Well, after eating several french macarons and marveling over how delicious this buttercream is, I felt that I should give it another go in trying to make some myself.
This time, I was going to do research instead of blindly following a recipe. I found that research helped A LOT. Some recipes looked complicated, while others looked very simple. I decided to go with a recipe provided by Three Little BlackBirds blog.
**Update**
Do yourself a favor and splurge on quality butter/ingredients (Land O' Lakes is a good one). Avoid using Great Value or knock off brands - I used GV unsalted butter and my poor buttercream had a weird filmy aftertaste.
Also, make sure your egg whites smell odorless before you use them. If they smell like eggs, it will probably taste like eggs ... yep, I ruined another batch by ignoring my senses.
What I liked about this recipe and blog, was the troubleshooting tips. The best tip I read was on prepping your cooking tools by wiping them down with lemon juice. Lemon juice cuts through any residual grease or oils that are in your bowls, whisks, or mixer attachments. Any amount of grease will surely cause your egg whites to not whip up. Who knew?!
The second tip I loved was using pasteurized egg whites, or liquid egg whites. This made my life so much easier than having to separate several egg whites and not using the yolk right away. No waste, and no more worrying about getting eggshells in anything!
Third, is my own tip, which is to make sure you have a baking or food scale. Getting the measurements down to the grams and ounces make all the difference than having to mess around with conversions.
When mixing the buttercream, TLB's blog mentioned using a stand mixer and paddle attachment, but if you have a powerful hand mixer like my Cuisinart, it works just as well, you are just working out your arms a little more, which is a bonus, because, who doesn't want toned arms?
The only adaptation I would make for this buttercream is adding some more vanilla for my taste, otherwise it came out perfect, TWICE!
I used the Swiss meringue buttercream to frost cupcakes for a middle school girl's lacrosse party to celebrate their season. I made chocolate and vanilla. Coloring the buttercream and decorating was so much fun! I made lacrosse stick toppers out of royal icing, which was made of egg whites, powdered sugar, and vanilla. The icing was piped onto wax paper and I let it dry overnight.
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| All cupcake decorating and box supplies were purchased from Micheals. I used a jumbo open star tip to pipe the buttercream. |
The buttercream tasted smooth, fluffy, and sweet....but not too sweet! This weekend I scored some Fluer de Sel at ROSS, so I will be using my leftover buttercream to make a salted caramel version sometime this week.
I hope you have the same success as I have had with the TLB buttercream recipe!
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