How to cream butter and sugar together when baking cakes, cooking terms.
By 2uesday
More on cooking a simple recipe for making muffins
- Easy to make Raspberry Muffin Recipe
Mix in one bowl - 6 simple ingredients - an easy, simple to follow recipe for fruit muffins, quick to make and with a healthier recipe than most shop bought muffins. A recipe that is good for new cooks, kids
Learning to bake, cakes how to cream the fat and sugar together
Baking can be fun and enjoyable,but when you have never baked a cake before the recipes can looking confusing. Just remember that everyone has to start somewhere and that is true about baking as well as most other things. Why you might ask yourself do the nicest recipes seem to need complicated cooking methods? The good news is that is just the way it looks, with new recipes, once you learn a few simple techniques the mystery of strange cooking and baking terms is solved. You will soon be able to tackle most of the recipes you discover and bake cakes that will be the envy of your friends.
To make the explanation of cooking terms simpler I have divided them up into separate pages, this page is about how to cream fat and sugar together this 'creaming'technique is used frequently in the baking of cakes.
The term in baking is 'to cream'or 'creaming' which is achieved by beating the fat and the sugar together. That does not really explain what you are trying to do or how you set about doing this but actually it is a really simple process.
If you are making cupcakes,a sponge cake, a birthday sponge cake or buns this is one of the techniques most often used. If you want to use a mixer for this creaming method of cake mixing scroll to the foot of this page, for the demo there as it has lots of helpful advice in it.
Traditionally creaming butter and sugar together is done in a bowl with a wooden spoon to mix the two together.
How to cream butter and sugar together to make a cake
Method to cream together fat and sugar
(the fat can be butter or soft margarine depending on your recipe you use).
- Weigh out the fat/butter and sugar. If you are using butter cut it up into cubes unless it is already too soft to do this.
- The butter should be warm but not melted and oily, the best way to get the butter to the correct temperature is to let it stand at room temperature for a while before using it.
- Put the fat/butter into a mixing bowl, pyrex glass or china earthen wear mixing bowls are good for this as they are fairly heavy and sturdy.
- Beat the fat in the bowl with a wooden spoon until it is soft and then add the sugar.
To do this take the wooden spoon and beat the sugar into the fat, this means pressing the wooden spoon against the side or base of the bowl with the sugar and fat being trapped between the bowl and the spoon.
As the butter/fat softens up this method of blending the two ingredients together will become easier to do.
If the bowl is slipping on the work surface put a tea towel or damp cloth beneath it to stop it from moving about. Some people prefer to hold the bowl still with one arm 'wrapped around it' while they use the wooden spoon to beat the mixture with the other hand. Work in which ever way you find easiest.
Eventually the sugar will have blended into the butter/fat and you are just incorporating them and making the mix smoother and creamier. When you have finished creaming the mix will be lighter in colour (because of the air incorporated into it) it will also look very 'creamy' and smooth.
This process creaming the butter and sugar adds air into the the mix and will help to make the buns/cakes light and fluffy.
Once you have beaten the two ingredients together follow your recipe for the next stage.
Making cakes,watch how to cream sugar into butter
A link fora web page for those who love baking cakes -
- Baking & Dessert Recipes & Videos - Joyofbaking.com *Tested Recipes*
A wonderful recipe, photography and demonstration video collection of cakes, cookes, pies, tarts, muffins, scones, shortbreads and other baked goods.
Baking, cooking methods - creaming butter and sugar with a mixer
Comments
Great hub to teach newbies how to cream butter and sugar. Thank you.
hi I really liked this hub - the bit where you said some people like to wrap their arm around the bowl reminds me of my grandma who was always making fruit cakes - she used to walk around beating the mixture in this huge bowl while she did a million other things - once it went into the oven she would pass the bowl out to all of us kids who would be hanging around the table tongues hanging out like a litter of hungry pups - so thank you for the memory and I enjoyed the way you wrote this cheers bon
Thank you leroy64 for visiting this page and for leaving a comment here too. It is always nice to get encouraging feedback like this.
Hello writer20, thank you it always nice to see you have visited one of my pages.
Hello bonny - this is a lovely comment that you have left here. As a writer one of the nicest things is if you can evoke memories of happy times for people with the words you use. I never thought of this practical page as doing that, but I am so pleased that it has brought back happy memories of your grandma baking cakes. You have a nice way with words, the part of the comment about your grandma cooking and the children waiting is written in a really interesting way. Thank you for sharing this here, I enjoyed reading it.
Great hub! I do it the traditional way. You know, bowl and spoon...
Hello Snurre, yes I often prefer the older style methods when baking, especially if the labour saving device takes an age to clean afterwards. I like being in the kitchen in the autumn and winter months there is something cosy about cooking and the smell of freshly baked cakes etc. that is nice.
OK. I voted you up this time, but I don't want to catch you making fun of us bakers any more here. Unless, of course, you were really serious and thought there was some special way to cream butter and sugar together~! in that case, so sorry, that is, sorry you - oh hell, nevermind!
Hi mega1 thank you, you managed to make me laugh and it is breakfast time here so your comment is good. I guess you could tell that really this was not written for anyone who has any experience of baking.
This page was written for someone who has never made cakes and wants to make a cake for the first time using this method of creaming the fat and sugar together.
Here in the UK schools use to teach cookery as part of the curriculum, so when they left school most people knew the basic techniques to bake cakes, make pastry or cook a dinner. Over the years this has changed and mums do not always pass on their skills to their children and then if you want to bake a cookery book does not always go into the basic techniques needed to make a cake. There may be some schools that still teach the pupils how to make cakes etc.. This is written for the people who did not learn and are now keen to start baking to avoid buying shop cakes which are sometimes full of - air and mystery ingredients that preserve the cake on the shelf for weeks.
Hi 2uesday, a useful hub for those learning, well explained, thank you.
Nice information from you. I'll show this to my mom. I believe that she'll love this hub. Nice tips and great video. Well done and vote up!
Prasetio
Hi Movie Master - thank you, I thought this might be useful for anyone who had missed out on learning to do this at home or school.
Hi Prasetio I hope your mom likes this page. This type of cake has fat and sugar in it so I cook the cakes made this way as a treat, I try not to eat too many cakes are they are not good for the health or waistline.
leroy64 7 months ago
It never occurred to me that you could use a spoon to do this. I like this and voted up and useful/interesting