Master Buttercream Frostings

1. Welcome!: Hi. Welcome to the course on buttercream frostings. I'm Amy Kimmel. I'm a cake decorator turned pastry chef turned stay at Home Online cake instructor. I teach all about cake, baking and cake decorating, and I am 100% passionate about it. I love sharing my knowledge. In this course, we're going to take a look at different types of buttercream frostings. Buttercream is the most common, and they're really perfect for special occasions, cakes or even elaborate wedding cakes. They're wonderful as a foundation, Teoh lay Fonda and over you can color them different shades and create really interesting techniques and beautiful designs. You learn how to make a classic American buttercream as well as a crusting buttercream. Then we'll take a look at cream cheese butter cream, and then you'll learn meringue, butter creams, Swiss meringue and Italian meringue. You learn different techniques how to mixed together certain ingredients, as well as how to use a candy thermometer and cook sugar syrups. There is a lot of this course on. It was so much fun creating it. So I know you're going toe love trying out these techniques at home. I really look forward to teaching you, and I'll see you in the next lesson 2. Mise en Place: If you already are familiar with museum plots, go ahead and skip over this lesson. It will just be repetitive for you if you're completely new to the term. I wanted to include a lesson so you understand what it ISS and also know the importance of building the foundation before you get started in the kitchen baking or making frostings. Maison pauses a French term, meaning everything in its place, basically having all of your equipment and ingredients in front of you in your workspace, ready to go reading the recipe, seeing if there's anything that is room temperature if you need to cook something. If your equipment needs to be prepared in a certain way, such as with whipped cream, you need to chill your bowl in your whisk. So understanding how all of that plays into building these recipes and creating the final product. That's where Maison Plus comes in. It's getting you ready and building that perfect foundation so that you'll be successful and all the things that you make in the kitchen 3. American Buttercream : in my house growing up when my mom would bake a cake. Chances are nine times out of 10. It had American buttercream on it. She swore by it. So I grew up on a fairly sweet but also very rich style of buttercream. Still to this day, I just love eating a very vanilla American buttercream so delicious, and it's great for frosting cakes, filling cakes and some piping. I also love that as I started working in the industry and learn more about it, I realized how versatile it is. You can go way beyond vanilla. You can add spices, extracts. You can even add fresh fruit to it for so many combinations. I mean, if you know just this recipe and no other butter creams it in and of itself, you'll know hundreds of ways Teoh make a different covering for your cakes or other treats . Now it's great to know how to make it, but do keep in mind the proper use for it. It's great if you're going to keep the cake refrigerated. It stays wonderfully in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, covered or wrapped tightly, and it's create in the freezer for up to three months. I like to put it in an airtight container and then wrap it really well. Just because butter tends to pick up the flavors that are around it. Now I want to take the proper use. If you're going to be using it for an outdoor wedding or something like that, you probably just don't want Teoh. You'll want to use a more stable buttercream now. You could also take the recipe in this course for American buttercream and take half off the butter. Omit that and substituted for vegetable shortening. That's going to give it more stability, but you'll still have that delicious, rich, buttery flavor. Because it has so much butter, you have to pipe with it quickly because the heat of your hands will warm the butter. So think about that as well. Now, if you're planning on using it for just a birthday cake that you can keep in the refrigerator and pull out just a little bit before eating it, then that's perfect. Or, you know an indoor wedding is fine, too. For smaller cakes. I wouldn't use it on large wedding cakes just because of if it's sitting under a warm light or anything like that. You just wouldn't want it to Mel and have a disaster on your hands. So definitely keep that in mind. You can give it more stability, but butter alone is really just so delicious and really worth making and enjoying it. 4. American Buttercream Method: making an American style buttercream is really simple. It's basically butter and powdered sugar. The biggest thing you want to make sure you dio when you're handling the sugar. You want to make sure that you sift this because when you go to add this to the butter, if there's any large clumps in there, they won't be broken up. And then you'll have a clumpy buttercream, which is no fun for anybody. So I started out by putting my butter right into the bowl, and this is really soft butter. This has been sitting out at room temperature for a couple of hours. Actually, I was just pulled out ahead of time when I know that I'm about to make it. If you forget, you can always knew Get in like 12th increments in the microwave. Just keep an eye on it because of you. Melt it. You can't use it, so I just let this run for a few seconds, just toe, break it up and make sure that the butter isn't in one big club. Once that is a little bit softened like that, I'm going to add about half of my powdered sugar. I don't add it all at once because it's going Teoh overwhelmed the mixer and you're gonna have a huge cloud of powdered sugar flying about and completely covering you. Trust me, I've been there before. What's even worse is when you do it in a bakery with a commercial sized mixer with about a 50 gallon bowl on it. And then it looks like you just came from a snowstorm because your hair is completely covered in powdered sugar. Yeah, you don't want that. Okay, so just sit this right in, and you're gonna get powdered sugar on your counter. Maybe on your clothes a little bit. This stuffs a little bit messy. Use a spatula, though. If you don't want to use your hands. Like if you're gonna be using this to