Melted butter and sugar…

[MKCH]

Cake bakers, I need your help, please!

I just meant to soften some butter to make a cake but instead fully melted it. Then added the sugar thinking oh this will be fine… but it obviously wasn’t. Tipped it out into a tub and started again.

So now I have a container that has 250g melted butter and 250g caster sugar in it (mixed).

Any ideas what I can make with that?! Otherwise I’m just going to freeze it and dump it but that feels like a bit of a waste!

Could you use it as a brownie recipe?? That's all I can think of!!

Stick in a tub, put it in the fridge and use it the next time you make the same recipe.

I am not a great baker but can someone explain why OP couldn't still use it please?

I would have to be honest.....

(After letting it firm up a bit)

Flapjacks? Mary Berry has a recipe with 225g each of butter and sugar melted together so I’d use that, and chuck a few more oats in by eye if it didn’t look thick enough when I mixed it.

Add some double cream and you have caramel sauce.
Easy peasy.
Add salt for salted caramel sauce.

There are lots of things you could make with melted butter and sugar.

Depending on what cake you are making, I would have proceeded as normal for something like banana loaf or carrot cake which I normally use oil for instead.

Someone has already mentioned flapjack, brownies and caramel.

If you have lemons, how about lemon curd?

Yes, in hindsight this is exactly what I should have done (and did think that… eventually!) but by then I’d already made the second batch!

Good shout to just keep and use again though once it’s hardened, thank you!

Mary Berry's Dorset apple cake is made with melted butter. It's why it's one of my favourite cake recipes, so much easier than creaming butter and sugar together.

Because it's too wet. If you make a sponge cake you want the mixture to be 'dropping consistency' (so if you fill a spoon with it, it sort of 'plops' off the spoon in lumps). If the fat is melted then the entire mixture becomes almost liquid and won't rise as well or have the right texture when it's baked. I've been known to go 'what the hell' and ended up with sponge cakes with the consistency of a small brick (they still taste the same though!).

Chuck in some oats and flour and it’ll make a gorgeous crumble topping. I always melt the butter when I’m making that.

Sounds like it's halfway to cookies.

Sift in SR flour, add beaten egg and stir through chocolate chips/vanilla/blueberries/raisins/whatever. Chill it in the fridge to firm up again and then make the cookies and bake.

Try half if you like, make butterscotch with the other half, add to ice cream.

Can someone explain how soft “softened butter” is supposed to be, and how to get it to that point?

We keep butter in the fridge so if I want it at easy spreading consistency or softer I will need to microwave it, but it’s so easy to go over. Any magic tips?

Cut a chunk off the fridge block and keep it in a butter dish - my kitchen windowsill is north facing and tiled, so it's perfect there for all but the very hottest of days.

Back in the fridge. Use another time

After you have boiled and drained carrots, put a spoonful of this mixture in and put back on the heat again for a bit.

Glazed carrots. My fave.

Stick some cinnamon in and spread it on toast and shove under grill

Yes but you can make a sponge cake with oil rather than butter so o don’t think it would affect the cake texture that much in the end -

howwvet if you are adding things like dried fruit they will sink of the mixture is to wet

@Hoppinggreen the butter and sugar need to be creamed together to incorporate air into the mixture to enable the cake to rise (in combination with a raising agent usually)