Melted

One of the things that I've learned from reading the Understanding Baking book is that when recipes say things like 'bring the butter to room temperature' or 'add the ingredients in alternating batches, beginning and ending with dry ingredients', they're not just doing it to irritate me.  Not that I really thought that, but it never made sense to me that they'd want you to mix butter and sugar, but not say 'nuke the butter'  What was the point? If you want to mix it, wouldn't it be easier if it was semi-liquid?

Then I read the thing in UB about how butter needs to be in a certain temperature range in order to give maximum volume to what's being beaten, such range being, essentially, room temperature, and I think Oh.......

A little learning.....