consistency. And that could result in dense cake layers that fall flat.

Sit out: Allow the butter to sit out on the counter for about 1-2 hours before beginning your recipe. The amount of time depends on the weather and how cool you keep your kitchen.

Baking powder contains sodium bicarbonate and acidic salts. The reaction of these two ingredients results in a cookie that is soft and thick, but slightly harder.

Should I use baking soda or baking powder in cookies? ›

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

Since it is not being creamed and aerated nor kept in cold pieces that create steam in the oven, melted butter does not serve the same roll in leavening pastries as softened and cold butter do. However, it does still play a roll in the texture. For instance, using melted butter in a cookie recipe will make them chewy.

Use it in: cakes and soft cookies. For best results: make sure butter is fully at room temperature. If you're in a hurry, cut butter into tiny pieces and it will quickly soften. Cold butter is ideal for baked goods that should be crisp.

But when choosing butter for baking, I always use unsalted, and we recommend you do, too. Salt acts as a preservative and masks any potentially funky flavors, so salted butter often sits on grocery store shelves longer than unsalted does. To ensure you're using fresh butter, choose unsalted.

Softened butter is room temperature butter used for heating or adding things like sugar in baking this process is called creaming the butter. This is not done with a cold pat of butter. Melted butter behaves very differently from softened butter because now you have crystalline fats and liquid fat.

To get that perfect consistency and temperature, leave butter out on the counter for around 1 hour prior to beginning your recipe. If your cakes are dense, you're probably softening the butter too much. And butter that's too warm causes cookies to overspread.

How Long Should Butter Sit Out To Be Room Temperature? To soften butter, we recommend leaving it on the kitchen counter for 30 minutes to an hour.

How long does it take to soften butter? Setting out chilled butter at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes prior to use gives it time to soften. The same approach works for frozen butter, though it can take a couple of hours.

And just before baking, cookies should be very well chilled, or even frozen hard. Cold butter's ability to hold air is vital to creating what pastry chefs call structure — the framework of flour, butter, sugar, eggs and leavening that makes up most baked goods.