Cookies – In cookie making, Does creaming time change with the amount of butter used

Creaming puts the air bubbles into the mixture. The baking powder only helps enlarge the bubbles, not make them. In cookies the creaming plays another essential role, which is to help dissolve the sugar. To cream the butter keep it cool and do it for a few minutes (at 65°F, harder in the summer).

It has recently been discovered that cookie dough is different from cake batters. Sugar is part of the structure of the cookie and not just a sweetener, tenderizer, and browning agent. It forms the base upon which the fats and the starch granules of the flour are embedded. The sugar needs to dissolve for the matrix to form.

If you beat the whole thing, it will be harder to get bubbles in and you may end up overworking the dough. The cookies will end up flat and tough.

The only way that the butter could be incorporated without creaming would be to melt it. Melting butter, or allowing it to get too soft, even if just left at room temperature too long will result in what I call "pancake cookies"...those that just spread out and run all over the baking sheet. This is also the reason that butter should NEVER be softened in the microwave.

Creaming butter and sugar aerates the butter with tiny little air pockets. The reason it becomes lighter in color is due to the air that has been incorporated. The moisture inside the air pockets from the butter itself to eggs, milk, etc. turns to steam and the steam (aided by any leavening that might be called for in the recipe) helps the cookies to "puff".

If you don't cream the butter and sugar you'll most likely have very poor results. The expense of the wasted and ingredients and your time would be enough to pay for an inexpensive hand mixer.