Mike.. I wasn't implying you were worried about cooking the whites, but worried that the sugar wouldn't dissolve without cooking. You don't have to cook meringue (be it directly over heat or indirectly by pouring hot sugar syrup over it) for it to work and have the sugar be dissolved was all I was trying to say. 
Jules.. while many would share openly there are plenty out there who won't. Many "trade secrets" are hoarded.. and key ingredients left out of recipes. On the same note though just because you (the collective you) have Collette's recipes doesn't mean people are going to start flocking to you rather than her.. so I don't see the point of being scared to share it all.
I have always read that French BC is yolk or whole egg based and the meringue based BC's were different.. interesting.
I'm glad that the vanilla made it better for you. It's amazing what a little flavoring can do.
It is definitely a SMBC..
Sorry to say but it is definitely NOT a SMBC. A swiss meringue, by definition, is cooked over a bain marie. If Duff skip[s the cooking, then he is making a french meringue buttercream (which I've never actually head of, but that's what uncooked egg whites & sugar + butter would be).
And you are definitely right that a true french buttercream would have yolks and/or whole eggs (the recipe I am most familiar with uses both) and is made with the same technique as an Italian meringue where the soft ball sugar is added to the whipping eggs/yolks (pate a bomb) and then adding the butter as in a meringue buttercream. Pate a bomb is also a common base for many french mousse recipes.
SHogg -
I don't know if you've ever seen an episode where they do this, but he does have a huge, walk-in refrigerator that they use to store the cakes in. I don't know if he stores cakes with fondant on them, but one of the huge sheet cakes he recently did went in and out of that fridge between night and day. I can remember them hauling it out of the fridge to finish it.
I won't say they do that with all their cakes, but there were a few in the background behind them when they brought that one out.
Theresa
Mike.. the reason you cook the whites when you make a meringue is to de-nature the protiens to make it go faster. Some say that it makes it more stable as well. If you don't cook it, it will still beat up just fine.. it will just take a bit longer. There is water in the whites (they are 90% water) and that will dissolve the sugar with no problems.
I wasn't worried about cooking the whites. It was the sugar I had the issue with. The whites will beat up fine without cooking them. The sugar makes them stable. I just would take the chance that the sugar doesn't dissolve.
Mike
SMBC- Swiss Meringue Buttercream- A swiss meringue is one in which the sugar and whites are combined and then heated both to dissolve the sugar AND to allow the whites to obtain full volume. The hot mixture expands to fullest volume.
Adding butter makes it a buttercream.
IMBC- Italian Meringue buttercream- An italian meringue is one in which the sugar is cooked first and poured over frothy whites and whipped until cool.
Again adding butter makes it a buttercream.
French meringue is whipped whites to which sugar is slowly added. It is commonly found on top of lemon meringue pie and is almost always cooked in some way after preparation.
Technically, all of these buttercreams are French. If you tell me you made "French buttercream" I'd ask you which one? LOL The point is Swiss Meringue and Italian Meringue exist as separate preparations.
Calling a buttercream made with yolks or whole eggs "French" is a bit of a misnomer. Pour boiling sugar syrup over yolks or whole eggs and you get "pate a bombe". It's the base for a gajillion different preparations; adding butter results in yet another type of buttercream.
French BC is egg yolks. That is unless your French then they are all French, because the french invented all pastry, and pastry items LOLOL
Mike
Well, I tasted the cake with strawberry preserve and duffs buttercream (french, swiss, or pennsylvanian) as a filling and covered with duffs icing flavored with vanilla. It was pretty good. I needed to do another layer of the filling, but it was pretty good. It is just that consistency that is driving me nuts. Would/have you covered a cake with that icing with fondant? It seems like a very fancy icing to me. But, it was only 2 or so years ago that I was using the strictly crisco crappy icing you learn in the wilton classes. I didn't know there were other things out there.
If you are going to cover it in fondant.. pop it in the fridge until it gets hard and then cover it. Let it come to room temp again and you can further smooth it if needed, but if you smooth it well you don't have to. SMBC is all I use.. it works very well.
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%