foodperson.com

If you must bake those butter-rich cookies right now but your butter is hard as a rock (or frozen), try grating your butter with a box grater or, better still, with the grating disk on your food processor. Sounds weird, I know, but you’ll wind up with butter that’s wonderfully blendable. It’s much better than if you try softening the butter in the oven, microwave or some other heat source, which inevitably leaves you with some melted butter, some soft butter and some hard butter.

Thanks to my friend Neil, a fine baker, for this tip.