How to cream when there is more sugar than butter in the recipe? I am accustomed to creaming sugar and butter, but the recipes I have used until now had more butter than sugar. This time, I tried a cookie recipe which had 180 g sugar and 75 g butter. It was supposed to be creamed at room temperature, without melting the butter. The result was a mass of separated dry crumbles, not the smooth mass I am used to seeing. 

Is this normal? Would using a paddle have made a difference? (I used the foam beaters of the handheld mixer, it doesn't have a paddle). Should I have tried to beat for a longer time? 

The cookies tasted good in the end, but maybe they could have been better with a better creaming.
For the purpose of mixing butter and sugar (oddly enough) are considered "wet" ingredients. What other wet ingredients are in your recipe? Eggs, Milk, Extract... these may be added in the creaming process to get a more smooth "paste" rather than a crumble.

You may also wish to try starting with 50g (or even less) of sugar to get the "smooth mass" (paste) that you are accustomed to and then slowly add the remaining sugar.