How to Quickly Soften Butter Without Melting It

We’ve all been in the position where a recipe calls for softened, room temperature butter, but all we have is a hard, cold stick of butter from the fridge. You can’t microwave the butter because then it will melt, and you don’t have time to wait for the butter to come to room temperature. So what do you do? America’s Test Kitchen has an excellent solution for us: