Creaming Butter

Have you ever seen a recipe that called for creaming the butter into the sugar and not known what to do? Well, the truth comes out:

What is creaming?
Creaming is the process of combining a solid fat and sugar, incorporating air bubbles into the fat. This technique can be used for butter, shortening, or lard. Shortening is supposed to be the easiest one the cream because it is already pre-creamed without sugar when it is made. Also, it has a higher melting point than butter, so it will stay solid even on hot days.

Why use creaming?
Creaming adds air to a dough, making it rise once cooked. It is also a way to add solid fat into a dough without needing to melt it or cut it in.

When do you use creaming?
Creaming is often used in cookie dough and in buttercream frosting.

How do you cream?
There are 3 different ways to cream. They all use the same movement, but the power behind it comes from different places.
The first technique is the easiest: put soft, room temperature butter in the bowl of a standing mixer with the sugar and mix for 2 minutes.
The second technique is the same concept, but using a hand-held electric mixer instead. It uses a bit more energy, especially if the butter is not completely soft. Put the butter cut into cubes in a mixing bowl with the sugar and mix on medium for 1-2 minutes. This technique is good if you don't have a stand mixer or do not want to dirty it.
The last technique is using a metal whisk to incorporate the sugar into the butter, a good way to build biceps!
Remember, the point of cream is to separate the lipid molecules and add air to the butter, so you want to make sure you cream for at least 1 minute with the electric appliances, and longer by hand.

If, when trying to soften your butter in the microwave, you accidentally melt, you can leave it in the freezer for 5 minutes and beat it with a whip until it is smooth.

Why did the chocolate shortbread turn out so weird?

It is flaky when it is supposed to be crumbly!

Some of you may have sampled my chocolate "shortbread", and you probably noticed that it had several problems. First, it was bland, but the most severe failure was the texture. Shortbread is supposed to be crumbly and buttery. Mine was flaky with layers. The crumbliness is due to lack of gluten formation in its dough.

Gluten

Gluten is a protein that forms in wheat flour when the already resident proteins gliadin and glutenin come in contact with water. When mixed or kneaded, this long and sprawling protein will form bonds with itself and other gluten molecules, creating an elastic web. This web is useful in cakes and breads because it enables the batter/dough to retain the carbon dioxide produced by yeast or chemical leaveners. Without gluten, it would be impossible for these to rise.

Shortbread is a different story. It is not meant to rise, and contains no leaveners. It is crumbly because there is no web of gluten to hold it together. The basic shortbread recipe is: mix butter with flour and sugar. Knead to form a ball. Roll out and bake. Notice there is no water to allow gluten to form.
Well, I had never made shortbread before, and in fact I didn't even know what shortbread was supposed to be like. So I followed a recipe in my favorite cookbook. The recipe told me to use "very cold butter", so I did. Unfortunately the butter was so cold that the dough refused to form a cohesive ball. I was confused, and I decided to add some water and see what would happen. Well, as you can guess, it was turned out like a thick cracker than anything else.
Later, I looked up shortbread recipes online and found that they all used almost twice the amount of butter mine had, and they did specify for the butter to be cold.

This was the most I could get out of cold butter. It is still powdery.

Information came from On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, and Wikipedia