Mary Berry's Go-To Technique To Soften Butter Quickly

Softened or "room temperature" butter is an essential ingredient in baking, typically creamed with sugar as the first step in making cakes, slices, muffins, and cookies. It's also a crucial element in creating deliciously fluffy buttercream frosting. But as any home baker will know, transforming a rock hard block of butter into something more squidgy is easier said than done. Soften the butter too little, and it won't blend with the sugar, ultimately creating dense and heavy bakes. Soften it too much, on the other hand, and it will give you a greasy, loose batter with a flat, soggy result.

There are, of course, a number of techniques you can use to tackle this problem, but one of the quickest and most effective comes to us courtesy of "The Great British Bake Off" judge and unofficial Queen of Baking, Mary Berry. Her unbelievably simple solution involves cutting cold butter into large cubes and popping them straight into a bowl of lukewarm water for around 10 minutes, before draining off the water and proceeding to cream them with sugar.

This sure beats waiting for a block of butter to soften on the bench for a few hours — grating it into smaller, more pliable pieces with a cheese grater — or even the rather questionable method of popping the entire block into the front or back of your waistband to warm up, as you go about the rest of your prep.

What's great about this technique, aside from its obvious speed and lack of equipment, is that there's very little room for error — Mary Berry herself describes it as "a simple, simple, foolproof way of doing it" in a masterclass for season three of BBC series "The Great British Bakeoff."

In fact, your most difficult task will be getting the water to reach the right temperature. Again, Berry offers some helpful advice, saying you want it to resemble "sort of the temperature of a baby's bath." Follow her lead, and you'll have butter that she says is "squidgy and soft, just the temperature for doing a creaming method." And if you want to heed even more of her advice when it comes to using butter in your baking, be sure to check out another top tip of hers for creating superior cakes.

One of Berry's favorite ways to use this beautifully softened butter is in cakes like a classic Victorian sponge, though you could also incorporate it into other bakes calling for creamed butter and sugar, like some chewy coconut chocolate chip cookies. There's also nothing stopping you from using this idea for when you want to straight-up butter some bread, create a dreamy butter board, or build your own compound butter (butter with additional flavorings) to use on steaks, baked potatoes, and similar dishes. With so many potential uses, this is one trick you butter not forget.