How To Make Buttercream Icing | Global Sugar Art

[Music] hi I'm Chef Alan Tetro with global sugar art welcome to part two of Back to Basics in the first part I showed you how to make a cake from scratch and also how to make a cake from a cake mix in today's lessons I'm going to be going over icings specifically a Swiss buttercream and an American buttercream or the the the typical buttercream that you will find from bakeries and cake decorators in the United States I just want to mention Italian buttercream I'm going to devote an entire YouTube video later on to just Italian buttercream because it's a little more complicated and it's a longer lesson and there's a lot of things that can go wrong in making the icing and I'd like to spend the proper amount of time to teach you how to make a good Italian buttercream the Swiss buttercream I'm making today is a modified recipe that allows you to use the icing when you're dealing with warmer temperatures outside so it it's it's a more stable icing and it's also better for decorating it's also a very delicious icing so just basically an Italian buttercream is a mering that is made with egg whites and sugar and then you heat sugar and water to a soft candy stage 240° and then you pour that into the egg whites so you have a cooked mering then you add butter to it a Swiss mering you start with fresh egg whites and sugar and you heat them to 140 or 160° and then you whip it and then you fold in or whip in the butter we're using a modified recipe today that I think you're going to enjoy you're going to find a lot easier and you can use both fresh egg whites or powdered egg whites so let's get started okay let's get going with the Swiss buttercream to begin with we'll go over the ingredients we're going to start with one cup of fresh egg whites now I'm going to be using the American Standard uh for measurements but we will post the metric uh measurements as well on the bottom of the YouTube and on our website so one cup of fresh egg whites and we're going to add 2 cups of granulated sugar if you can get super fine sugar that works even better but it doesn't have to be super fine sugar we're going to put both of those in a bowl the same bowl that you're going to mix this with and I'm going to add 2 tpoon of vanilla now there is a safety factor with egg whites uh everyone knows that they they can um uh breed bacteria that can make you sick so people are very conscious about using egg whites and icings now this becomes a safe icing when you heat this up to 140 to 160° 160° is better at that point you're pasteurizing the egg whites while I mention that I should tell you that you can't use the egg whites that you purchase in the grocery store in a quart container that are pre- pasteurized they will not whip up they're great for cooking but not for making icing so I'm just going to stir this together and then I have a hot water bath I have about an inch of water in here and I've got it on a medium high heat I'm going to place the right on that pan and I'm just going to gently stir this this could take 5 10 or 15 minutes depending on how hot that water is you don't want the water boiling because steam is much hotter than boiling water and if you don't want scrambled eggs make sure you don't boil your water so just keep it hot make sure there's a little bit of steam coming off the top but not a hard boil I have ready an instant reading thermometer and I'm going to Heat this mixture until it reaches about 160° go up to at least 140 while I'm doing this I want to talk about a substitution that I've used for years uh in bakeries that I've worked at and I still use it at home all the time instead of fresh egg whites for this recipe I would use 4 tablespoons of powdered egg whites and I would mix that with 3/4 of a cup of warm water blend the two two together in a bowl and let them sit for about 5 minutes for the egg whites to absorb the water then add your sugar and your vanilla and go through the same process put it on uh a water bath and just gently mix this until it reaches about 120° you don't have to worry about pasteurizing that mixture what you're trying to do there is melt the sugar the whole idea of heating this up is to make the egg white safe and to melt the sugar if you don't melt the sugar you're going to have a grainy Icing at the end so this is the a very important part of the mix so I'm just going to keep mixing this this will take about another 5 minutes maybe 10 minutes and we'll be back as soon as this is ready to show you how to continue making the Swiss buttercream okay we're back the mixture is up to 160° and you can see the consistency it's it's very liquid at this point so I'm going to turn my my burner off and we're going to put this on the mixer with a whip and we're going to whip this until it reaches stiff peaks and it cools down it's really important that you whip this long enough so that it does cool down you don't want to ever add butter to a hot mering mixture so we'll get this going this will probably take about 5 minutes to whip and we're going to put this right up at high speed [Music] okay we're back my mering is almost ready and I just wanted to show you one quick tip when I first put this bowl on here the bowl was really quite