feed people, get a little last bits in there. Don't leave anything out. Okay? So this is gonna go on low speed, and I like to pulse it just to get it started. I just moved the switch really fast back and forth to pulse it. And once that is mixed in, I'm going to add the other house of my powdered sugar. This is just really, really simple to make. If you still want the buttercream toe, have some butter in it because you like the flavor, but you want to be a little bit more stable and have more of a white color to it. You can actually dio half a cup of shortening, solid shortening and half a cup of butter, and I don't give you more stable buttercream thing. This is an all butter butter cream. This is rich Andi Sweet, definitely a frosting where it pays Teoh have really good butter cause he'll definitely be able to taste it. All the sugar. Here we go. You can see my hands messy, but I also feel like what I'm making are making anything in the kitchen if I don't get my hands a little bit dirty than it's just thought like I didn't do anything. OK, so gonna pulse this again to incorporate that sugar that was really thick. And my mixture is starting to, you know, grown a little bit on the bulls, moving a little bit, even though it's locked on here. And that's when I want to start adding my other ingredients and also to you'll see that the sugar is mostly combined in. There's a little bit of straggler stuck to the side of the bowl, but that's OK at this point I took with this up, out. Otherwise, your liquids will get stuck on top of the buttercream at this point and slosh, we don't want to slash, so I like to get this in. Underneath that was two tablespoons of milk, two teaspoons of vanilla or whatever type of flavoring you're using. You can use any kind of extract in this and a pinch of salt. And like I said, this is really sweet sugar and butter. You want a counterbalance that a little bit or else it's, you know, pretty overwhelming. Okay, so my ingredients are combined, and I just want to scrape the bull and the paddle really well at this point to make sure that I've got all the ingredients in there. There's no little pockets of anything hiding that you might scrape out of your bowl later, and then somebody just gets a full mouth of drying sugar or plain butter. We don't want that. Always make sure you scrape down to the bottom of your bowl, especially in my kitchen. Aid has like a little valley and there's kind of like a little hill in the middle of town, the bottom. So I try to make sure to get around that really well and get on my ingredients combined in here, and I'm gonna turn this back on, and I'm actually gonna let this beat for a few minutes. And what that's going to do is it's gonna air raid that make sure all my ingredients are really well incorporated and give it a really wonderful ending. Mouth feel. Just a light, airy, buttercream way. Okay, this has been going for about two minutes. My buttercream is lighter in color. It's so fluffy looking and it's super smooth. It's got a great texture. I mean, it's just so so lovely and luxurious. This is just amazing. And the reading process also allows all of my sugar to kind of dissolve. You don't want any grittiness when you're making this buttercream, and that also comes from buying typically buying storebrand sugars. You really want to make sure that you get a good, pure cane powder sugar straight. My bull and I don't see anything hiding in there, so this'll is ready to go at this point, if you're gonna keep it plain, you know, taste. It doesn't need a little bit more salt a little bit more extract. You can add those things in balance out your flavors at this point, but otherwise this is ready to go and you can cross with this or go ahead and store it. 5. Flavoring American Buttercream: this buttercream is surprisingly versatile when it comes to flavoring it, you can use any type of extract, obviously dried herbs, spices. I'm gonna show you how to add a fruit syrup and also how to turn this into chocolate buttercream. There are two ways. Better show you with cocoa because that is just so simple to add co. Go to the buttercream and then you have chocolate. It's also justice. Delicious is adding melted chocolate. I kept my bowl that had the sifter and am stressed that the sifter aside, I'm actually going to take half of this buttercream and just place it right into other mixing bowl. And I'm sure I've mentioned before that a huge fan of not using batch of dishes. So we're just reusing things that we've already dirtied. All right, says that happened half great fistful down into the bottom. We don't lose any of that awesome buttercream upon the sides, not something to show you the super difficult process of making chocolate buttercream. This is not a specific amount. This is to your taste and preference. If you like dark chocolate budgie buttercream at a lot of cocoa. If you like a light barely chocolate super smooth, fluffy Coe Coe ish buttercream. Then just add a little bit. And I don't like to do this by hand honestly, because I find that when I put this cocoa in the mixture, it's lies about the bullet, no matter what I do. So I like to do it by hand and cut down on the mess a little bit and just be really careful when you're folding this in because it's still is going. Teoh. Try to escape via air, so I just fold in a J motion, adding all that cocoa in there that is used a Hershey's cocoa use whatever cocoa you like. Does it matter if it's 100 natural? Dutch process doesn't matter whatever your flavor preferences and this is great. I mean, Coco has no sweetener in it. It is just pure powder chocolate, basically, so it's pretty bitter, but that's the beauty of adding cocoa to this. Because American buttercream is so sweet, it really mellows it out and just fold it in there until it's combined. This is so easy to make a chocolate buttercream now adding dry ingredients. Teoh on already made product is going to make it a little bit thicker. I personally I am fine with this, and what I do actually is I will just throw this in the microwave in a heat safe bowl for about five seconds. Mix it up really well, and it softens it up just enough to frost a cake. And you don't have to mess around with adding in liquid ingredients and trying to figure out those ratios. So that's a fun little pointer. If you don't wanna mess with all that, then just add in, you know, like