A Brimly NewsletterRoom Temperature
Never Have I Ever Waited for Butter
The instruction this newsletter is named after, and my ongoing failure to follow it.
August 14, 2026
“Butter.”— Image courtesy of Andrej Lišakov
I named this newsletter after a line in a recipe that I skip almost every single time.
Room temperature butter. Room temperature eggs. It sits there in the ingredient list, third or fourth item down, and I read straight past it the way everyone reads past the terms and conditions. Then I open the refrigerator and pull out a stick of butter cold enough to hurt.
Here is what I have decided about that, after years of doing it: good enough is good enough.
I mean this about more than butter. There are cakes on this website that are not perfect. There are loaves with a dip in the top. I look at some of those photos and I can see exactly where the thing went a little sideways, and I posted it anyway, because the alternative is remaking a recipe four times until it looks like something out of a magazine, and I do not want to live that way. It surprises me, honestly, when someone writes in impressed. That is lovely and I never get tired of it. But I did not set out to make anything flawless. I set out to make something you could actually pull off on a Tuesday.
There is a real beauty in the crooked version. In the everyday one. That has been on my mind a lot lately.
“Better-Than-Boxed Birthday Cake”— Image courtesy of Brimly
Better-Than-Boxed Birthday Cake
Now. Back to the butter.
Ten seconds in the microwave, then flip it. Ten more. Keep rotating the stick, a face at a time, and it arrives at room temperature almost instantly. No standing around. No planning your afternoon around dairy.
Eggs go straight from the refrigerator into a bowl of warm water. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute. They settle right in.
Milk, yogurt, anything like that: pour what you need into a small container and set that container in a basin with a little warm water in it. Leave it while you do something else. By the time you want it, it’s ready.
That’s the whole trick, and there isn’t a more sophisticated version of it that I’m holding back.
Have I ever ruined anything by ignoring the instruction? Not that I can remember, and I’ve thought about it. I suspect the reason is that I’m slow. I like recipes that are simple and quick, but I don’t rush through the making of them, because then I’ve missed the part I actually enjoy. So my ingredients come out of the refrigerator and then just sit there while I rinse a bowl, butter a pan, find the thing I need in the drawer that never has it. By the time anything goes into the oven, it has warmed up on its own without my help.
I have wondered once or twice whether that’s the reason a loaf dips in the middle sometimes. Whether that’s why a cake came out slightly different from the last time I made it.
I don’t really think so. But I’ve wondered.
What I do know is that some recipes genuinely will not behave if you skip it, and that’s exactly why I keep the shortcuts on hand instead of just hoping. You never know when you’re going to need something in a hurry. A craving shows up. Guests show up. Sometimes guests are already in your house and you are nowhere near ready for them, which is its own particular flavor of panic. Having a solution ready is the difference between handling that and making a mess of your kitchen at speed.
The other half of my strategy is keeping recipes around that don’t ask for any of this. Last week I pointed you at the chocolate orange spoon cake, which happens in the microwave in a few minutes and comes out looking like you gave it your whole evening.
“A Chocolate Orange Spoon Cake”— Image courtesy of Brimly
Gluten-Free Chocolate Orange Spoon Cake
I have a few blender recipes here too. Everything goes in, the blender does the work, done. Those have saved me more times than I can count.
“Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins”— Image courtesy of Brimly
Gluten-Free Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
So my actual advice is: pivot. When you can cheat it, cheat it. When you can’t, make something else. There’s no prize for standing in your kitchen waiting on a stick of butter to soften when you could be eating dessert instead.
One warning, because I don’t want to be responsible for anything: if you do take the honest route and set things out ahead, don’t forget about them. The eggs are out there. The milk is out there. Come back for them.
I want to say one more thing, and it’s about where any of this comes from. I did not invent a single one of these tricks. I picked them up the way everybody picks things up, by watching someone who already knew. Erin Jeanne McDowell and Samantha Seneviratne are the two I go to every now and again. They are wonderful about the small practical things, the shortcut that makes a task shorter without making it worse, and I watch them and take notes like everybody else.
There is no version of baking where you’re supposed to already know. Look it up. Ask the person who knows. Take the trick and use it and don’t feel a thing about it. I am still learning as I go, and I intend to be doing that for as long as I’m standing in a kitchen.
Which brings me to why this newsletter is called what it’s called.
I drop a recipe a week here on the blog. And because I wear a lot of hats at Brimly, and because I work about a month ahead, some weeks I’m testing two or three at once. I will tell you plainly that it gets exhausting. Sometimes a recipe I’ve tested doesn’t land the way I hoped it would. Then I go again. That’s the job, and I like the job, but there’s a version of food writing that shows you only the finished plate in perfect light, and I don’t want to make that. At least not entirely.
Room Temperature is the other thing. It’s what’s actually happening behind the photo. It isn’t perfect, life isn’t perfect, and I’m not especially trying to be.
Good enough is good enough. That’s my whole position.
The butter, meanwhile, is still in the refrigerator. I’ll deal with it in twenty seconds.
One More Thing!
September is nearly here, and I’m calling it Back to Basics: a month of gluten-free bread machine loaves. You put everything in, you close the lid, and the machine does the waiting on your behalf. Which is, now that I look at it, more or less the argument I have just spent a thousand words making.
Also, the grams question from last week is still open. If you have a feeling about weights versus cups, write to me and tell me. I’m collecting opinions.
Thanks for reading, and see you next Friday.
Write to me at hello@brimly.co. Past issues are archived here.
Stephnie Grace is a recipe developer, editor, and co-founder of Brimly, specializing in gluten-free, soy-free, and gum-free baking. She writes Room Temperature, which lands every Friday.
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Steph writes about what actually happens in a gluten-free kitchen. Sends weekly.
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