Hi Gregory! Some recipes call for this for specific reasons, but most recipes don’t require this. Since ‘creaming’ is using the abrasive edges of the sugar granules to pierce through the fat to create lots of tiny air bubbles in the butter, it’s not typically needed for most cookie, cake, cupcake, etc recipes.

Hi Gregory! As Tessa mentions in the article above, “Perfectly-creamed butter and sugar has lightened in color, and has peaks and valleys in its texture, giving it that ‘fluffy’ appearance. The sugar appears to be dissolved, but when you rub the mixture between your fingers you’ll still feel the sugar granules.” I hope that helps 🙂

Hi Connie! We don’t have a recipe for that, but you can check out all Tessa’s cookie recipes here, and also check out Tessa’s Salted vs. Unsalted Butter article here 🙂 I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂

Hi Molly! So glad to hear that Tessa’s baking science info has been so helpful!! Yes, egg temperature does matter and you may notice that a lot of recipes will state “room temperature” next to the eggs in the ingredients list. Eggs will incorporate more easily and more evenly when at room temp. If a recipe calls for just an egg yolk or egg white, or divided eggs, be sure to separate the white from the yolk while the eggs are cold, as the yolk is more fragile and more likely to break open once it has warmed up. I usually pull my butter and eggs from the fridge at the same time before baking, so they can reach the same approximate temp. I hope that helps! 🙂

Does the temperature of the eggs matter? This has been a great resource for figuring out how I should really be baking my cookies (so many fascinating details). Love, Love, Love all this information!

Hi Kaye! So glad you found Tessa’s article helpful! I’m glad to hear that your lemon cookies turn out well! The measurement Tessa uses for weighing flour actually evolved over time. It is basically a combination of:
– The weight of a cup of flour using the ‘spoon & level method’ averaged out,
– What Tessa learned in culinary school,
– Alongside the averages of 1 cup from some of Tessa’s go-to resources like Cooks Illustrated (although she found Cooks Illustrated to be too heavy – I believe their 1 cup of flour is 141 grams),
– Factored with the weight of 1 cup of Gold Medal flour vs. King Arthur Baking by their nutrition labels. Tessa’s favorite brand of flour is Gold Medal Bleached Flour and this is what she uses to create and test recipes.
Of course, feel free to experiment and add a few additional grams of flour to determine whether or not you prefer those results, but I hope that gives you some context as to how Tessa landed on this particular gram measurement! Happy baking 🙂