Common Cooking Mistakes #7: Under-creaming the butter and sugar
Each week we offer a few little tips and hints that will improve your cooking tremendously. This week it's all about baking. If you've ever baked cookies, cakes, or muffins, you've probably had to "cream the butter and sugar." We all know that simply means beating them together with an electric mixer. But how much mixing is enough? When is the butter and sugar "creamed" to the appropriate point. And the fact is that most cooks tend to stop beating the mixture too soon. When you beat butter and sugar, the mixture goes through several stages ending with a soft, light, and creamy mixture that is full of air. And that is what creamed is all about. It's the air you beat into the mixture to make your cakes taller, your cookies higher, and your baking better all around.