This Is Actually the Best Way To Soften Butter Quickly, According to a Baking Expert

Even though I’m a food editor, cookbook author, and former bakery owner, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to bring my butter to room temperature before starting a baking recipe. I’ll be humming along, gathering my ingredients, with my oven already preheated and ready to go, and then (cue the sound of tires screeching) I remember that I should’ve set out my butter.

I’ve used various methods for speedy butter softening over the years, including the guessing game of programming my microwave to the perfect time and power level, but it’s always a gamble. A few seconds too long in the microwave and the butter goes from pliable to a puddle. Turns out, the microwave is actually the perfect tool for this task, but I’d been using it all wrong.

How To Soften Butter Perfectly in 10 Minutes

Sally McKenney, of the popular baking blog Sally’s Baking Addiction, writes that in order to soften butter quickly and perfectly, she microwaves two cups of water in a glass liquid measuring cup for two minutes, until the water is very hot.

Then, she cuts her cold butter into cubes, places them on a plate, and sticks the plate in the microwave (removing the measuring cup full of hot water first). Finally, she closes the door and lets the butter sit in the ambient heat for 10 minutes. At that point, the butter is perfectly softened and ready for baking.

When I tried this trick, my butter started out at 49°F, and after 10 minutes in the microwave, the temperature rose to 61°F. Ideally, butter should be at about 65°F for beating or whipping with sugar, so just a few more minutes in the barely-warm microwave brought it up to the perfect temperature. Note that my microwave is neither new nor particularly powerful, so if you try this trick, you should start checking the butter at 10 minutes.

Why Softening Butter Is Important for Baking

Getting your butter to that Goldilocks temperature is really important, but it’s usually glossed over in recipes, as if the word “softened” tells you all you need to know. Like all adjectives, though, this one is highly subjective. Does “softened” mean that you can easily press all the way through the butter with a fingertip? Or does it mean that the butter is simply at a cool room temperature?

The answer lies in how butter functions in baked goods. When you whip softened butter with sugar in a cake batter or for cookies, you’re trying to incorporate air into the batter so the final result is light and fluffy rather than dense.

When you try to whip butter that is too cold, it never fully incorporates with the other ingredients, creating a lumpy batter with pockets of cold butter. Butter that is very soft and starting to liquefy also doesn’t blend well with the other ingredients because it is too dense to hold the air pockets you want for a light, smooth batter.

How To Tell When Butter Is Softened Enough

Many home cooks over-soften their butter because they don’t know what to look for. Ideally, softened butter should be malleable enough that it will hold your fingerprint if you gently press your finger into it, but it should not be mushy (you shouldn’t be able to easily press your finger all the way through the stick). Visually, you want butter that appears matte, not shiny or greasy.

Getting your butter to the right temperature may seem like a small detail, but for baking, the small details can be the difference between a light, fluffy cake and a greasy, dense one. At least with this one trick up your sleeve, you’ve mastered one really important and often-overlooked step.