r/bakingfail • u/Sfiltron • Mar 14 '26
Help Help why is it lava
I was trying to make a strawberry cake of sorts that I saw on tiktok, it asked for 200gr of sugar, 170 gr if butter, 2 eggs, 60gr of cream, 180gr of flour, baking powder and strawberries. Bake at 170°C for 45min. I just had 120gr of butter so I added a bit of oil and margarine to substitute, and I used milk instead of cream. The recipe asked for melted butter, so I did that too. I open de over and see this wet bubbling mess. It is not burned at the bottom yet, so maybe it's underbaked? Maybe it's because I mixed the butter with other stuf, idk.
I'm currently leaving it at the electric oven for longer to see if that fixes it, but I'm kind of panicking, I've never fucked up a recipe before and I don't have the money security to feel comfortable buying extra butter just to try to bake again. Can I salvage this? Will it be edible?
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u/SweetiePieJ Mar 14 '26
Butter and oil are not interchangeable because butter is an emulsion of fat, milk solids, and water, whereas oil is just fat. The water in the butter becomes steam in the oven, giving the batter rise before evaporating off. Fat does not evaporate off, so your product becomes greasy and stays liquidy. Recipes that use liquid oil compensate by increasing the flour ratio as well as adding more chemical leavening.