Hello Everyone!
After attempting this recipe found in Heavenly Cakes for the second time….my white chocolate and butter separated while on the double boiler before it is thoroughly melted. Any help would be appreciated!
Debbie

It’s possible the temperature is too high - what setting do you use on your stove? The water should be simmering (not boiling). When this happens you can always add some white chocolate, this will cool the mixture down and save the chocolate from separating further.

I made the luxury lemon cake last weekend that uses a white chocolate/lemon buttercream. I melted the chocolate and butter in the microwave using 15 second bursts and stirring in between. for the chocolate I used a Ghirardelli bar with vanilla bean, chopped up. It worked just fine. When it was pretty far along I stopped nuking it and just kept stirring until it was all melted.

I made the luxury lemon cake last weekend that uses a white chocolate/lemon buttercream. I melted the chocolate and butter in the microwave using 15 second bursts and stirring in between. for the chocolate I used a Ghirardelli bar with vanilla bean, chopped up. It worked just fine. When it was pretty far along I stopped nuking it and just kept stirring until it was all melted. If using a double boiler, make sure it’s not TOUCHING the simmering water.

Thanks for the help. The first time I thought it was too high so I tried to make sure the second time that it didn’t get too hot but it failed that time too. :(  Indy Susan I thought about nuking….when did you add the eggs? How long did you whisk?  I was worried the eggs would cool down the mixture and not work well.  I will try nuking it!  Thanks for all your help!  I have a birthday cake to make for tomorrow and I wanted it to work out!

After I stirred until it was all melted I transferred it to another container with a wider bottom to whisk in the eggs. (ultimately I had it in 3 or 4 different containers and although I thought I was very careful to scrape as much as possible of it out each time, I ended up almost 100g SHORT when it came time to put it all together. I can’t believe I wasted THAT much but it’s possible. Or else I made some silly mistake when I weighed the ingredients. - anyway it turned out wonderfully, and I had enough to cover the cake but not enough to pipe around the bottom as I had planned.) I whisked for what seemed a long time waiting for it to chill enough to add to the egg whites (I hope I am remembering the recipe correctly). Seems as if I did refrigerate it for 1.5 hours, and still even used an ice water bath to chill it enough, which actually worked a bit too fast. It ultimately got a degree or two TOO cool but I went ahead and used it anyway and it was fine. Perhaps due to beginner’s luck. I got RAVE reviews for this cake (luxury lemon.)

well I will certainly try it again with your instructions - I have wasted so much white chocolate and butter to make me cry!   I was going to try the lemon cake too one day..perhaps for my Mom’s birthday in April. Thanks again for your help, I really appreciate it!

You may want to check that your white chocolate is truly white chocolate.  Some of the white chocolate in grocery stores is a confection made without cocoa butter.

I know I didn’t realized that compound chocolates were just chocolate flavours….so I went to buy the expensive one as opposed to the cheap one. I did however make white chocolate whipped cream with the white dipping wafers and it worked fabulous.