Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer – Baking with Room Temperature Ingredients

In most cake recipes it calls for room temperature ingredients; i.e., eggs and butter. Do you know why?  Why not just take the butter out, melt it and use it in the recipe?  And does it really, really matter if my egg is still cold?  Well on this week’s Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer I’m going to be talking about Baking with Room Temperature Ingredients.

Actually yes, it makes significant difference.  You see when eggs, butter and even milk are at room temperature, when they are added to a recipe they form an emulsion when whipped, beaten or creamed. This emulsion traps air.  The end result is a cake crumb that is light and airy.  When the ingredients are at room temperature the batter will combine more evenly and become smooth.  Cold items such as the fats in butter or eggs never really incorporate completely thus you end up with hard, dense cookies that, as my Dad would call ’em… sinkers.

 

Think of it this way…  Have you ever tried to whip cream cheese straight out of the fridge?  Sure it’ll whip BUT you will always end up with little clumps that never quite go away thus lending to clumpy, cloggy cheesecakes.  Gross, huh?  But if you let that cream cheese come to room temperature before you whip it, you’ll end up with a silky smooth texture each and every time.

So what happens if you’re really short on time or you forgot to let the stuff set out and come to room temperature?

♥ For butter, place the unwrapped butter on a plate.  Fill up a glass container larger than the butter with very hot water.  Allow the water to sit in bowl until the sides are very warm. Empty the water out, wipe out the inside of the container and then place the container overtop of the butter.  The heat will soften the butter in under a minute.  Check it after thirty seconds. Voila!

♥ For the eggs, put the uncracked eggs in a container and put warm(not boiling) over it covering it completely for 15 minutes.

♥ To quick soften cream cheese, Place the wrapped package of cream cheese sealable plastic bag.  Place the bag into a bowl of hot tap water.  In about 5 minutes, the cream cheese will be softened.

See, easy peasy so no more excuses, right!?