Too Much Butter in Cake? Here’s What To Do
Butter is that not-so-secret ingredient that elevates cakes, cookies, or cupcakes. But mistakenly adding too much butter to a cake will change its texture and flavor. So, what happens when you add too much butter to the cake, and more importantly, how can you fix it?
What happens if you add too much butter to the cake?
We all know that anything excess than required is not good. This same formula also goes for cooking. When you are baking something, you have to be sensible about the ratio of the ingredients. Baking is an art, and something excessive in quantity can ruin your creation.
Having said that, putting too much butter into the cake mixture will make your cake moist and dense. The more butter you add, the more moist the cake gets. If you continue to do so, it will cross the breakpoint, and eventually, the cake will get denser. As a result, the cake will not set and will fall into itself.
When you put too much butter in the cake, it gains the texture of a greasy brownie.
Another negative side of adding extra butter to the cake is that butter tends to decrease the sweetness of a cake, harming its taste. You have to maintain a proper ingredients ratio to make a good cake. That is why you should add a certain amount of butter if you do not want your cake to collapse like a house of cards.
Changing the recipe and experimenting with something new can ruin what you have prepared, creating a mess. For these reasons, I always rather stick with the main recipe.
Other than providing moisture and flavor, butter has several roles in the cake. It acts as a leavening agent (a substance that causes the expansion of dough or batters), which is why you can see air pockets in the cake.
When heated, the fat in the butter creates steam and carbon dioxide, helping the cake become fluffy and soft. However, adding too much butter to the cake batter would liquefy the mixture and prevent it from setting when heated in the oven.
How much butter goes in a cake?
You cannot define how much butter you should use in a cake. It always depends on what ingredients you are using and their ratio. No one could tell you how much butter you should use to make a perfect cake. Your question should be, what is the butter ratio in the cake according to other ingredients.
To make a perfect cake, you must follow certain parameters and almost 80-85 percent of the recipe. If you follow this rule, you can make any cake from scratch.
Having the proper sense of the ratio of the ingredients like flour, sugar, eggs, and fat (butter) is essential to baking a cake. To balance the proportions, an experienced baker always calculates the ratio of the ingredients before baking a cake that will perfectly set, swell and taste.
A cake has two main parts, or two features, that ensure it is well baked. One part is building the structure, which is done with flour and eggs.
Another part is tenderness and moisture, which is the opposite of holding the structure caused by butter (fat) and sugar. These two vice versa features need to be balanced accurately. Hence, the cake becomes neither too dry nor too soft.
The two main protein ingredients, flour and sugar, hold the cake’s structure together. Putting too many structure-building ingredients in your batter will make your cake tough and dry. Putting too much sugar and butter in the cake will wreck the cake structure, resulting in a soupy mess when heated.
Following a good recipe is important because the recipe lists the balanced ingredients to hold the cake together. Following the recipe will make your cake tender and moist, giving a perfect taste. You do not have to follow the recipe blindly and if you are careful enough, you can stray out by 15-20 percent of the recipe.
Now that you know and understand the facts, it is time to learn about the ratio and have the answer to the question. The butter should weigh about the same or slightly less than the eggs. You have to be careful because this is all about weight, not quantity or volume.
A full egg out of shell weighs around 1.75 ounces. Suppose your recipe requires 4 ounces of butter; you should use two eggs to balance the cake.
However, an egg has two parts that work differently in a cake. The white part dries out the cake, and the yellow yolk part gives the cake a smooth texture. To balance the weight, you could use one whole egg and three yolks, weighing around 3.75 ounces.
How to fix too much butter in a cake?
Under certain conditions, there is always a way to fix things you messed up. You have softened and liquefied your batter if you mistakenly put too much butter in a cake. Butter tends to reduce sugar because it is salty in flavor.
To fix this mess, you could use extra flour and sugar, which will harden and restore the taste of your cake. But this solution is only applicable before putting your batter in the oven. If you oven your cake and try fixing the batter, nothing can help you.
What happens if you add too much butter in cupcakes?
As I said earlier, butter is a leavening agent that emits steam and carbon dioxide when baked food is heated. The making process of a cupcake is quite the same as that of a normal cake, and the effect of butter on it is also the same.
Butter gives the cake a fluffy and moist texture. If you add too much butter to cupcakes, it will ruin the structure flavor and will not set.
Adding too much butter to cupcakes will liquefy the batter. That is why it will not set and gain the structure of a cupcake. Butter contains fat and flavor. It is quite salty (except unsalted butter) and will decrease the sweetness of the cake.
As butter contains fat, your cake will taste greasy if you add too much of it.
How do you dry out a cake?
Sometimes, things do not go as planned when you are baking treats. A cake has some features that tell whether it is perfect or not. It will set and gain a perfect structure containing a fluffy and moist texture. But if things do not go as planned, it can be too moist and taste worse. In this situation, you must dry the cake before it becomes a mess.
Drying out a moist cake can be tricky but not impossible. To make a perfect cake, you have to mix the ingredients in a proper ratio. When you mistakenly put too much butter in your cake batter, it becomes moist. Another reason for the moist texture is that the structure cannot be formed if you put less egg than required. Eggs work as a binding agent in the cake.
To make the moisty cake better, you must put dry ingredients in a proper ratio to balance the batter.
Ingredients like eggs whites and flour can suck the moisture and dry out the cake. You have to be careful when adding these ingredients because it will harm your cake if you put too much of them. This method is applicable before baking the batter in the oven.
If you realize your cake has too much moisture after baking it, bake it for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.
To conclude, too much of anything is bad, even if it is something as creamy and delicious as butter. So, the next time you accidentally get too much of it in your baked goods; hopefully, this article will help you.
