Creaming butter and sugar for cakes

This means mixing the two ingredients together in a special way – it’s an important skill to learn for when you are baking cakes.   By using a wooden spoon to ‘beat’ the butter and sugar together, you are adding millions of bubbles of air.  When you have finished, you will have a light fluffy mixture which will be the base of your delicious cake.

The most important thing to remember is that YOUR BUTTER MUST BE SOFT!! Margarine is always soft, but butter is rock hard when it comes out of the fridge. There is no way you will be able to cream hard butter with sugar. It’s impossible!

Measure out the butter and leave it in a bowl in a warmish place for two or three hours – a windowsill would be great. It needs to be as soft and as squishy as margarine.

What to do

1. Put the butter and sugar in a large wooden bowl.

2. Get a wooden spoon and mix the butter and sugar together as hard as you can.  Get mean!

3. After about two minutes, your arm will be hurting but the mixture will have turned a pale golden colour.  It should be light and fluffy.  It looks like this because of all the air you have mixed into the mixture.  Your cake is going to be delicious!

Recipes

Cupcakes

Chocolate Easter Cakes