Good Morning,
I have tried and used many, many buttercream recipes over the years. For now I use a butter shortening split.
I am still trying to develope my favorite for my store (while I use my stand bys). The large majority of taste testers and customers prefer real butter. Though it is a toss up between all butter "American" style and all butter meringue style, (reagrdless of method) Swiss or Italian.
My only problen with offering all butter icing is that I feel neither offer stability. I have been going crazy trying to solve this problem. CAN it be done?? Can you stabilize with gelatin? Or maybe cornstarch? How in the world do people offer a wedding or party cakes that sit in a warm room or outside using all butter recipes without disaster? Does everyone end up using some shortening?
I am not sure what I have against shortening...but I do. I would love to rid myself of it, especially hi ratio! If anyone has any suggestions or has had success with a certain recipe, I would love to hear from you with suggestions or even recipes to try.
Thanks in advance for any help offered!
Suzi
There's nothing you can do to change the softening point--room temp., so about 70F--or the melting point (about 90F) of butter.
As butter softens, the oils come to the surface and it separates, and nothing but cooling it will stop that.
I can't imagine wanting, or liking, an icing that has had copious amounts of gelatin or cornstarch added to it to try to change this process.........
That said, I'd guess that adding pure trans fats, most likely palm oil, would shore it up, but that's expensive, time consuming, and would require a lot of experimentation.
So, we come to adding in an already made product that will accomplish the desired result of an icing that is more stable in warmer temps.....high ratio shortening.
I've read several entries where people who work mainly with meringue buttercreams adding in high ratio to stabilize the icing in warmer settings.
Rae
I've read several entries where people who work mainly with meringue buttercreams adding in high ratio to stabilize the icing in warmer settings.
I haven't heard of doing this. If anyone reading this does it, could you please give details? At what point do you add the shortening? Do you replace some of the butter or add in addition to the butter? How much do you add....say....in proportion to butter? Thanks!
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2011/01/04/the-beautiful-side-of-baking-blissful-buttercream/
Go down the page to "Secrets and Confessions" and there's some info there.
Rae
This blog has some great info and a recipe using some shortening:
http://judyscakes.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-swiss-meringue-buttercream.html
Rae
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