a teaspoon of your milk at a time until it's the right consistency. You can't more cocoa to this, which is gonna make it thicker. So then you would have to add more liquid, you know. But there is a delicious light chocolate buttercream so yummy, and this is still super smooth. Delicious. Okay, so that's the talk about a cream. Now. I had some Cherries that I boiled down with sugar and alcohol, so this is just like a cherry syrup you can use. Any costs are even maple syrup. This is just a liquid. That husband thickened a little bit on the stove with some sugar, so I'm gonna add just a little bit to this. You don't want to add too much, because then it's obviously adding a lot of liquid. So I put about two tablespoons in there, just enough to flavor it, but not to completely alter the consistency of my buttercream too much. The key to adding liquid as a flavoring in this that's more than just a couple teaspoons of extract is that you want to beat it really well to get it incorporated, because that butter is going to resist the liquid a little bit. It's a fat like what it must resist. So I find that if I beat it for a really long time until it's completely incorporated, it'll go. It'll be a little bits tavern, but it works. So I've got this locked in place and they start beating that, and I'm going to keep an eye on it, and when it doesn't look separated at all, then it's done all right. So I didn't take longer all because I didn't have a lot of butter cream, and I also didn't have a lot of liquid added in there. But oh my gosh, look at this purple color This is so pretty. And now I have talked about a cream cherry buttercream. Of course, I'm gonna have to make a black forest cake out of this, but you can see that it's not separated. It's all one smooth buttercream mixture, which is what I was looking for. And, you know, depending on what your what, you want to taste this. If you need to add a little bit more, you know, add a tablespoon at a time and beat the butter cream and make sure that it's really well incorporated. You don't want to dump a bunch of liquid in here and overwhelm your butter, and then it may not come together. So take it a little bit out of time, and this isn't gonna be a super strong flavor. It's gonna be a subtle fruit flavor, because if you wanted a strong flavor of fruit, you would want to Adam extract. But this is just keep that in that this will be a very subtle flavour. So play around with this buttercream. It's very versatile, and you can definitely get a lot out of it. You could even combine him the cherry and swirled in with the chocolate and fracture kick like that. So many possibilities. I hope you try this at home 6. Crusting Buttercream : crusting buttercream is its own type of buttercream. Sometimes people will categorize it with American butter creams, but it doesn't have any butter in it, so it's still classified as a buttercream, but not an American buttercream. I know that's a little bit confusing, but crusting buttercream is 100% solid shortening used as the fat now for home bakers. Basically, what you're gonna be able to find is vegetable shortening at the grocery store. For commercial bakeries, you can order large amounts of high ratio shortening, and that's more based off of animal fats rather than vegetable fat. And that's going to give you a smoother mouth feel. That's the most grocery store and big chain bakeries used, so that's fun to know. It's actually great if you need something for stability. The shortening isn't going to melt in warm climates, and it's not going to get super hard in the refrigerator, such as an all butter based buttercream would. And it also gets a nice crust on the outside, a very thin crust that when you break into it with a fork, you can see the crossed kind of crack a little bit. But then it's this really soft, creamy butter cream on the inside. The key to crusting buttercream is whipping it really well. Once your ingredients are combined. I have found over the years that if you let it beat for 5 to 6 minutes at least, even the vegetable shortening that can give you that pallet cling. It takes a lot of that away. This is also great for pure white butter creams. Sometimes, if you're doing a cake for a wedding and a bride requests pure white, you can get away with using crossing buttercream. Now they absolutely insist on a butter based buttercream. Then you can also purchase a pure white food coloring, and that'll help take out some yellow color from butter on. As long as you make crusting buttercream without any dairy, you can store it for really long periods of time. If you ever have shortening in the pantry and maybe after six months, it starts to pick up weird flavors. That's about when you're buttercream would start to go bad. Now, if you add milk to it to get it more fluffy and rich, it has the same shelf life as American buttercream. Two weeks in the refrigerator three months in the freezer. I like to keep it just in a tub on the counter. If it doesn't have milk in it and I can use it, it's really great to if you just want to make it, Teoh, practice your piping. When people ask me for a mock buttercream, I tend to give them that recipe because then you can just sit for hours and practice flowers or borders or what have you, and it's not gonna melt on you or get weird. It just last for a really long time on its even versatile in flavoring. So if you are going to use it four of special occasion cake you can add almost any flavoring to it. You can add fruit syrup, peanut butter, melted chocolate the same as you would to an American style buttercream, so people won't even know that it doesn't have any butter in it. 7. Crusting Buttercream Method: to make the crusting buttercream. You want to start out with your shortening here? I have a cup of shortening, and this is gonna go straight into my mixing bowl. And I just want to turn my mixer on low speed to break up that shortening and make sure that it's not all clumped together. Okay, that's good. Now what? The crusting buttercream you want to make sure since you're incorporating dry into a fat that you sift the pattern sugar, and I just like to and I just go ahead and move my paddle out of the way. Just go ahead and pull my bowl off the mixer. This rescue so easy because it's measured out perfectly. Teoh £12 bag of sugar and I get the CNH pure cane. That's a juvenile court. Pure cane