How to Bring Eggs and Butter to Room Temperature

Ever take out a recipe and the first items are room temperature eggs and butter? Same with cream cheese? If you’re prepared you might have taken them out ahead of time, but unfortunately, that’s not usually the case. Room temperature eggs always seem to mix better through batters when they are not ice cold. One rule of thumb is that if a recipe calls for room temperature butter, it helps to use room temperature eggs as well.

How to Bring Eggs to Room Temperature

The easiest, fastest, and safest way to take the chill off your eggs is to place them gently in a bowl and cover them with lukewarm water. Be careful the water is not too hot or you’ll start to cook them. Allow them to sit for at least 5 minutes or until they are no longer cool to the touch.

How to Bring Butter to Room Temperature

There are a few ways to accomplish this. While you can use the defrost feature on your microwave, one foolproof way is to unwrap the stick of butter and place it on a paper plate. Microwave for only 5 seconds, then turn the stick onto another side and microwave another 5 seconds. Continue this process until all four sides have been turned and the butter should be the perfect consistency.

If you would rather not use the microwave you can simply grate or cube the butter into very small pieces and let the air slowly soften them. This can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

How to Bring Cream Cheese to Room Temperature

The cube technique works best for cream cheese. Just peal off the wrapper, cube into small pieces and wait about 20 minutes.

If you need softened cream cheese faster, you can leave it in the foil wrapper and submerge it in warm water for about 10 minutes.

Do Eggs, Butter, and Cream Cheese Even Need Refrigeration?

Rule of thumb with eggs: if you buy them refrigerated, they need to stay refrigerated. If you get them fresh from a farm and they are not washed, you may be able to keep them out for a few days. The safest way is to keep all eggs refrigerated.

Unsalted butter needs to stay in the refrigerator. Salted butter can stay out about a week or two depending if it is in a butter crock.

Cream cheese needs to stay in the fridge.

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