I have always used buttercream made from icing sugar and butter (generally made with about twice as much icing sugar to butter, vanilla or cocoa depending on flavour required with a bit of milk to loosen if necessary - is that american buttercream?) but have seen lots of references on here to other types of buttercream like IMBC, SMBC etc.  I don't have a thermometer so have decided to avoid IMBC for now as i have read that the sugar syrup temperature is fairly critical but thought I'd give SMBC a go as i'm intrigued to see what it tastes like being made with granulated sugar rather than icing sugar.  I have a question though.  Do these other types of buttercream have the same versatility as the buttercream I currently use which I spread in the middle of cakes, use for crumb coating, piping on cupcakes etc and have just started trying to pipe individual roses with? Do they all basically do exactly the same things but just taste different?

Many thanks,  Helen 

no not really each one has a slightly different best feature to it -- and then there are variations to each one that enable it to....well for example some peeps add powdered sugar to swiss and it will probably pipe flowers much better than without -- but typically i don't pipe roses with swiss --

so you have every right to be confused -- and the best way to get a grip on it is to either drop by and we can make them all :) or just hunker down and across time make each one successfully so you can see for yourself --

the meringue icings are fluffier of course and abc gets a bum rap if it's not made correctly with butter and cream and good things -- the cooked flour icing is quite easy to smoothy smooth on a cake -- each one has it's strength kwim 

just a matter of developing your repertoire -- best to you

I absolutely love SMBC. So rich, fluffy and smooth. But you need a thermometer for that one too. the egg/sugar needs to be cooked to 140-145 to kill the bacteria. But on the good side, I used a regular thermometer that you can get at any store, until i could get a candy thermometer. They are fairly inexpensive around $3 here.