sugar. Sometimes lower quality sugars like store brand fritters we made out of beet root, and that will end up giving you a really green buttercream. Seems like a lot of powdered sugar to go in here, but there is 1/2 a cup of milk, which is going to help dissolve the sugar and make a really creamy icing so they have about half of it in. I like to pop it back on the mixer and then just incorporate that so as not to overwhelm my mixer, pulse it. And you just want to make this until it's combined and doesn't look like a course meal. Okay, so once it's at that point can go ahead and add in the salt whatever flavoring you're using . If you want this to be a sure white, then go for a clear extract and I'm gonna put my milk and at this point, to looks a little Carl, That's okay. It's not gonna hurt anything. You just don't want Teoh. Put all your sugar in there with the shortening because it won't completely combine. It will be sandy, and then it would be more difficult to incorporate all the milk in. So at this point can add the rest of the sugar. It's amazing how much sugar goes into frostings, and then, when they're finally all combined, it doesn't seem like a whole lot. Give a little shake tonight. Besides there, Cam's gonna pulls this so it doesn't make a big mess. Not that my countertop isn't already covered in powdered sugar. You'll see it come together like this, and it'll look really thick and kind of pasty. This is when I like Teoh scrape my paddle in my bowl really well, that I'm gonna turn this on to medium high speed and let it beat for about six minutes, and it's gonna get really nice and creamy and fluffy. - Okay , so this has been going for a few minutes, and it is just this really firm but creamy frosting. This is perfect for frosting. A cake smooth with and piping with. You could also thin it out a little bit for more delicate piping. But this is perfect. This is a crusting buttercream. Once you frost your cake in this, it's going to get a nice kind of thin crust on the outside. Which then is really great for attaching decorations, Teoh, or you can paint on it lots of nice benefits of having that crusting buttercream. And this is really heat stable 8. Cream Cheese Buttercream: cream cheese frosting is absolutely delicious on a vanilla cake or, more popularly, on red velvet cake. It's also great on things like banana cake or other fruit flavor cakes or just really any cake. In general, it's great for using as a frosting or filling, and you can pipe some borders with it now. It's not typically used for piping flowers. It definitely has a softer consistency than other type of butter creams, and that comes from the cream cheese. Now, if you're making your cream cheese frosting and it's a little bit too soft, never add more powdered sugar. That's what makes it different from other butter creams, whereas you would add same or powdered sugar to an American buttercream for a stiffer frosting with cream cheese frosting, you want to add more butter or a little bit more cream cheese. Now I have 1/2 butter half cream cheese ratio in my frosting recipe, because that gives it enough stability to not slide off the sides of cakes. It's pretty versatile in flavoring. If you add any extra liquids to it, just keep in mind. It's gonna loosen the frosting, and it's going to make it a little bit more difficulty to frost with and probably not be able to be used for piping. If you want to add fresh fruits or Orioles like I'm going to show you in a later lesson, you just want to fold them in at the very end very lightly and loosely, and then frost your cake immediately if you're making it ahead of time. It's stores covered well for in the refrigerator up to seven days. Or you can even freeze it for up to a month. Now. Phrasing it. You have to have at least 1/2 and half butter to cream cheese ratio because if you have more cream cheese and butter, it's not going to freeze as well. And it could separate or become gritty ones. You take it out of the freezer, so keep that in mind. The recipe and this course is fine for freezing up to a month. But if you increase the cream cheese, it might not turn out how you want. And after you pull it out of the refrigerator or freezer, just let it come to room temperature and then beat it for a few seconds just to get it back to that original consistency. Now you always want to keep cream cheese stored in the refrigerator just because of the cream cheese itself. If the dairy product and it needs to be refrigerated to eliminate the risk of food borne illnesses. If it's a cake you want to keep on the counter, I wouldn't use cream cheese frosting. For that. I would use maybe a crossing buttercream or an American buttercream. And finally, the biggest tip I can give you on cream cheese frosting. No matter what recipe you use now or in the future, always make sure your cream cheese and your butter are soft. Pockets of firm cream cheese or butter will completely ruin your cream cheese frosting, because cream cheese and butter are two different consistencies. If they're not both, stop in to room temperature. They will not combine properly, and you'll have a lumpy buttercream and you won't be able to fix it. Same goes for confectioners. Sugar. Sift it really well. You don't want any lumps in the frosting. You really want to make sure that everything is nice and soft and easy to mix and always mixed together. Your cream cheese and butter make sure that they're really smooth before adding your powdered sugar. And also don't overwork cream cheese frosting. I never put it in a bowl and just let it be and walk away from it because it could break down and be completely ruined. And I know that cream cheese, depending on what time of the year it is, can be expensive, so it's definitely an ingredient that shouldn't be wasted. 