Last week, when I posted about the apple crumb cake, I mentioned that I had melted the butter (as I always do
when I bake). Later, my friend Beth commented that melting the butter would
ruin the texture of the cookie. I told her that I was pretty sure it didn’t
make a difference and that I had been doing this since I was in high school.
Well, Beth insisted, and the idea for a little test came about. In our
discussion, I also happened to mention that I usually use light butter, instead
of real butter; this too, became a part of our taste test.
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| Softened Butter vs. Melted Light Butter: Can you tell the difference? |
I used the Nestle chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the semi-sweet morsels bag, halved the recipe, and in one half, used melted light butter, and in the other half, softened real butter. The results may surprise you. (Okay. Or not, but still. It did turn out well.)
I mixed the flour, baking soda and salt in one bowl, and set it aside.
I mixed the flour, baking soda and salt in one bowl, and set it aside.
In the larger bowl, I mixed the butter (and light butter), sugars, vanilla, and 1 egg in each.
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| You can see the difference the melting makes. |
Then, I slowly added in the flour mixture, thickening the dough. After this was all mixed well together, I added the chocolate chips.
I then dropped the dough onto the cookie sheets and baked for 11 minutes at 350 degrees. After all the cookies were baked, and cooled, I brought them out to my official testers tasters: Josh, Nick and Greg, who were all over at our apartment for Sunday football.
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| The softened butter is on the left, the melted light butter on the right... |
Beth and I were both right! The butter made the cookie a little sweeter (“more buttery,” as one taster commented), but the melting of the butter didn’t change the texture at all. So, for all of you butter softeners out there, you now know that if you forget to soften the butter ahead of time, your texture will remain the same. All tasters said that while the light butter cookie wasn’t as sweet, it was still good and definitely not something they would turn away.
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| Light Butter |
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| Real Butter |
Go for it and experiment some more!! I'd be curious about the results. Although if you do find a healthier cookie recipe, you're probably going to overcompensate by eating more because "they are better for you!" And then you'll probably be in the same place you started when you baked it with real butter. Oh well! Live it up and eat some yummy cookies :)
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