warm and I don't want to wait all day for this to cool down to put my butter in so I've taken a flexible ice pack you can buy these in medical stores or you can buy them for shipping containers and um it works perfect just put that on the bottom of the bowl I'm going to turn the mixer on for two reasons so you can see the consistency of the mar rang from from the camera and to see how this is cooled down so that's a nice thick mering at this point I'm going to take this off so you can see how heavy that is and that's exactly what that should look like and it's actually cooled down enough now that I can put the butter in and I didn't have to wait a long time because I used the ice pack you don't have to use it but it just makes your job a little easier okay now we're ready to start putting the butter and the shortening in and I just want to talk briefly about this we're using 2 cups of butter which is about 454 G and 1 and 1/2 cups of Crisco or some sort of a white shortening um that's about 270 G Crisco works fine you can buy the non-hydrogenated one now which is even healthier to use the best shortenings to use are sweet Tex or Alpine or some brand of high ratio cake and icing shortening they will give you the best stability and the best workability for an icing especially for a commercial application like if you're making wedding cakes or birthday cakes um that that may be in a hot environment in a hot kitchen or at a party where the room is warm that's going to give you the best icing but most people can get a white shortening like Crisco in their local supermarket so that's what I'm using today the reason I don't use all butter is because it will not stabilize as well the icing will break down more easily and it doesn't hold up in the heat as well now you can certainly substitute this for butter that's your own choice but the icing I'm showing you today is going to be the best Swiss buttercream I've ever used for decorating and has a great flavor and great stability so I'm going to turn the mixer back on and I'm going to start adding the butter in small amounts now the butter is soft you can see that I can cut right through it but it's still cool you don't want the butter sort of oozing and running on the plate then it's way too soft and you're liable to break down the icing so let's start by putting this butter in a little piece at a time a okay I've added half the butter and you can see that I had the mixer probably 3/4 of its full speed and I'm putting in about a tablespoon at a time the reason I'm stopping now is I want to let you know that whether you're making an Italian or a Swiss buttercream as you continue adding more of the fat content this will start breaking down and look curdled that's when most people panic and say oh my goodness I've ruined my icing you haven't that's one of the natural stages the icing is going to go through it will break down and as you continue adding the fat it'll start coming together again into a nice creamy icing oh [Music] because the butter is a little bit more solid than the shortening I'm going to stop now before I add the shortening and I'm going to scrape the bowl and make sure if there's any small chunks of butter that we get those off the sides in the bottom and this still hasn't broken it doesn't always break so if it doesn't break don't worry about it but then again if it does break don't worry about it so I'm going to start adding the shortening now okay okay we've added all the shortening I'm going to scrape it down one more time and I can see it's actually starting to break so I want to take this off so you can see this consistency it's very very soft and liquidy and it almost looks like it's breaking and that's to be expected so we're going to put this back on the mixer and I'm going to whip this on high for about 2 minutes maybe two or 3 minutes and this will all come together and then we're going to add our confectioner sugar at the very [Music] end okay I've only mixed this for about 30 seconds but I wanted to show you what that what that short amount of time did look at my icing now look how quickly that changed so what you thought was a curdled icing and was very soupy has now become a beautiful buttercream but we're going to mix this a little bit more just to get it smoother and then we'll add the sugar so give us about a minute on this okay we finished mixing it and now I'm going to add the confectioner sugar now this is the part that you will rarely rarely find a recipe for Swiss buttercream that has confection your sugar in it but then there again this will stabilize your icing make a much better icing to use on cakes that are going to be in a warm environment it also makes a much better icing for decorating so I'm going to add all of this at once and of course if I turn this mixer on high now I'm going to be wearing the sugar so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it on low just take a regular kitchen towel and wrap it around and then just turn that on let that run for about 30 or 40 seconds that will mix the sugar in I haven't dropped one of these in the mixer yet so it's pretty safe all right that's in already it just really prevents a mess I'm going to scrape this down one last time and then I'm going to give this about another 2 minutes um on a medium [Music] speed okay the icing is done if you want to make this a really nice chocolate icing melt about 4 oz of of unsweetened baking chocolate U over a hot water bath or even in the microwave on a low temperature and then after it's completely melted stir until it's cool and then pour it in here and whip it up and it makes just a really luscious chocolate icing I wanted to show you the final consistency of this icing it's very very light and smooth and creamy it's it's delicious it has a lot of butter in it it has a really nice flavor and yet it's a very very workable icing now after you're done using this if you have any icing left you can put it in containers in the refrigerator sealed for about 2 weeks or you can freeze the icing I recommend that you freeze it in small containers and that way when you take it out of the freezer it doesn't take a long time to thaw so use small containers put it in the freezer and then when you want to make a cake or cupcakes or something take out one or two packages and just leave them in the refrigerator overnight or leave them on the counter until they come to almost room temperature and then re-whip it and it's ready to go so this is the modified Swiss buttercream the next buttercream I'm going to make is a traditional American buttercream and for many people who don't live in the United States this seems like a rather foreign buttercream typically it's either all butter or in many cases it's all shortening or a combination thereof uh in the United States the reason I'm showing you these buttercreams today is because I want to show you buttercreams that are easy to decorate with and not all buttercreams are so these two recipes I'm giving you today will give you a a nice uh set of recipes that you that you can use for cake decorating in all sorts of applications so we'll be right back and we'll do the American buttercream okay we're back to do the American buttercream and the ingredients aren't that different than a lot of other buttercreams but the mixing method that I'm going to show you today probably is a little bit different than what you're used to seeing now I use a mixture of water and coffee creamer powdered coffee creamer this is totally optional you don't have to use the powdered coffee creamer what I find that it does do is it gives you a creamier frosting it decorates beautifully it's Smooths beautifully on your cake when you're trying to get that real nice glossy uh satin finish on a buttercream cake and it also helps the buttercream to crust on the outside now when I say crust I don't mean that it's going to dry out and be cracked you know crack all over it just dries enough so that if you wanted to impress a design using design impression mats or if you wanted to stencil on the cake or if you wanted to use what they call the paper towel method of smoothing the cake you can do that where you take a paper towel or a piece of computer paper and you put it on the dried buttercream and you just smooth it with a smoother on the outside of the paper and you get a beautiful beautiful uh finish on your cake so this is a CR crusting buttercream um but again it's a very light crust it's nothing that you're going to have to cut through uh and make the cake crack that's not what a crusting buttercream is so we're going to start with 2 lbs of powdered sugar and if you're not sure about the source of the sugar you can um you can sift it which is really a good idea I find that the Domino's powdered sugar rarely needs to be sifted just a quick note on sugars the Domino Sugar that I just used is cane sugar and Cane powdered sugar makes the best icing a lot of the times when you go to grocery stores and you see bulk packages of powdered sugar it's actually beet sugar and although it looks identical it does react differently in the icing and it doesn't work the same so if you can find cane sugar you're going to find that your icing is better so we're going to start with uh two cups or Excuse Me 2 lbs which is about 910 G of powdered sugar and we're going to start with a half a cup of butter it's about 113 G or one stick and that's soft but it's still cool and I have 1 and 1/2 cups of solid white shortening it's about 270 G now again I'm using the non-hydro hydrogenated Crisco but if you have sweet teex or some sort of a commercial um uh cake and icing shortening that's high ratio that's even better I'm going to put only half of this [Music] in now I've taken my water which is about uh let's see I have to just check my recipe real quick 2 tablespoons of the powdered coffee creamer and 1/3 cup of water I've boiled the water I've added the powdered coffee creamer I've dissolved it completely and then I've cooled this down and I'm going to mix this together and slowly add this mixture um and we're going to beat that on low until it's nice and creamy and we try to get all the lumps out before we add the remaining shortening so I'm also going to be adding about 2 tablespoons of the Allen's Bridal blend this is sort of a uh a blend of of citrus and a little bit of cherry and vanilla and butter flavoring it's a beautiful blend it gives a really nice um um Essence and and fragrance and taste uh to the buttercream without