It just so happened that this morning turned out to be the perfect time to make the banana bread I was planning to make sometime in the next day or two. So I mashed the bananas and got everything ready to go and then got to the part in the recipe that says “softened butter.” Crap. I always forget that I need softened butter (you don’t in a very traditional recipe, but this is an America’s Test Kitchen light recipe that calls for creaming the butter and sugar first, and it’s well worth it!). So, I relied on my old trick for this, and it struck me that some of you might like this trick as well.

I find the microwave too unpredictable when trying to soften butter without melting it, so what I do is chop the butter (in this case 3 T) into small pieces, put it in a melt-proof container and set it on the range over the oven vent. My oven vents through the back right burner. There is a nice warm spot there. I keep a close eye on this and mix it up periodically so nothing actually melts. In just a couple of minutes I have the perfect softened butter!

The banana bread is now in the oven! Woot!

Happy baking to you all!

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