Cake, cookies, and other baked goods bake up light and tender when you start with creamed butter and sugar. Learn the easy process to make light, fluffy, and pale yellow-colored creamed butter.
Slice room-temperature butter and add it to a large mixing bowl.
With the mixer on medium-low speed start mixing the butter to smooth it out, then increase the speed to medium and beat for about 1 minute until the butter is creamy.
Add the sugar to the butter and mix on medium speed to incorporate the butter and sugar. At this stage, the mixture is chunky and grainy.
Scrape the sides of the bowl then increase the mixer speed to medium-high and mix for 2-3 minutes. The mixture will start to become smooth.
Scrape the sides of the bowl, and mix for another 2-3 minutes on medium-high speed until the butter and sugar are light and fluffy and the color is a pale yellow.
From this point, follow your recipe to add other ingredients.
Notes
Using a stand mixerIf you prefer to use a stand mixer use the paddle attachment. Because a stand mixer is more powerful than a handheld mixer the overall mixing time should only take about 2-3 minutes.Using brown sugar or powdered sugarIf your recipe calls for these sugars the same process, as shown above, will work.