being overpowering I'm also going to add a/4 of a teaspoon of popcorn salt now if you this is totally optional the salt just adds a little flavor to your icing if you don't have popcorn salt just omit the salt because regular salt is is uh too coarse and it won't dissolve in the icing and you'll feel the little the grains of the salt the popcorn salt is super fine and it just dissolves into the icing so we're going to add that and then I'm going to put a paddle on here not a whip we're going to use the paddle and to start this off just like I did with the Swiss buttercream I'm going to put this towel around the mixer just turn that on low and let that combine if you look too soon you're going to get a face full of powdered sugar okay it's not completely combined yet so I'm going to start adding my my uh coffee mate or the uh the coffee creamer and the water mixture now I'm just going to let this blend on a low to medium speed for a minute or two until all the ingredients are combined by starting by starting with a heavier mixture um you're smoothing the icing and you're getting all the lumps so if there were any lumps in the sugar you're going to be working them out at this time I'm not ready to add the remaining shortening yet but I wanted to show you the consistency you can see it looks kind of heavy and very thick I'm going to put this back on and I'm going to put this up to about a medium high speed and I'm going to let this go for about 2 minutes okay we've given this about 2 minutes on on medium high speed I'm going to add the remaining shortening so now all the ingredients are in here now if you'll notice I held back half of the shortening not the butter if the butter is on the cool side when you put it in the icing that's part of the reason you're going to get some lumps and that's why we put the icing the butter in the icing first when the mixture is thicker and it will break up those lumps the shortening easily dissolves into the sugar so that's not the problem so make sure you put the butter first don't hold back part of the butter so we're going to go about 2 more minutes now on a medium speed don't overmix this uh for this first this first part of the icing you want it well combined and and fluffy but you don't want to overbeat it okay the icing is done this is the first part of the icing now I'm going to stop here for a few reasons which I'm I'm going to show you I want you to see the consistency of the icing it's it's thick this is perfect for decorating and for making roses you could if you're only going to be making roses with this batch of icing you could even hold back some of the water in the beginning maybe only put half of that water uh coffee creamer mixture and then you can add more later so I would put some of this aside for decorating and then if I wanted to ice my cake I would put this back on the mixer with the paddle on low speed just a low speed for two or three or four more minutes even until it's very creamy and soft and fluffy and then you have a beautiful icing to ice a cake so there's different consistencies that you can make with the same icing just by how how much you mix the icing if you find that you're decorating and your icing is really grainy and starts seeming a little runny you've over miixed your icing and unfortunately with buttercream there's nothing you can do to correct that people try to add more confectioner sugar to make it thick again it just doesn't come back so be careful not to over miix your icing um so once again that's the consistency I'm looking for uh for decorating and uh for Roses or piping I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial um I wanted to tell you a couple quick substitutions yes you can make this with all butter will it be as good it'll be a delicious icing but it won't work as well for icing and decorating it's going to be a much much softer icing flavor will be fabulous so if you're just looking for a nice buttercream to ice a cake that would be perfect you can change the proportions if you don't want to use 1 and 1/2 cups of the Crisco you can use one cup and then add a cup and a half of butter so feel free to play around with the proportions you can omit the salt if you want to you can omit the coffee creamer if you want to and lastly use whatever flavoring you want there are tons of recipes on the market and on the internet for buttercream it's not always the recipe it's how it's mixed that will give you the best final results so be adventurous and look for new recipes and try them all I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial on the basics our next one will be on beginning uh piping so we're going to go through a whole series of piping with buttercream thank you for watching and as always you can find all the supplies at Global shugar art.com thank you [Music]

Channel: Global Sugar Art

Views: 1,210,360

Keywords: Alan Tetreault, Global Sugar Art, Buttercream (Food), making icing, icing for cake decorating, buttercream icing, icing recipe, recipe, buttercream icicng recipe, Swiss Buttercream, American Buttercream, crusting buttercream, homemade buttercream, homemade, homemade icing

Id: BIL0RjB6sLI

Length: 26min 43sec (1603 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 20 2014