Does this sound right? Amounts quoted in recipe ingredients list

[Treats]

Am making this cake for my DD's birthday party next week.

The ingredients list for the chocolate buttercream say 500g butter, 750g icing sugar and 750g chocolate drops. That sounds like an awful lot of chocolate - do you think that could be a mistake? Does anybody have an alternative recipe for chocolate buttercream that I could compare to?

Don't want to spend all that money on chocolate only to find that I don't need anything like that much.

TIA

It is a large cake. That sounds about right to me. Especially if you are needing to 'rough up' the frosting to give a furry look.

Sainsburys basic chocolate is delicious, cheap and would be ideal for this.

I've never heard of chocolate drops in buttercream at all - do you melt them or just mix them in?

I don't have a recipe to hand but we always made buttercream with butter, icing sugar and cocoa.

thanks ymby - I wasn't surprised about the overall quantity of the ingredients (I will need a lot, there's a filling as well as the topping) but more the proportion of chocolate to butter and sugar.

Thanks for the chocolate tip - I'll definitely be passing on the Green and Blacks for this, I think!

I prefer ganache because it's less sweet - actually, so did 4yo DNephew when I filled a madeira cake with it for his birthday last month

Grimma - the recipe says to melt the chocolate drops and then add them gradually to the beaten butter and icing sugar - I guess it's just the same as using block chocolate, but you don't have the faff of breaking it all up first.

I have used cocoa in the past, but I think if the recipe really does need that much chocolate, then it would impact the texture or quantity.

I'm quite an experienced baker and don't usually fret too much about getting the icing right. But I've got a severe case of performance anxiety this time round.......

Just checked my chocolate frosting and the one I use has 200g of each and covers an 8 inch cake.

Yes to ganache!! Totally agree, and if it was just a filling I'd go for it. But I don't think it would be stiff enough to rough up the fur, iyswim.

The ratios are close. I imagine your recipe has less butter as it needs to look firm on the cake.

Sorry for drip feed DS has just poured spaghetti everywhere and I am distracted!

Thanks for checking ymby - sounds like it must be right then.......

Why don't you try doing a test with a 10th of the quantity- so 50g butter, 75g sugar and 75g chocolate and see what it's like?

BTW agree with the Sainsbury's basics chocolate advice.