I am a newbie and I need the wisdom of the wonderful cake experts on CC.  Swiss buttercream is my love, my passion.  I have converted almost everyone to whom I have introduced this wonderful frosting too.  My problem now is that sometimes I need this to be white.  I have tried  adding white coloring and it did not help much. I was hesitant to add too much coloring because I did not want to spoil the taste or consistency.  Any advice? I have tried googling this and have not come up with anything concrete.

I have seen pictures on here with very white looking SMBC. I don;t know if it was mostly the lighting in the pictures.  Advice please.  Thanks.

I also love SMBC!

However, I think it's impossible to get SMBC white.  It's the nature of the beast, because the main ingredient is butter.  There are different shades of butter available, but butter, being what it is, isn't white, so neither will your icing be, unfortunately.  It's always going to be ecru at best.  :-)

Apparently there are ways of whitening it somewhat, by using organic uncoloured butter (not sure where to buy this...health food store?), or substituting shortening for some of the butter (but wouldn't that change the wonderful flavour of SMBC?), or adding whitening (Wilton White doesn't work...I've tried it).  I also have used clear "vanilla", but I didn't care for the difference in taste (plus it really didn't help a whole lot) so I went back to pure vanilla.  I've tried mixing it longer to see if it would make a difference (mixing it "whiter"), but it didn't make a huge difference.

Unless someone else has other suggestions, you (and I) may have to resort to using ABC or fondant to obtain that white finish.  :-)

Thank you Kathleen.  I will definitely try the organic butter and see how that works. I know I will never achieve a pure white but was hoping for something "almost" white so I wouldn't lose that SMBC decadence .  So like you said it will be ABC or fondant.

Have a great day!

If you add a few small dots of violet gel/paste color, it will greatly diminish the yellowness.  It will definitely pass for white, unless you hold it up to a pure white piece of paper or cloth--because those are actually a "blue-white" and you can't really get that when you start with a yellow base.

Some people also swap out some of the butter for hi ratio shortening and find that it helps a lot without compromising taste or texture.

I get mine quite white when I need to. I will cut back a bit on the butter, and definitely not add vanilla. The only time I do this is when it's a butter cream only cake, and they definitely ask for white as possible. I will make that batch last, and use it to ice the last outer layer only. (Meaning-there is a healthy layer of flavored bc underneath the final top coat)

I've done the violet thing, and it really ended up a grey colour, more than white. I wouldn't use that strategy if you're looking for a really white icing.

Thank you all for your responses.  My "lab" will be going full blast this weekend.  Let's see what works for me.

The whitest you can achieve with-out food coloring is to whip it like you'd never believe. I once worked at a French bakery for a day and they whipped theirs for almost an entire hour (maybe even longer). I couldn't believe it, I thought it would be a nightmare, just full of air bubbles.........but darn it, it was very white and very smooth. I recall them making a big deal about having the butter already extremely soft and whipped before combining with the meringue.

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Yes, you really do need a good stand mixer. It's a necessity.