So if you're anything like me, when you want to get on with some cooking (particularly baking), you want to do it right away. No messing. No dawdling. No hanging around. There are plenty of other things on your 'to do' list after all. You certainly don't want to wait while your 'straight from the fridge' butter reaches room temperature and a useful consistency. Isn't it fair to say that the butter is ALWAYS rock hard when you need it to be soft?
So here's how to quickly soften butter -
- Weigh the quantity of butter that you need and then get out the grater - just a regular cheese grater is fine.
- Next grate the butter on the coarse side of the grater and ...... Ta Dah ..... by the time you've reached the end of the block, your grated butter will be well on its way to being soft. Be careful of your fingertips as you reach the end of the block, but to be honest, by this stage your butter will be pretty soft, so you can probably stop grating before the bitter end.
- Now your butter is ready to use.
I often store my spare butter in the freezer and this even works when it's straight from frozen. It's a bit more like hard work to grate but as a bonus, you are probably getting a mini-workout at the same time and there's less potential for it being a bit messy than when you do it straight from the fridge.