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It's freezing in here and it takes forever for butter or eggs to come to room temperature. My questions are:

1) How to bring ingredients to room temperature quickly when its winter?

2) How do you know they are room temperature?

3) Why should ingredients be at room temperature?

Bar Akiva
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    If room temperature is actual room temperature then ingredients should come to room temperature faster in the winter. If the room is cooler then they don't heat up as much. I hope your kitchen is not literally freezing. – paparazzo Jan 26 '18 at 15:05
  • I think there's more than one possible answer to (3), depending on the recipe. You might have better odds of a helpful answer if you gave an example or two. – Cascabel Jan 26 '18 at 15:06
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    https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/43603/why-do-some-ingredients-in-baking-recipes-need-to-be-at-room-temperature is a duplicate of your third sub-question. I think the others might also be duplicates, but couldn't find a previous question whne searching. – rumtscho Jan 26 '18 at 15:25
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    Having had an essentially unheated kitchen in the past I sympathise. The typical morning temperature in there in winter was 9C, I saw 6C, which is essentially fridge-cold. In that case I could put things in a warmer room though (the rest of the house was a sensible temperature). Do you have such an option? – Chris H Jan 26 '18 at 15:45
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    You might find that many answers to https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2276/how-do-you-raise-your-dough-in-cold-seasons will also work for (1). – Cascabel Jan 26 '18 at 15:51

1 Answers1

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As long as you have the heat on in your house, it shouldn't be an issue really. But for butter and eggs, here are some answers:

  1. Microwave the butter for a few seconds to soften it up; put the eggs in warm water until they come up to temperature.

  2. Room temperature for butter just means relatively soft (spreadable, like it is when you don't refrigerate it). For eggs it just means not cold.

  3. Not sure what the recipe is, but, as I just mentioned, room temperature butter is more malleable than cold butter. Eggs fluff better when they're warm (e.g. its more difficult to get peaks when whipping eggs if they're cold).

Evan Nowak
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