How To Cream Butter And Sugar

If there was one piece of advice that I would give anyone who has even a slight interest in baking, or just having a spur of the moment “I have to bake something right now!” sensation, it would be creaming your butter and sugar correctly. 🙂

This is the most important step when it comes to baking that can either make or break your cakes, cookies, cupcakes etc

Creaming the butter and sugar is usually the first thing that you are told to do when following a recipe and thats because this is the foundation on which the rest of your ingredients will build on. This technique gives your bakes a fine, delicate crumb texture as well as making it beautifully light, fluffy and cakey.

The reason behind this is that as you are whisking the butter and sugar together, the sugar is actually being dissolved into the butter while beating in air at the same time. These tiny air pockets are what causes your bakes to rise nicely and properly when they are in the oven, acting as a leavener.

Incorrectly creaming the butter and sugar together, most usually due to not whisking for long enough, produces dense, flat bakes that cannot be salvaged no matter how many other ingredients are added into the batter or how much filling and frosting is spread on after it has been baked. This is why it’s so important to make sure your butter and sugar are well creamed before you add anything else on top. This is the only chance you’ll get to cream them properly and it really is very simple and straight forward to do so 🙂

Start by adding in your butter and whisking it for a minute or so until creamy.

It should be nice and creamy before you start adding in the sugar.

Once the butter is creamy, gradually add in the sugar in small increments whisking until all the sugar has been incorporated before adding in the next amount of sugar.

It only takes about a minute to combine the sugar as shown below.

Once the butter and sugar have been whisked together, add more sugar and whisk again. Continue repeating this step until all the sugar has been added.

After all the sugar has been added, increase whisking speed to high and whisk for 4 – 5 minutes until the mixture is very pale, fluffy and has a creamy texture. You rarely need more than 5 minutes of whisking so if you are unsure of whether you have creamed enough, just stop after 5 minutes, this is a good benchmark 🙂

Of course the same applies to adding in brown sugar 🙂

Get it all nice and creamy 🙂

All in all it’s a simple and easy step that is so worth the effort to produce a beautiful bake that you can be proud of <3

Make sure to follow me on Instagram where I have posted a video showing how your butter and sugar should look when creamed! 🙂