Jennifer Garner Has the Most Brilliant Trick for Softening Butter
So, you want to bake something, like shortbread cookies or a summer cake, but the recipe calls for a stick of softened butter. Softening it in the microwave could be a solution, but if you’re not careful, that softened butter could easily turn into melted butter and could be too warm for the recipe you’re trying to create. This could completely change the texture of your baked treat. So what should you do instead? Jennifer Garner’s trick is to grab a cheese grater.
Here’s how it works: Take your stick of cold butter and run it through a cheese grater like you would a block of cheese. The butter will separate and soften quickly from the action, and will mix easily into whatever baked good you are creating. This way you still get the texture that you want in your treat without having to worry about nailing the perfect microwave time to soften your butter. We highly recommend tipping the cheese grater on the side for easier butter grating action, and for a cleaner countertop when you’re finished. This hack is also similar to the viral TikTok butter softening hack where you run a fine mesh sieve over the top to grate the butter.
Garner shows off this particular trick in a video from 2018 where she bakes a chocolate chocolate chip bread for the holidays, in her episode of “Pretend Cooking Show” on her Instagram. The recipe originally comes from “The Bread Bible” by Rose Levy Beranbaum, and according to Garner, “This recipe isn’t crazy sweet, with a good swish of peanut butter [it’s] just the thing for my early rising middle schooler.”
The famous actress loves to show off her favorite treats in other episodes of her “Pretend Cooking Show”, like a lemon olive oil cake, her mother’s blueberry buckle, and her favorite cobbler.
This post originally appeared on The Kitchn. See it there: Jennifer Garner Has the Most Brilliant Trick for Softening Butter (It’s Quicker Than Using a Microwave!)
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