9. Cream Cheese Method: this cream cheese frosting recipe only has four ingredients. Cream cheese, butter, vanilla flavoring and confectioner's sugar. Now you might think cream cheese should just be cream cheese and sugar, but you add butter to help stabilize it. Because cream cheese is too soft to just combine with butter, it will kind of fall off your cake so I do 1/2 in half eight ounces of cream cheese, eight ounces of butter. The biggest thing toe walked out for with cream cheese frosting is lumps. It tends to want to get lumpy on you, so you really have to make sure that your sugar is sifted well, and the number one thing make sure that your cream cheese and butter are softened. They really need to be room temperature. So if you know you're gonna be making cream cheese frosting, just think ahead and pull them out is early, as you think of it, at least an hour ahead of time before you make the frosting to really give it time to come to room temperature. Thes air Really nice and soft, so you want to start out by just putting your cream cheese um, butter, right into the mixer. We're gonna combine these until it's smooth and there's definitely no sign of lumps in there at all. You just want to combine this till it's smooth. You don't ever wanna Whippet or over beat cream cheese because it will start to break down at a certain point. And then it's just kind of a mass and you can't fix it. So be very gentle with your cream cheese and try not to overwork. It makes it a little bit more was I scrape it down? You can just spin it off the paddle there. I'm Alex Cabal looks really smooth. You don't see any lumps of cream, cheese or butter, and they're so that's perfect. I want to start adding my powdered sugar. I have four cups measured out here. I find it easiest to just sipped it directly into the bowl. I actually have a little bit sit there. If it's sticking at all, you can just hopping on a smaller bowl. If you haven't really give it some good taps, that's about half of my sugar was going. Teoh. Mix this on low speed to get that combined just until combined. Remember, don't want over work this at all. Push that last little bit through. Yeah, my work services covered in powdered sugar as usual. Okay, both speed. Pulse it if you need Teoh. Okay, So is looking pretty good. Just want to make sure to scrape down and get all the sugar in their incorporated with the butter and cream cheese before you add any liquids or flavoring. Have you had liquid? And there's a chance that the powdered sugar could clump and then go have lumps. I'm gonna kick it up to medium speed for just a few seconds to fully incorporate it. There we go, just like that, and then you can add your flavorings. At this point, I just have a teaspoon of vanilla. Sometimes I have added lemon juice just to bring out the tang of the cream cheese a little bit more. If you really are looking for that just plain cream cheesy flavor. If I'm going to be adding other stuff to my cream cheese, then I'll just use the vanilla beautiful cream cheese frosting. And this is pretty firm. If you would need it to be any more firm than this, you can always add more butter or cream cheese. Never add more powdered sugar. It actually breaks down the cream cheese frosting if you add more powdered sugar to it, so you'll want to add butter or cream cheese if you need to thicken it anymore. But this is plenty thick and perfect to frost a cake with. Just make sure that you store cream cheese frosting in the fridge. If you're not using it really important with this, especially because of the cream cheese and cream cheese. Frosting is not as versatile as other butter creams just because of the nature of the cream cheese. But I'm gonna show you how to fold in some crushed up Oreo cookies, which make a really delicious cream cheese frosting that you'd want to use right away. 10. Flavoring Cream Cheese Buttercream: I have some mini Oreos here in a little bag. If you ever wanna crush up graham crackers or cookies if you have a food processor, then that's fantastic. Definitely used that. But if you don't, it's always nice. Teoh know how to just to the same thing without it, so you can use a rolling pin for this or your hands. It's up to you just to make sure that your bag is sealed really well and just crush it up if you really want him, finally pulverized, then used the food processor or the ruling, then I like to have varying, varying sizes. Pieces mixed in with the cookie frosting in there. I'm just feeling to make sure that there's no whole cookies left. Now, if you want to add something like cookies or nuts or even fresh fruit to cream cheese frosting, you don't want to mix it in with the mixer. Thank you might do with other frostings. Remember, because we don't want overwork the cream cheese, so it's just a little bit different with cream cheese frosting. You just want to fold it in at the end very gently. If you have kids, I'm sure they bumped. Finish whatever is in there. I'm just gonna fold this in. If you were to fold fresh fruit into cream cheese frosting right at the end, you would want to use it immediately just because the fruit is gonna start to release juices into the frosting and then it's going to start becoming softer. So I would recommend if you put fresh fruit in here to frost your cakes right away and then put it in the refrigerator. So yeah, so simple. Just folding it in end. There's a delicious cookies n cream cream cheese frosting perfect for covering a cake or filling on cake with. 11. Swiss Meringue Buttercream: Now we're getting into the cooked meringue butter creams. This should not scare you. And hopefully, after watching the next two lessons, you'll feel confident to make Swiss meringue or Italian meringue buttercream at home. Swiss meringue is definitely the easiest of the cooked meringue frosting, so it's a great place to get started. I absolutely love Swiss meringue buttercream. It's typically what I use on cakes that I've been commissioned for birthday cakes or any other type of special occasion cakes, even wedding cakes that are supposed to be all buttercream. And it's because it has more stability than the American buttercream, despite the fact that it has a lot of butter in it. And that's because the cooked egg whites give it a lot of good structure and stability. Swiss Meringue buttercream is really firm and holds up nicely. Italian meringue buttercream does even better, and you'll find out why later. But for Swiss meringue buttercream, it's perfect to Frost Phil and pipe with even really nice flowers that need a firm buttercream. It should be kept refrigerated. If it's not being used, it can live in the refrigerator for up to seven days or in the freezer tightly wrapped for up to two months. Now, if you do store any leftover Swiss meringue buttercream, just let it come to room temperature for an hour or more and then re Whippet and it'll be perfect and ready to go if you start to whip it after you've stored it and it