As I've been baking and researching about baking I've come confused about what the sugar is actually doing when it gets creamed into the fat (I'm not sure if I even used the term "cream" correctly there). I do understand that when you cream the sugar and fat you are creating air pockets, which give the space that leaveners use to expand in. People's advice on techniques for this that I've come across is what is confusing me.
America's Test Kitchen's (ATK) research says that using chilled butter that is defined as 60-65 degrees F or when pressed with a finger leaves a crack is superior in leavening or creating those air pockets than butter at room temp, which is about 70 degrees F or there is no crack in the butter when pressed with a finger. They also showed what happens when you use melted butter. What was shown was that as the butter loses its solid nature it becomes harder to create those air pockets. In my mind I akin the butter to the substance that is the wall that surrounds the air and as that gets less solid it gets increasingly difficult to trap air or create air pockets. What makes butter special is that it has these “beta-prime” crystals that are just the right size versus the larger ones found in lard, which is apparently too large to hold in the air. They also point out that as you beat the butter the temperature of it will rise a few degrees. If I wanted to be safe I would definitely be going for the low 60’s in butter temp.
To concur with ATK, I have Milk Bar’s cookbook and Tossi goes on about creaming the butter and sugar. She goes the extra mile and does it longer than most people intuitively would. I think it was 7 minutes, which is basically the time ATK uses for their pound cake recipe. However, when ATK cream the butter and sugar for their lemon bundt cake it’s only for three minutes and they don’t care much about temperature of the egg other than it should be room temperature. Whilst in the pound cake you need to beat the eggs before hand and then gradually add them in and beat for an additional 3-4 minutes. I only note these eggs instructions parts because they say since it’s more difficult to incorporate a colder egg into the creamed butter and sugar you can actually break the air pockets in that time versus using room temperature eggs. If I were to believe what is going on here you’d want to be more careful with more delicate cakes like pound cake that doesn’t rely on chemical leaveners.
Here’s where things get tricky for me. If I were to apply these principles would it be fair to say that if I wanted to have my cookies spread out less then I would use 60-65 degree butter and use room temperature eggs? Also, I know people chill their cookie batter before baking not just for flavor development but so that the cookies doesn’t spread as much. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to apply and rely on these techniques than it is to chill the batter? If anything once the walls that is from the butter is too warm they become weak and chilling the cookie batter doesn’t really do anything to trap any more air and therefore wouldn’t make your cookies spread less/rise more. Another weird thing I heard about creaming was from a book called “The Elements of Dessert”, which said that using a finer grain of sugar like superfine or powdered aides in the creaming process because it dissolves better and faster in the fat versus granulated. Is this because when you cream the sugar into the butter or cream the butter and sugar (I’m not sure the correct way to say it) the process of combining them HAS to come first and then as you beat faster you are then able to mechanically mix in AND trap the air?
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