$60 earbuds beat my $200 ones I lost in a week.

I mean, isn't "inspiring" just a nice thing to say though

Blame it on that cheap thermometer, man. I had the same thing happen with a pork shoulder where I kept cranking the heat because my thermometer said it was stuck at 150, ended up with dry meat.

Honestly, the same thing happened to me with a lemon pound cake last spring. I did a 1:1 swap like you and ended up with this greasy, dense brick that barely rose. It was so disappointing because I thought coconut oil would be a healthier swap, but nope. Tbh, that person in the video you mentioned is totally right about the water and milk solids thing, butter really does the heavy lifting for structure. I tried it again later with half coconut oil and half butter, and even then the texture was just off, not as tender. Ngl, I've just given up and stick to butter for anything that needs to be fluffy now.

Oh man, I gotta push back a little on the preheat thing. Ceramic molds do take longer to get up to temp, sure, but you can absolutely stack them in the kiln while you're prepping your melt and it barely adds any time to your total workflow. I switched to ceramic for my aluminum bronze pours and the difference in surface finish was night and day, like you said. The graphite ones always left these weird little pitted spots I had to grind out, but ceramic gives me a mirror finish right out of the mold. I do miss how cheap graphite is for one-off parts though.