I am making a cake for my aunt's 70th birthday and need to leave the house in about 2 hours. I frosted the cake this morning in SMBC, but ran out. So, I went to the store and got more ingredients to make another batch. I just made the next batch, but it is not coming together. I had stiff peaks before adding the butter.It is just soupy and can see small chunks of butter. I have been beating for about 20 minutes. If I continue to beat will it eventually come together? Or do I scrap it and start over?

I had a similar problem re-whipping a defrosted IMBC. I switched to the whisk attachment and let er rip. It finally came together. HTH.

keep whipping it with the wire whisk.. it should come together.. it usually comes together before 20 minutes though.. just see what it does.. by whipping more. let us know...when i am beating the egg whites.. i put gel packs under my bowl and really cool it down. it works great.. as i am adding the butter.. it comes together really fast and nice.. hth

contrary to what I'd guess to do, I've heard to warm the bowl slightly over a pot of water (dbl boiler)....if you're seeing chunks of butter, the butter is probably not soft enough to mix in with the meringue. I've never had to try it, but have read about a few different people having success w/it doing this. Good luck!

this has happened to me once before, i just added a little mirange pwd to it, and it came together nicely hth

I got lazy awhile back, and this is how I do it now. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to someone trying SMBC for the first time but here goes.

I use butter straight from the fridge now. I whip the egg white mixture on full throttle with the whisk until it's stiff, immediately switch to paddle, the mixture is still pretty hot at this point, and add the cold butter in little pats. Lock the mixer head in place, cause the cold butter is going to make your mixer head jump around. Mix on low speed until the chunks have melted down a bit. Then, put it back to full throttle and let it rip. The cold butter in the hot egg white/sugar mixture should even everything out and should be a good stiff frosting by the time you turn it off. You can check by swiping a spatula through the middle of it and see if there are any unmelted little bits of butter, if so...let it rip a bit longer.

When it's done, let the mixer turn around slowly for a minute or so to draw up any air out of the mixture.

Thanks so much for all your help. It finally came together after about 45 minutes! I thought my KA was going burn out! (-: