Hi, I've gotten into making meringue buttercreams (Swiss, Italian, French) and I love the taste and mouth-feel of them, but my family sometimes complains about the amount of butter in them and hesitates to eat it.  

So I've been wondering if there's a way to lighten these up?  Specifically I was thinking about adding some whipped heavy cream to add air/volume with fewer (though not technically "light") ingredients.  Has anyone ever made a meringue buttercream and then mixed in bit of whipped cream to stretch the volume of the final product?  If so, what recipe/ratios did you use and how did it turn out?

Thanks!

No.

Simply put in less butter.  When the recipe calls for 6 sticks of butter I put in 3 or 4 sticks.

I use Beyond Buttercream`s SMBC recipe, I have doubled recipe for meringue ( I do it by weight), and left same amount of butter ( 1 lb.).

The problem with people/customers is that they don`t want any butter in cake or icing or filling.

I had a cake order 2 month ago. When I asked what kind of icing they want, she said please, no butter in icing, so I used non dairy whip topping. 

I really like SMBC under fondant. Ice the cake with 1/4" thick SMBC make it straight and leveled, build corners ( if square), refrigerate, cover with 1/8" thick fondant!

Ingredients, and good quality fresh ingredients make such a difference in home cooking.

cslas,  you'll find a wonderful flavor improvement if you make a simple change in the type of butter that you use to make your icing recipe.   use Unsalted sweet creamery butter.

It tastes soooo much better in icing than Salted butter.  Huge difference, that I actually discovered by accident when I ran out of salted butter one day.  I simply did not believe that there was a difference and refused to bother trying it.    Now I'm very happy that I did.