Fought my stand mixer for years before I saw the light

I used to dump everything in at once. Flour, butter, sugar all together. Hit start and just let it go. Then my neighbor watched me make cookies one time and said 'you're supposed to cream the butter and sugar first for 3 full minutes.' I tried it and the texture was night and day. Has anyone else had a basic technique they ignored for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela_dixon1mo ago

...and honestly I'm not convinced it's that deep. Like yes, creaming butter and sugar makes a difference but are we really out here acting like it's life changing? I've done both methods and sometimes I just don't feel like waiting three minutes for cookies. They still get eaten. My mom's been baking for 40 years and she never creams anything separately and everything turns out fine. You know what actually matters? Not burning them. That's the real texture killer right there.

skyler_white1mo ago

@angela_dixon I think there's a middle ground nobody talks about. Creaming butter and sugar is great for structure but if you're slapping a teaspoon of baking powder on top of everything else that changes the game way more. I started weighing my ingredients instead of using measuring cups and that made a way bigger difference than any mixing method ever did. My neighbor told me flour compaction can vary by like 30% between scoops and now I can't unsee it.