Separated batter?! Let’s fix it.

Why did my my batter separate?

Tell me if you’ve been here: you’re cruising along, making your batter for brownies or maybe a cake and when you start to mix in the eggs … greasy, slimy, andddd you’ve got separated batter. UGH. What the heck happened?! This has happened to me more times than I can count and typically when making brownies. Why? The shortest, easiest answer is: temperature variance. Your eggs are likely too cold! I tried out one trick (listed below) that solved this year-long problem! I wanted to share it with everyone because holy cow, I feel like I discovered the secret to the brownie universe.

This can be especially evident when the mixture you’re adding your eggs to is very warm, like with my brownie example. To make the brownies, you melt the chocolate and butter together on the stove and then you add the sugar and eggs to the warm chocolate and butter. Every. Single. Time. I was getting a greasy, gritty mess. Why? Because butter sets at room temperature so when you add the eggs, it cools the butter – bringing the butter to room temperature. Having all of the ingredients at the same temperature helps to create an emulsion.

So what’s the solution?

How to prevent separated batter:

1. Beat your butter and sugar together until fluffy. If you’re using a stand mixer on medium-high speed, this takes about 6-7 minutes, or up to 10 minutes. As Jacqui states in her blog post: A well-beaten butter and sugar mixture can hold more liquid.
2. This is the trick: Before adding the eggs to your batter, hold the eggs with your hands under very warm water. You want to hold them rather than place them in a strainer so you don’t accidentally cook your eggs! I found 1-2 minutes under very warm water should warm them enough.

How to fix separated batter:

1. I also got this tip from Jacqui: Place the batter bowl in warm water, up to the line of the batter, and whisk until the batter is smooth. I’ve also recovered buttercream frosting in a similar fashion: by running a towel under very hot water and wiping the bottom half of the bowl. This method takes several minutes, however the outside of your bowl will be spotless.
2. You can also rescue a batter with a little extra flour. While visually it seems to do the trick, the result is typically a dense crumb so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this option, unless you only need a tiny bit to fix it, less than a tablespoon or 2. Unfortunately, you can end up adding way too much flour without realizing it’s way too much flour … until you’ve baked it because the batter looks good.

I hope this helps you understand why your batter separated, how you can prevent separated batter in the future and how to rescue a separated batter!