Cooking For Engineers

[mumu3]

Hi,
Was wandering if someone could answer a question on creaming butter and sugar? Some recipes tell you to cream both butter and sugar tog. and others tell you to cream butter first then gradually add sugar is there a reason or end result for doing either way.? If there is how do you know which way to do the recipe : for example cream butter and sugar, what would be the best way to prepare this?


Thanks,
MUMU3

(sorry if this seems dumb to an experience baker)

[ConfidentCook]

Hi,

Creaming butter and sugar is probably the most important step in successful baking. Butter (or other fat) needs to be beaten to create volume/air bubbles to produce a light end product. You're goal is a light and fluffy butter/sugar mixture. Creaming butter before adding sugar would be to ensure the butter is soft enough to properly beat. Most recipes, however, do not require this; instead, they assume you will know that the butter needs to soften at room temperature for a while before beating with the sugar. Regardless of the initial creaming method, you should look for literal physical clues of "light and fluffy" to gauge when you are done. The more well-creamed the mixture, the less sugar grit you will feel when you scrape the beater against the bowl.

[mumu3]

Thank you for your information, I found it very useful.



Mumu3