Vanilla Swiss Buttercream

Size: approx. 800g

Not overly sweet, this meringue based buttercream is smooth and easy to use on cakes, cupcakes or to eat with a spoon (we don’t judge!). The buttercream takes flavours really well see below for instructions and suggestions on how to best flavour it and prep it for use. 

Ingredients: Butter, caster sugar, egg whites, vanilla bean paste, salt

Instructions+Notes

• Will freeze beautifully, approx.. 6 months
• To thaw, leave in fridge 24 hours, then on counter until room temp
• Do not whip cold buttercream, it will break (see below if this happens)
• You can microwave it, in short 10 second-ish bursts, at a lower power to help bring it to room temperature
• Beat with paddle attachment, preferred: electric mixer, but by hand is good exercise ;) just use a spatula or spoon, not a whisk
• It is ready to use when it is nice and smooth and fluffy looking – be patient, it’s totally worth waiting and is so much easier to work with when it’s smooth and fluffy
• What if:
  • It curdles?
    • Keep whipping. It just means it was too cold.  If you have a torch, you can use that on the heat safe bowl, gently!, as it’s whipping.  It will eventually come back to together, just be patient
  • It melted a bit too much?
    • Same as above, just whip it all in together, provided the entire container didn’t completely melt.
    • If it just won’t come back together, or too much melted, you can add some room temp butter, just a little at a time and keep whipping until it comes together, then taste it. If you added enough butter to affect the taste a great deal, you can add a little icing sugar to offset the flavour, just know that this will affect your texture some.  Alternatively you can add in a different sweetening agent – maple syrup, honey, agave, jam, melted chocolate …  Just be aware of how it will affect the flavour and add it in a little at a time.
  • I want to flavour it?
    • Swiss meringue flavours beautifully! You can add just about anything to it, you just need to be aware of how much liquid and fat you are adding in.  Melted Chocolate, Nutella, jam, fruit puree, curd, freeze dried fruit, espresso, caramel, all of these are great for adding flavour.  Some things to note;
      • Add it in a little at a time while it’s mixing and keep looking for that smooth fluffy texture
      • High fat items will slowly break down the buttercream so you want to mix them in and use that day – such as peanut butter.
      • To get an intense chocolate flavour, add both melted chocolate and a little cocoa powder