Swiss Buttercream

Basic, Swiss buttercream—fast and simpler. It's from my daughter, Andrea. The measurements on the right are what I use more often. It's more or less a half recipe (1lb butter) and just the right amount for a store-bought cake mix even when done in three cake pans (instead of the usual 2).

However, for "Texas" sheet pan applications (still just a single, store-bought cake mix, you'll need to double the recipe on the right. It depends on how much frosting you want to present. For two sheet pans, it's very thin.

If I were to explain Swiss buttercream, I'd say it's a meringue-based buttercream.

Ingredients

(the big and metric recipe) 200 g egg whites, room temperature 300 g sugar — trace amount of vanilla 1000 g good-quality, unsalted butter, room temperature 200 g slightly melted chocolate with 4 tbsp butter (optional)

(the one-cakemix recipe) 3 egg whites, room temperature 150 g sugar — trace amount of vanilla 1 lb unsalted butter, room temperature 5 oz slightly melted chocolate with 2 tbsp butter (optional)

0. Precut the butter out of the refrigerator using a wire, butter slicer. Do this once, tip the butter up on its end and cut twice at 90° angles to get myriad little cubes. Then let the butter reach room temperature.

1. If using chocolate, heat it with 2 tbsp and butter over a bain-marie until melted. Set aside in a warm place.

2. Heat sugar, vanilla and egg whites over bain-marie until very hot to the touch (about 140°F). Whisk vigorously to avoid cooking the egg.

3. Whip until room temperature. I put it into the bowl of my KitchenAid® with its whisk, turn it on full, then rub the outside (bottom, especially) of the bowl with handfuls of ice cubes to cool it down.

4. Change from whisk to paddle. Slowly add the butter until smooth. If too cold, the buttercream will be grainy. This is overcome a) by room temperature butter and b) beating longer.

5. Add chocolate now if choosing that option.

Storing buttercream

Store in refrigerator tight against the depredations of oxygen. It will last even longer in freezer, up to a couple of months. It will need to come up to room temperature to be spreadable.

Using cream cheese

This complicates the recipe. If you put the cream cheese in with the butter, you'll surely get a grainy mess. The secret is to incorporate cream cheese after the buttercream is made and only once the cream cheese has sat on the counter (outside the refrigerator) until it reaches the same temperature as the buttercream.

My daugher recommends:

1. Make the buttercream, then refrigerate it while you perform the next steps.
2. Whip the cream cheese separately and incorporate some small amount of buttercream to lighten (temper) it.
3. Incorporate the rest of the buttercream, a bit at a time, beating at low-to-medium speed.

Saving a buttercream

A seasoned chef would know much more. However, here are some experiences I have lived through and what I did to save the buttercream.

1. Disaster: Got egg yolk in the egg whites. Solution: throw it out and start over; there is nothing that can be done except to throw the egg whites and yolk into a bowl to use for breakfast tomorrow.
   

   Never expect egg white to beat into foam if there is the least little bit of fat present.

   Egg science

   Egg white is about 90% water plus 10% egg protein. The reason you can make foam for meringue or other purposes is because the proteins, really amino acids, will link up, stick together and tend to form at the microlevel on the outside around trapping air and water. You can add more acid, the form of cream of tartar, to egg whites to enhance this natural reaction.

   When you contaminate the emulsion with a fat, such as a bit of egg yolk, or trace amounts of residual fat left over from something else you've used the bowl for (why you should never make meringue in a bowl that's plastic or another, porous material like wood), the fat defeats the structural mechanics of protein encapsulating air and water in the foam.

2. Disaster: Put vanilla or accidentally spilled a few drops of water or alcohol (rum, etc.) into the melted chocolate. Solution: throw it out and start over; there is nothing that can be done to save the chocolate.
   

   Do not try to use the chocolate in the buttercream. If you add butter and cream to it, you may succeed in reliquifying it to make a chocolate sauce.

   Chocolate science

   Chocolate appears greasy to us, but at the micro level, it's just a powder, like flour. Just as letting a few drops of water into flour will ruin it by turning it into mud—it must be something you really want to do on the way to where you're going with the flour, chocolate cannot endure this treatment and making a dough is absolutely not something you want to do on the way to buttercream.

3. Disaster: The white didn't beat into foam or accidentally got some water into them when trying to cool them. Now the butter is grainy. Solution: See below.

4. Disaster: The butter is grainy and destroys the smooth buttercream texture hoped for. This is a frequent occurrence except when conditions in the kitchen are perfect which they never are (temperature of butter, temperature of bowl, temperature of chocolate or cream cheese, ambient kitchen temperature).
   

   The real solution is to beat more, but the temperature of everything (the butter, the egg whites, the bowl, the air around you) may not cooperate or is too hard (too late) to control.

   Another solution is to put the bowl into the refrigerator for half an hour and beat again. It especially happens when the egg whites didn't beat into foam well.

   Often, if you haven't added chocolate or cream cheese (that has warmed to room temperature and been prebeaten) yet, do that and it will probably serve to melt/soften the butter pieces, then beat the whole as fast and hard as you can. Try refrigerating it and beating again.