lime meltaway cookies recipe – use real butter (2024)

FAQs

Can I use melted butter instead of softened butter for cookies? ›

Swapping out softened butter for melted is an easy way to transform the texture of your drop cookies. Cookies: The New Classics author Jesse Szewczyk knows a thing or two about how to make great cookies. And for anyone who wants theirs as fudgy as can be, he's sharing his go-to technique below.

Want to know what makes chocolate chip cookies even better? More butter, of course! The extra butter in these cookies makes them super tender. Everyone will wonder about your “secret ingredient,” but only you'll know the reason for the popularity of your easy chocolate chip cookies.

Which One Should I Use in Cookies? Basically, cookies made with butter spread more and are flatter and crisper if baked long enough. However, they are more flavorful than cookies made with shortening. Cookies made with shortening bake up taller and are more tender, but aren't as flavorful.

Butter is an emulsifier and it makes cookies tender. It also adds in the crispy-around-the-edges element. Adding too much butter can cause the cookies to be flat and greasy. Adding too little butter can cause the cookies to be tough and crumbly.

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.

The best butter for your baked goods depends on what type of recipe you're whipping up. Unsalted, American-style butter works well in goods like cookies, pound cakes and pancakes that require the high-fat content of conventional butter and more flexibility with salt and flavor content.

If it's too soft, instead of holding in the air, the butter will just sort of flop over onto itself, making your dough heavy instead of fluffy.

Why Using Real Butter Is Better for Baking. One of the most important aspects of butter is how it's made – it always contains at least 80% fat, no more than 16% water, and just a small number of milk proteins. Plus, because water converts to steam when baked, using butter always results in crisper, flakier textures.

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.

What happens if you use butter instead of shortening? ›

You'll notice these differences if baking with butter instead of shortening. Cookies made with butter or margarine may be softer and spread a little more. Cookies made with butter are usually crispier than chewy cookies made with shortening, but the flavor is richer with butter.

Cookies made with butter, especially high-sugar recipes, tend to be flatter and crispier than cookies made with shortening. Because of butter's low melting point, the dough tends to spread during baking before the structure sets.

The short answer is yes, butter and shortening can be used interchangeably in baked goods as one-to-one swap. However, results may differ depending on fat used because butter and shortening are two very different ingredients. Butter contains 80% butterfat and about 20% (naturally occurring) water.

The temperature of your butter is critical when creaming butter and sugar. Too cold, and your sugar won't properly dissolve into your butter. Too hot, and your cakes will end up flat and greasy. The magical temperature of softened butter is actually around 65℉, slightly cooler than the ambient temperature of your home.

To properly cream butter and sugar, you want to start with softened butter. Chilled butter is too hard to break down and fully blend with the sugar. Overly soft or melted butter will whip up into frothy air bubbles, which eventually collapse into a greasy, wet batter and bake into a heavy and soggy baked good.

Softened butter is my go-to for most other bread dough types. Melted butter is something I have always avoided because it would need to be added at the beginning of mixing unlike the softened or cold butter.