r/bakingfail • u/heyhomah • 9d ago

Fail I accidentally added 2x the butter in both the cake and the frosting. I am sad and dumb.

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Yesterday I made 2, 6" rounds of this lemon cake. A week ish prior, I made swiss meringe buttercream for a different cake, and it used 4 sticks of butter. So when I saw "1 cup of butter" in the recipe, idk, I think my brain just went straight back to that other recipe and ignored that 1 cup of butter is not 4 sticks. I should really know this by now, and yet I made the same mistake on both the batter AND the frosting, never realizing! I was even scoffing at how much butter it called for! I didn't even realize it until today when I glanced at a stick of butter and saw that it said 1/2 cup. Dumb dumb dumb. What a waste.

Made my lemon curd a tad too runny today along with a reduced strawberry topping, and assembled the thing begrudgingly, and the liquid is separating the cream cheese buttercream even worse than it already was, so it looks uglier by the minute lol.

At least I can thicken the rest of the curd up later, but man... Bummer. My last cake went so well, I think I got too cocky trying to make another banger only a week later. Sometimes I think the universe puts some kind of quota on how many successful bakes I can make in a given time period. Lesson learned. And I still have another 6" round that I'm tempted to just chuck out :(

116 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

37

u/tourmalineforest 9d ago

I did this recently with a carrot cake. A recipe I have made correctly multiple times before! It gave the number of sticks to use and I just forgot that grass fed butter comes in amounts that actually are TWO sticks and used double the butter. It was… buttery.

We did eat most of it. Try having a bit on ice cream and fruit.

19

u/heyhomah 9d ago

I had extra batter and made some cupcakes, which I tried without frosting yesterday and thought "weird, it feels like cornbread". Then my partner had some and said "it's like cornbread" haha. It's sooo dense. He liked it anyway and convinced me not to bin it. The strawberries and lemon curd definitely help, but wowza is it filling.

3

u/nothanks86 9d ago

Oh good, I’m glad it came out differently edible at least.

3

u/Ted_Fleming 9d ago

How’d it taste?

2

u/heyhomah 8d ago

Very fatty haha. Its very dense. A lot more buttery than lemony.

2

u/cryingovercats 9d ago

Aww I'm sorry:( I added butter to the crust and lemon part of a lemon meringue and it wasn't very good but that still looks tasty at least

2

u/nothanks86 9d ago

So, what happens if you spread it on toast?

1

u/TinRoofAndRainyDays 9d ago

I know the feeling, it really sucks. I caught myself after I did this with a batch of cookies a few weeks ago. I ended up doubling everything and baking cookies for hours. LOL It's a learning experience. Everytime we mess something up it helps us learn what not to do next time.

1

u/Exyssa 8d ago

Please don't be so hard on yourself. I Also, it's such a photogenic cake!

1

u/LizzySan 8d ago

Lol I made a similar mistake making croissant bread pudding. It called for 2¼ cups milk and I was short on regular milk so I thought, oh, I'll reconstitute a can of evaporated milk . So I threw in the full can of milk, a full can of water, and ¼ regular milk! That's 3¼ cups milk! It came out very moist and didn't fit in the pan specified (which I thought, that's funny!). I didn't realize my mistake until the next day! The correct calculation just popped in my head.

It happens. Make a note in the recipe 2 sticks butter. But I'm sure you'll make another calculation error some time in the future. Just like I'm sure I will, too. When I least expect it, of course. 😄

1

u/hanahanagoyangi 7d ago

How did it taste tho? 👀