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Cold butter vs room temp butter in my chocolate chip cookies, and I can't believe the difference
I baked two batches of chocolate chip cookies side by side on Saturday, one with cold butter straight from the fridge and one with butter I left out for 3 hours. The cold butter batch spread into flat greasy puddles, like 4 inches wide and paper thin, and the edges burned at 11 minutes. The room temp batch held its shape, puffed up nice, and came out chewy in the middle with crisp edges at the same 11 minutes. Same recipe, same oven, same pan, only the butter temp changed. My husband said the flat ones tasted like sweet cardboard and he wasn't wrong. I wasted 2 sticks of butter and a whole afternoon figuring this out the dumb way. So do you all actually wait for butter to soften, or is there a trick to speed that up without melting it in the microwave?
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matthew_owens97d ago
I always figured cold butter was fine as long as you cream it long enough, but your side by side test proves that wrong. I made a batch last month with butter that was still a little firm in the middle and got the same sad pancake situation, thin edges and all. The dough never really came together either, it stayed kind of crumbly and the chips kept popping out when I scooped it. Now I just cut the butter into small cubes and leave it on the counter while I get everything else ready, takes maybe 20 minutes instead of 3 hours. If I'm in a rush I grate the cold butter on a box grater, it softens up fast without turning into a puddle like the microwave does.
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