Technique of the Week: How to Cream Butter and Sugar  Slideshow
SLIDESHOW: Technique of the Week: How to Cream Butter and Sugar
Note: Please welcome our new columnist Kumiko Mitarai of the
blog Recipe, interrupted. Every week she'll put together a
slideshow demo on a technique that seems easy-peasy but is
hardly ever explained. Each step-by-step lesson will feature a
corresponding recipe so you can put that technique into
practice. Show us how it's done, Kumiko! —The Mgmt.  Since I was
a kid baking cookies, this recipe instruction would always stump
me: "Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy."  I did
my best with our family's old hand mixer but always wondered, do
they really mean light and fluffy? How could a stick of butter
and some sugar ever be anything but thick and heavy?  But skip
ahead a few years to culinary school, where I was coached
through the technique and finally got it. The butter and sugar
will never transform into cotton candy, but if the butter starts
at room temperature and is