Creaming Butter and Sugar Method

Many cookie and cake recipes require the creaming of butter and sugar. A lot of people don't really understand the meaning of the creaming method. Here is how to do it:

Have all ingredients at cool room temperature. 65 to 70 degrees F.

Put the butter in the mixing bowl of a stand mixer and cream at low speed for about 1 minute or until it's soft. Add the sugar. Change the speed of the mixer to medium and leave it alone for at least 4 minutes. This is the single most important step in the creaming method. Because this is where bubbles are formed. The sugar perforates the butter and the holes are where the bubbles are formed. The bubbles are later going to form the texture of the cookie.

After a few minutes on high you can see the butter mixture has fluffed up and has turned a lighter color. That's because air bubbles change the way light reflects off the butter. You can also cream with a hand mixer but it will take much longer. In the past it was done by hand!

Eggs and other dairy ingredients that will be added should also be at room temperature. Dairy ingredients at room temperature form an emulsion that traps air. When heated in the oven, this air expands and is what makes your desserts fluffy. When you add cold eggs to a creamed butter and sugar mixture, those air cells are destroyed. Batters made with room temperature ingredients are smooth and evenly incorporated. Cold ingredients don’t incorporate evenly to bond resulting in flat chocolate chip cookies or lumpy frosting.

Adding Eggs One at a Time

It’s About Creating an Emulsion. If you add the eggs all at once, the butter-fat mixture won’t be able to absorb it all and won’t create a nice suspension.

The reason why lies on a microscopic level. It first starts with creaming butter and sugar. If you’ve done it correctly, you’ll have a light and fluffy mixture that is pretty much all fat. Now we know fat (or oil) and water don’t mix, at least not without some effort. However, when we add the eggs to our creamed mixture, that’s exactly what we’re attempting to do. We’re trying to suspend the water in the egg into the fat, scientifically know as making an emulsion.

Almost all of the water in the egg comes from the egg whites. While the egg yolk is mostly fat, it also has lecithin which is key to helping to create our emulsion. Lecithin is the matchmaker that ties water and fat together, as long as you do it slowly and gently.