What is the purpose of creaming butter with sugar in cookie recipes?
I got distracted while assembling the dry ingredients for a cookie recipe and added the sugars, which were supposed to be creamed with the butter first. Fortunately, the sugar was added last and I was able to salvage enough to cream it.
What does creaming the butter and sugar actually do? Had it been on the bottom of the bowl under the flour etc, could I have just beat everything together?
The recipe is simple and just calls for creaming and then adding egg, and after that, dry ingredients. It's nothing fancy.
Best Answer
Creaming puts the air bubbles into the mixture. The baking powder only helps enlarge the bubbles, not make them. In cookies the creaming plays another essential role, which is to help dissolve the sugar. To cream the butter keep it cool and do it for a few minutes (at 65°F, harder in the summer).
It has recently been discovered that cookie dough is different from cake batters. Sugar is part of the structure of the cookie and not just a sweetener, tenderizer, and browning agent. It forms the base upon which the fats and the starch granules of the flour are embedded. The sugar needs to dissolve for the matrix to form.
If you beat the whole thing, it will be harder to get bubbles in and you may end up overworking the dough. The cookies will end up flat and tough.
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Quick Answer about "What is the purpose of creaming butter with sugar in cookie recipes?"
Creaming evenly disperses the sugar throughout the batter, completely dissolving it into the butter. You also increase volume by mixing thoroughly and incorporating more air into your batter. The result? Lighter textured cookies and cakes.Why is creaming important in cookies?
With nowhere to go, those pockets of air don't just gently lift the cookies; they smash their way through them. Cream the butter and sugar properly, though, and the cookie dough will be loaded with micro pockets of air.What happens if you dont Cream butter and sugar for cookies?
If you don't cream for long enough, your mixture will appear gritty, yellow, and flat. If you cream for too long, the mixture will transition from smooth and voluminous to a greasy, separated, deflated puddle that sits at the bottom of the bowl. If you overmix your butter and sugar, start over.Does creaming butter and sugar make a difference?
Creaming butter and sugar together adds pockets of air that aerate the batter. This air puffs up cakes and other homemade treats as they bake, giving them a lighter and more appealing texture. The air is added by beating room-temperature butter with sugar on high speed.Cookie Science: Why Cream Butter and Sugar?
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Answer 2
Note: this answer is from a merged in question which was asking specifically about the chemistry of the creaming method.
The creaming of fat (typically butter or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, such as the US brand Crisco) is more a mechanical process than a chemical one.
Sugar does not dissolve in fat, and pure shortening has no water to dissolve the sugar. Even butter is composed of no more than about 20% water, which may dissolve a small amount of sugar, but then will be saturated.
No significant chemical reactions are taking place during the creaming process.
The sugar crystals have very sharp edges. Under the agitation of the creaming, the sugar is forced into the fat mass, and the sharp edges cut into the fat phase small bubbles carrying air into the fat phase.
Because it is a mechanical process, you want the fat neither too cold (which makes it harder to mix), or too warm (when it will be so soft that it will collapse, and it is hard for the air pockets to be formed). Baking Info's article on the creaming method tells us the ideal temperature for creaming is 21°C (70°F).
When fully creamed, the mixture is a foam of sugar crystals and air in the primary fat phase. This air helps to leaven the baked good.
In many baking recipes, the next step after creaming sugar and fat is to emulsify eggs into the fat phase. This is also a mechanical process, as the egg proteins and liquids will form small drops throughout the butter phase. The additional water from the eggs will also continue to dissolve some of the sugars, but the product of this step is an emulsification of egg/water/syrup droplets and air pockets in a fat phase with sugar crystals embedded within it.
Answer 3
Creaming butter helps to melt down the sugar because sugar does not dissolve in fats.When there is exact amount of cream in the cookie the mixture contains sugar crystals and this helps to bake the food easily. The amount of sugar added will affect the texture of your cookies as well as give sweet taste to the cookies.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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