On room temperature dairy

When I'm making cream cheese frosting, the recipe specifies using "room temperature" butter and cream cheese. How long can I leave these items on the kitchen counter before I court danger? I've left both out for up to six hours with seemingly no problems.

The standard USDA line about leaving food out is that you have 4 hours before it becomes unsafe to eat. This is very conservative, but it’s meant to provide guidance to old people and sick people and babies whose immune systems couldn’t easily fight off a sprinkling of bacteria.

Assuming you’re not old, sick, or a baby, here’s how you should think of your frosting ingredients:

When the dose [of cream cheese frosting] hits

Butter— Don’t worry about it. Unrefrigerated butter can go a week, minimum, before it starts tasting funny (which is when you should stop eating it.) 

Cream cheese— Worry about it, but just a little. Follow the standard 4-hour rule; it should be plenty soft by then. As for five or six hours...well, bacteria growth is only a problem if there’s bacteria in the food to begin with. Extra thawed cream cheese isn’t dangerous unless Philadelphia made some egregious processing errors when they were whipping da shmear. 

So when you black in and realize that your room-temp dairy has been oozing on the countertop all afternoon, ask yourself this: do I trust that Philadelphia didn’t fuck up this cream cheese? 

For me, the answer is always “yes”, because almost no risk is too great to overwhelm the reward of dunking my spoon into a bowl of pillowy tangy frosting. But you do you.

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