I’m a little obsessed with this recipe. It’s not something you’re going to make when the chips are down and you need something to take to a potluck (although everyone nowadays just stops by the grocery store and buys something, alas). I like it because it’s so fluffy and smooth and because it tastes much more of butter than of sugar. I will probably never make a wedding cake, but if I did I’d use this recipe. Part of its charm for me is simply being able to conquer it. Once you’ve made it a few times and honed your technique, it really isn’t all that hard. There are many varieties of this recipe, the main ones (if I’m understanding the terminology correctly) being Swiss and Italian. I don’t like the idea of the Swiss version (if that’s what it is), because the egg whites don’t really get cooked, and I don’t think you could make it with egg white powder, which is what I use. So I believe this is Italian buttercream. (There’s also French buttercream, which is made with egg yolks. The yolks aren’t really cooked, and I think powdered egg yolks would be pretty bad. I did see Martha Stewart make a wedding cake and use French buttercream for the frosting on the old “Baking with Julia” TV show, but I’d never try it. It was absolutely beautiful, though. And I just went online to check on whether or not I’ve covered all the buttercream bases and found out that there’s also flour buttercream and German buttercream, which I’m not going to go into. However, I was pleased to see that for the most part Italian buttercream is preferred as it’s the most stable and you do cook the egg whites.)
One thing you do need to realize is that you can’t really rescue this stuff if you make a mistake. The plain old American buttercream made with powdered sugar, butter and milk can always be tweaked with more powdered sugar or more milk, but there’s no easy fix for ruined buttercream. If you don’t get the sugar syrup to the right temp before mixing it in the with egg whites it won’t set properly, with the most common mistake being that you don’t get the syrup hot enough. (Although the first time I made this I got the syrup too hot, which resulted in a rather hardened frosting which was perfectly edible but not exactly what you’d call fluffy.) The other common mistake is not getting the meringue cool enough before mixing in the butter/shortening mixture, and if that happens you’re done. You’ll have a gloppy mess, because the fats will melt and collapse the meringue. You could sort of pour it on top of something, I guess, but it won’t really set. So don’t do that. I give detailed instructions below about how to make sure you’ve gotten the meringue cool enough. I’ve made chocolate, lemon and vanilla buttercream. The next time I make my world-famous Chocolate Root-Beer Cupcakes I’m going to make root-beer buttercream. It will be so absolutely awesome that I won’t be able to stand it.
I got the original recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole-Grain Baking Cookbook but added a few tweaks of my own. If you go online you’ll find about a million versions of this recipe. The KAF one has you use some corn syrup, which not everyone does, and also suggests using part shortening. See my notes about that ingredient at the end of the recipe, and also my recommendation for using powdered egg whites.
Okay, here goes:
Classic Italian Buttercream with Variations
This recipe is from the wonderful, wonderful King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook. I have modified three ingredients and added some commentary; this is a pretty standard recipe. It will make plenty of frosting for 48 cupcakes.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons+ 2 teaspoons dried egg whites whisked into ½ cup warm water I use Deb El brand, found in most grocery stores. If you use fresh egg whites you'll need 3-4 whites, enough to equal ½ cup. The dried egg whites are kind of expensive, but you don't have to worry about whether or not they'll get hot enough to kill salmonella, and you don't have to use up the yolks. The dried ones last for years on the shelf. The KAF recipe calls for meringue powder as a fresh egg white substitute, but I found the results with that ingredient to be very disappointing, and you have to buy it online or at a cake decorating store. I think they got mixed up on this, as meringue powder has sugar and flavoring already in it, and that's not what you want.
- ¼ cup light corn syrup
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup water
- ½ tsp. cream of tartar if using fresh egg whites
- Pinch salt if using salted butter; ¼ tsp. If using unsalted
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter at cool room temperature
- ½ cup vegetable shortening I use the non-hydrogenated Spectrum brand
- 2 tsp. . vanilla
- 1/2 tsp . almond extract (optional)
Instructions
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Place the egg whites or the water and powdered whites in the bowl of your standing mixer. Place the corn syrup, sugar and water in a medium saucepan, stir until sugar dissolves, cover the pan and bring to a boil. Boil for 3 minutes, then uncover and cook to 245 degrees, which is right between soft-ball and hard-ball stages. There is some variation in recipes as to what temp the sugar syrup should be; 245 seems like a good compromise. A candy or instant-read thermometer is pretty vital for this; I have a high-end digital instant-read thermometer and use it all the time--it was a good investment.
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While your syrup is cooking, begin to beat the egg whites on low speed. When they are foamy add the cream of tartar (for fresh whites) and salt. Gradually increase the speed and continue beating until soft peaks form. Then, slowly and CAREFULLY, pour the hot syrup directly into the middle of the whites. This isn't the way the recipe says to do it, but in my experience it works well as long as you have a thin enough stream of the syrup. Continue to beat for 20 minutes, or until the meringue is very thick and fluffy. It will almost certainly still be hot at this point. Remove the bowl from the mixer and place in a larger bowl of ice and water and let sit until completely cool, using a spatula to stir it up from the bottom a couple of times. Check the temp with your trusty instant-read thermometer and get it down to 70 degrees before proceeding. DON'T TRY TO HURRY THIS STEP! If you try to add the butter before the meringue is completely cool the butter will melt and you'll have a mess, as I said above, and you won't be able to rescue it.
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Once the meringue is cool, start adding the butter and shortening bit by bit. It's worth the effort and an extra dirty bowl to beat the butter and shortening together before adding it to the meringue. Classic recipes for any kind of buttercream are made with all butter, but the small amount of vegetable shortening makes the buttercream more stable at warmer temperatures. As I said in the ingredients list above, I use Spectrum organic shortening, but, again, for this small amount Crisco probably wouldn't kill you. Believe me, this stuff tastes very buttery, even with the shortening added.
Recipe Notes
One big drawback of this recipe is that you really shouldn't make it ahead of time, although you can certainly make it and then frost the items ahead of time. But to make the buttercream and then refrigerate it separately and then bring it back to room temp, beating all the while, is kind of a process. Once your items are frosted, though, they can stay at cool room temperature overnight. I did some looking online and everyone seems to agree that frosted items don't have to be refrigerated unless it's going to be over two or three days--and why on earth would you do that?
If you make this with powdered egg whites then you can be completely sure that there's no salmonella involved. I'd never make this with fresh whites, myself, but I'm sure purists would faint dead away. I get absolutely great results with the powdered whites and the small amount of shortening. And I'm pretty much of a purist myself!
Here are a couple of variations to try, with more on the way:
Lemon:
Most recipes just tell you to beat in some lemon juice and zest at the end, but when I've done that I've felt that the texture of the frosting was compromised. So I suggest replacing half of the water in the sugar syrup with lemon juice (1/3 cup = 5 tablespoons + 1 tsp, or 16 tsp., so use 2 tablespoons + 2 tsp. water and 2 tablespoons + 2 tsp. lemon juice) and then beating in about 1/8 tsp. lemon oil with your butter/shortening mixture. The lemon oil won't affect the texture, and if it's still not lemony enough you can add more, but do so SPARINGLY, drop by drop. Citrus oils are EXTREMELY strong.
Chocolate:
Melt 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate and COOL. Beat in with your butter/shortening mixture so that you basically have chocolate butter, then beat that into the meringue.
I have some other variations I want to try and will add them here as I do so.
