baking question about butter

[tarheel]

Why does something always go wrong when I try to bake something? I was planning on finally making the cut out sugar cookies with my kids today. I was taking out the butter to soften, when I realized it was salted butter. The recipe calls for unsalted butter. In the recipe it calls for 1/4 tsp salt and 1 cup unsalted butter. Can I just skip the salt and use the salted butter, or should I run out and buy unsalted butter? Thanks to all who will help me.

 

[mudnuri]

Well, i just looked at both my moms sugar cookie recipe, and my butter.

My recipe says "unsalted butter"

my butter says "land o lakes, sweet cream salted"

hmmmm my cookies are always good LOL

Brandy

 

[SSDonut]

Use the salted butter--I always do, regardless of if the recipe specifies unsalted or not. You could 1/2 the salt amount, but I don't think you'll notice any difference regardless.

Tip to help when you're rolling out the dough--use confectioners sugar, not flour to keep the dough from sticking. With kids at the helm, you always end up using more flour than you probably should, and the cookies will get tough and not taste as sweet. The confectioners sugar works great!!

Good luck!

 

[Christine]

The cookies will be fine. It is always best to bake with unsalted butter, mainly because the butter quality of unsalted butter is much better--not sure why. But, it will be fine.

 

[Nancy]

According to our executive chef he says if it says unsalted butter that is what you should use. He also said that when baking you should use the name brand ingredients....not generic, there is a difference. One other tip, many recipes were created when eggs were much smaller, so if it is an older recipe you might have to adjust the flour and dry ingredients a bit so the dough is not too soft, or try to find small or medium eggs, not large or extra large.


BTW...I love the tip about the confectioners sugar instead of flour to roll out!

 

[tarheel]

Thanks to all. I had heard about the tip to use powdered sugar when rolling the cookies---from here of course!!! I got the recipe from here as well. I'll try it with the butter I have and if they aren't great, I'll know better next time. Thanks again!!!!