starts to curdle and kind of separate. Don't friend. Just let it sit for a little while and warm up a little bit and then try whipping and again . Once it comes to room temperature, it'll reincorporate. You have not ruined your system. Oring buttercream. It's just being cantankerous, and it's not at the right temperature. Now. I loves was Moran, just because it's so easy to flavor it with so many different things, you can flavor it with nut butters such as peanut butter or almond butter. You can use whiskey beer. You can use melted chocolates or fruit syrups. So many different things, and it really holds up nicely to it. It's not going to break down your buttercream, cause it to separate or anything like that. It's fantastic. It's so versatile and because it's so easy to make, that's why I use it the most. 12. Swiss Meringue Buttercream Method: Swiss meringue buttercream is by far my favorite buttercream. It to me is the easiest cooked butter cream to make, and it also just has awesome texture and flavour. So let me just tell you right now, don't be afraid of making this. Just because you have to use a thermometer doesn't mean that you can't do it or that you'll ruin it. The Swiss buttercream is just so easy to make you just hang out with it, and I promise you you won't mess it up. I walk you step by step through this recipe and you'll see how simple it really is. You start out by separating your eggs. I have six large eggs and I just want the whites. They're going to go into my large mixing bowl, and then I have a little bowl just for the yolks. Crack those right on the side, and then I just like to separate my eggs using the shell. So this is the part that scares people the most. You start adding heat on thermometers, and it just gets scary, but it's really not. I have ah, medium size saucepan, and it's filled with about an inch and 1/2 of just tap water and I'm gonna turn this on Teoh medium heat. You just want to make sure that the water isn't going to touch the bottom of the bowl. Now I have this little part from my stand. Mixers of this kind of protects my egg whites so I don't worry about it as much if you just have, ah, plane bold and just make sure that it's above the water and not directly touching it. And also, you know, use a use the size of pot that appropriate for it. So my ankle weights air in here, and I just want to add my sugar. One cup of sugar here. Once you add sugar into eggs of any sort, you need to start mixing immediately. Reason being is sugar is very acidic, and if you just let it sit, it will cook the egg whites, and then you'll have little bits of cooked egg in your buttercream, and nobody wants that. So just wish to combine it and then pop your thermometer onto the edge of your bowl did make sure that the tip ear thermometer is submerged, but not touching the bottom of the bowl And then you're gonna keep whisking this continuously so that the eggs don't cook and become scrambled. This is kind of a tedious process, so just stick with it. Whisk it. You're gonna bring it to 100 and 60 F that's going to pasteurized egg whites, but not get them so hot that they will just completely cook. That way you have a safe buttercream that you're eating, - so the temperature starting to rise on my thermometer. And they can feel just as I'm whisking the egg whites and sugar that it's getting thinner. It's heating up, and the proteins in the egg are breaking down a little bit, so it becomes easier toe kissed. But once the temperature starts to go up on your thermometer noticeably, this is when you really have to stay with it and watch it. Soon as it hits 1 60 you need to pull it right off and put it right onto your stand mixer. As soon as your meringue hips 1 60 you want to pull it off the heat and be careful. Don't burn yourself. Use oven mitts. If you need Teoh, there's gonna be a lot of steam trying to escape in the bowl will probably be hot, so put it directly on your stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, working as quickly as possible and get it moving. You want to turn this on to medium high heat and just let it with until you can touch the side of the bowl and it's cool to the touch. So however long that takes depending on the temperature where you're at climate things of that nature, you'll just know by touch and it's not going to over with. You can't ruin it by letting it go too long, so don't worry about that. So that was literally the hardest part of making Swiss meringue buttercream. My bowl is cool to the touch, and as you can see, this is a really nice, glossy, fluffy meringue. Looks amazing. So this is when the butter goes in and my butter is soft, very soft room temperature. You don't want this to be cold or have any resistance, but you also don't want it to be really warm room temperature and feeling like it might almost melt. Return my mixer onto low speed, and I like to put my butter in like this, the whole stick at a time. I think that's the easiest way. This part scares a lot of people, I think, because if you ever tried this before and thought that you ruined it or it failed, you probably did it. Sometimes if the meringue is too hot or the butter's too cold, the mixture will curdle or it won't completely come together, and it looks like it's ruined, but usually it's not. You can just keep whipping it, and it will come together if it looks weird at all. Just remember that with meringue based buttercream, just keep whipping it. Just let it go and it'll eventually come together. You feel the bull in the bulls too cold. Let it warm up for a few minutes and then whip it again. If you feel it, it's too hot. Let it cool down. Now you don't want your meringue to be so hot that it melts the butter. If you melt the butter than you know, there's not much you can do because it changes the composition of the butter. But the butter stools. It's too cold, and it just looks curdled and chunky. That's okay, The butter will soften and it'll all come together. This is what I mean. It came together this great besides my bowl because there's a little bit of meringue stuck there. Make sure seconds incorporated. But oh, man, this buttercream so silky if you've never had this before, never made it, never tried it. I really er did you If you don't try any of the other frostings in this class, try this one. It's really just superior. 