I've been trying to make a buttercream completely made out of honey. I found a recipe that I love and it taste great, but I don't know if Italian buttercream are suppose to be fluffy or not. I've never made a frosting with any type of sugar.

Original Recipe:

1 1/3 cups plus 1 TBSP sugar, divided

1/2 cup water

4 large egg whites

1/4 TSP salt

1 1/2 cups salted butter

2 TSP vanilla extract.

All I did was change the sugar to 1 cup and 1 TBSP honey and took out the water. Basically heat honey to 240° F, whip egg whites still soft peaks. Add all honey while beating egg whites and keep beating for 10 minutes then adding 1 TBSP of butter at a time when the mixture is cool.

I may just have a crappy piping bag and tip (dollar store bought....sigh)

I regularly make IMBC but have never made it with honey.  Basically any meringue based buttercream (which is what IMBC is) starts with making a meringue.  Maybe if you think about it slightly differently you might have a better chance of success.

I have never tried this but I would do some googling, there are honey meringue recipes out there, try perfecting your honey meringue first then take the next step of adding butter to make a buttercream.  You don't say what is wrong with your buttercream but I can pipe IMBC with any piping tip no matter how cheap it is, so long as the texture of the buttercream is correct.

the texture is smooth and kinda like velvet, but I guess when I pipe, I feel like there's a lack in volume. Unless there's not suppose to be much volume.

Meringue buttercreams are smooth and velvety, if you have only used buttercreams or frostings made with icing sugar/powdered sugar it may feel different to what you are used to.  Does it hold it's shape when you pipe it?

[postimage id="3237" thumb="900"]I only have one type of piping tip and with that it looks like it holds it shape. It's looks like this but more smooth not broken. I didn't have a picture of my own so I had to try and find one that was similar.