Frozen butter

[PrettyCandles]

If I take a block of butter out of the freezer now, when will it be soft enough to make buttercream?

Depends how warm your house is!

I would have thought overnight.

Microwave it on defrost until you get the right squidginess...

I tried to microwave. Did you know that a block of frozen butter explodes quite messily? I do, now.

Also that the oven/grill element in the ceiling of a combi-microwave is an absolute bugger to clean.

I do - if the microwave is on full power. But if you have it on the 10% setting (or nearest to that) and do it in 20 or 30 second bursts it should be ok. Do it all the time as can't even keep butter out of the fridge here, unless I want rancid melty butter within an hour!