13. Flavoring Swiss Meringue Buttercream: So at this point, the buttercream is perfect. This is where you want to add flavorings. So I have just a little bit of salt because it's nice to counterbalance all that sugar. A couple teaspoons of vanilla. Always put that in my buttercream. Now Swiss meringue buttercream is really, really versatile. You can add a lot of flavors to it. You can liquid flavors even, and it won't ruin it. It's a pretty sturdy buttercream, so I actually have some maple syrup, and you would probably think having liquid to a buttercream like Know what do you doing? Stop. It's okay. It isn't going to ruin it all. You could put, you know, whiskey or just orange juice. It's It's a pretty sturdy body butter green, so I'm gonna put my maple syrup into taste. Frosting is always to preference. There's never usually a set amount of any type of slavery that you could put it a frosting put a little bit in, taste it. If you don't like it, then just, you know, add more flavor. And until you do like it, Sam's gonna let this with a little bit until all my flavorings are incorporated. He hasn't changed it all. Still a really nice silky buttercream. But I'm gonna taste this. Oh, yeah. Maple syrup. So good. So delicious money. I'm gonna add anymore. But look at that. Amazing. I really want you to try this recipe. 14. Italian Meringue Buttercream: Italian meringue buttercream doesn't need a huge introduction. It has basically all the same characteristics of the Swiss meringue buttercream. The only reason that you may want to use it instead of is because it has slightly more stability for a cake that's going to be sitting out on a display table for a longer period of time. You can use Italian meringue buttercream to give you a little bit more of a display time. Now I'm not saying Put it out in the hot sun and an outdoor wedding and let it go. No buttercream will hold up to that, but for a nice air conditioned room and a cake that might be sitting out for an hour, it'll hold up a little bit better than the Swiss meringue. It can still be flavored the same way it has the same shelf life on the same workability and storage characteristics seven days in the refrigerator, two months in the freezer. What makes Italian meringue a little bit more stable is building the egg structure before adding the hot liquid to it to set that egg structure. Swiss meringue is based off of everything being cooked and then whipped to cool down. Now that's still a firm, stable meringue, but Italian meringue. You'll see the egg whites are whipped with sugar to give it stability on its own. But then adding the hot syrup to it is just gonna set the protein in egg and make it really nice and firm. I'm finally the biggest thing that people ask me is, Can I use pasteurized egg whites? Now? I've seen new recipes where people are making meringue butter creams, and they're not even heating the eggs whatsoever because they're using carton egg whites that have already been pasteurized. The biggest thing that I find of adding heat to stabilize your meringue is it tends to make the buttercream lighter in color and in texture. So definitely something to keep in mind if you're during a little bit of research and you just want to know what the difference is between a cooked and non cooked meringue buttercream 15. Italian Meringue Buttercream Method: Italian meringue buttercream involves a little bit of cooking. But as long as you have your thermometer and keep a good eye on it, you should be able to make this recipe. No problem. The first thing that I do to get started with my Italian buttercream I have a small saucepan right here, and I have a copy of granulated sugar. I also have 1/4 cup of water and a tablespoon of corn syrup. And once you get these ingredients into the saucepan, you don't want Teoh stir it. And the reason is is Then you're gonna get sugar up on the sides of the pan, and then that will cause crystallization, which we don't want. So the goal is is to just get it in there and then leave it. But get it on low. He low he because you want Teoh melt the sugar but allowed to melt before it starts to caramelize. So I just popped my sugar mixture onto a burner with low heat and put my thermometer in there, and I'm gonna let that go. It's gonna take a few minutes on low he until it reaches about 150 F. When my thermometer reads 1 50 I'm going to start whipping up my meringue. And that's gonna be about enough time for the sugar mixture to reach the 230 degrees that we're going for, which is about the softball stage. The sugar syrup is heating up and it's reached 150 F. So I want to start whipping up the egg whites. I have an extra tablespoon of granulated sugar, and this is just gonna help stabilize these egg whites. This is six large. It quits. I'm gonna start on low just to break it up and then turn it up to medium speed to whip it into a meringue. You can see my sugar syrup is starting to bubble a little bit and the sugar starting to dissolve its A a little below 200 F. Right now I'm gonna keep my egg whites whipping into the meringue, and he should be ready to go at about the same time. When this reaches 238 Fahrenheit. My meringue should be nice and fluffy and ready to all incorporate. Okay, so my Marais has finally hit nice firm peaks. My sugar syrup is almost there as soon as it hits to 38. You wanna pull that sugar, sir, right off the heat and into the mixing bowl. Because it goes past it, it's going Teoh firm up and cook the egg whites, and then you'll have a lumpy buttercream. We don't want that. The sugar syrup is almost there. You can see that it gets nice and bubbly and clear, and it's forming big bubbles, and my bubbles have started to slow down a little bit. So it's right at that point that I need to pull it off the heat. As soon as the sugar syrup hits that point, take out your thermometer, lock this in place, turn it on to medium drizzle of the sugar syrup down the side of the bull at the side of the bowl between the whisk and the bulls, slowly getting it in there. Whatever is left in your saucepan. Don't try to straighten that out. Just pour whatever comes out into this and let it go, and you're gonna let this with on a medium speed until you can touch the bowl and it's cool to the touch. So I've been checking the around the sides of the bottom of my bowl, and it feels almost room temperature. It's so a little bit warm. But I just wanted Teoh give you a few little