Christmas cake disaster

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Hello,
Last year I made Mary Berry's Christmas cake. It is loaded with fruit and was a great success especially since it was my first time making a Christmas cake. However, horror of horrors, I got distracted when making this year's cake and forgot to add the butter. The recipe calls for little batter to fruit, but a rather large amount of butter in the batter. And I'm wondering, how will this mishap affect the overall quality of the cake? The cake looks normal. But, is it better to start again or do I stick with this? Please advise.
 
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Did you just make one or a whole bunch of them? I would imagine that the butter keeps the cake part soft and moist over time so it might be denser and dryer, a little less rich certainly. But some fruit cakes are meant to be dense.

It's this recipe? http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/classic_christmas_cake_04076 ? 250g (9oz) butter is a fair amount to be missing, but there's a lot going on in a fruit cake. If it's to be served at your Christmas dinner, you might want to re-do it. If it's multiple cakes you made, maybe sacrifice one to a taste test and see how it tastes?
 
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Personally I would remake the cake. Butter plays an important role in cake. Without butter or a fat substitute, there’s going to be both flavor and texture issues.

1. Flavor: butter is fat. Fat is flavor
2. Moisture: butter contains both fat and water, so a major component of a moist cake
3. Crumb: fat coats the flour, so makes cake crumb softer
4. Rise: the water in butter turns to steam, which aids rise. Rise makes a lighter cake.


The omission of butter means less flavor and a drier cake.

The omission of butter means a denser cake.

The omission of butter means a there is too much flour since the ratio of butter to flour is suppose to be 100%. All flour and no butter will make a crumbly cake.

There’s nothing you can do add back the benefits of butter after the fact.

You can try to counter the dryness by saturating in simple syrup, but that will not create a softer crumb. And it could make a dense cake denser since there is no fat to repel absorption of the liquid. It will also make the cake sweeter.
 

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