pieces of information at this point. Now you can see that this has made a really stable sign E meringue. So there Steph Peaks. This is really great and stabilized, and I can see and feel that this is completely smooth, which means that I cooked my sugar syrup to the proper temperature and added it at the proper time. If you feel your meringue at this point, or you can visibly see that it's lumpy, you have sugar crystals in their little bits of sugar that almost like candy. Then you'll want to start over because there's no way to get out at this point. You want this to be a really nice smooth Moran. Now, as I've been talking, my meringue has cooled down to room temperature. So at this point, I want to add in my butter. I'm going to put them at mixer back on to medium low speed, have softened butter here, three sticks. You wanna make sure that these are soft to the touch. These have been sitting out for a little while. They don't need. They shouldn't be melty in any way, shape or form. And here's why. You want this to be completely cool, because if you have really soft room temperature, butter and this meringue is it all warm, it's going to start to melt your butter and then it's going to deflate your meringue, and this is going to be a puddle e mess. We don't want that now. If you're butters a little bit too cold, and it's not completely incorporating into the meringue and it looks kind of lumpy and curdled, don't worry. Just keep whipping it. It may take a few more minutes to whip it, but then, as the whip warms up the butter and it softens, it will combine into the meringue so melted butter will ruin your buttercream. But too cold or too firm a butter won't just let it continue to whip under this on to medium low and add in a stick at a time. Once my butters and there I'm gonna stop the mixer and just get all this last little bit of meringue that stuck up on the side of the bowl. Get that knocked down into the buttercream. And I know, too, that I poured my sugar syrup correctly because I don't have any sticking to the side of the bowl. You really want to make sure that you get it between the bowl and the whisk so it doesn't spray it everywhere, and it also doesn't get stuck on the side and cool two months before it gets incorporated. Something like this go on medium speed until it's a nice, fluffy Italian meringue buttercream. Now I'm just going Teoh, let this wit on medium high speed for about a minute just to fully incorporated at a little bit extra Aaron and create the luxurious Italian buttercream there. It ISS you can add your flavoring. At this point, I'd like to add just toe. A touch of salt is definitely not a sweet as an American buttercream, so you don't need as much fault on whatever flavoring you're going to use. I just have some clear vanilla extract about you spend in half right in there with it back up there. This this is really stable so you can add liquors, melted chocolate, all kinds of flavorings to this and it won't knock it down or deflate it. But there you have it. Italian meringue buttercream. 16. Chocolate Buttercream Method: So if you want to add actual chocolate to any of your butter creams, the key is to completely melted. Here, I just melted it in a large mugged. This is about half of a 3.7 ounce chocolate bar dark chocolate, and I completely melted it in 12th increments. 10 seconds in the microwave. Stir it another 10 seconds until it was completely melted. You don't ever wanna overheat your chocolate because it'll get brittle and you won't be able to use it. So take it slow when you're melting chocolate. Now, I just want to let this sit on cool down. I don't want it to firm up, so I'm gonna make sure that my besides in my bowl or scrape down really well because I don't want that chocolate to harden. I want it all to be kind of sitting in the bottom altogether, but I'm gonna let that cool but not harden. The reason is because you don't want to obviously melt the butter in your butter cream, and also I typically go with about roughly four ounces to two cups of butter cream. No, adding chocolate is always a personal preference, so if you like more chocolate at more. We want less at less. But if you really want to be easy, I just had to go with 1.5 cups of butter cream to one chocolate bar. And I know that three cups of buttercream will safely frost an eight inch double layer cake . So to chocolate bars. Adam good to go. So I feel like this come to room temperature and then added into the buttercream so my traffic has cooled. It's a little bit thicker, but it's still liquid, and I can tell just by touching it. And it's not hot. It's not actually even warm. So this is perfect. It's just been about six or seven minutes. But this is also a really small amount of chocolate. Once you have your chocolate ready to go, depending on how much butter cream you're gonna have an end. You know, choose the appropriate size bowl for this. I'm just going to put some of my buttercream in there just because I have half a chocolate bar. I'm only putting about our cup of butter cream in, and then I'm just gonna fold it in. You could see that Italian meringue buttercream is really stable. This isn't deflating it or anything like that. It's still really nice and fluffy and silky. So just get the melted chocolate combined really well in there. And that's it. Chocolate, Italian meringue buttercream. So simple. 17. Thank you!: thanks so much for taking the course. I hope you enjoyed it. And I can't wait to see your success in frosting at Hope. Try out the project and share photos on the platform. I love to see everything that you're working on, the whole process as well as final products. If you want to learn about cake baking as well, I have great courses on that and I'll share links to those. You can ask me any questions if I left something out or wasn't too clear on something. Please feel for you to ask. I'm always happy to answer questions. If you want to stay up to date on what I'm working on, you can follow me on social media. I'm on Facebook, Twitter and instagram. Just look for cake. Engage. I'm so happy you took this course on. If you fat was fantastic, please leave a review that way. Other students know whether or not to enroll in the course, and it helps me determine whether or not I need to make the course better or add more information. Thanks so much, and I hope to see you in another course