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Buttercream Icing with Variations and Instructions

Source of Recipe

internet


Recipe Introduction

The Complete Step-By-Step Guide To Cake Decorating by Carol Deacon

List of Ingredients

1 cup softened butter, preferably unsalted
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 Tsp boiled, hot water
1 tsp vanilla extract

(Amounts for 1 regular cake)

Making up a batch of buttercream will only take you a few minutes.


Recipe

Beat the butter until soft and fluffy.
Add the sugar, water and extract. Beat until pale and creamy.


Different flavors:
White or milk chocolate
Stir either 3 oz melted white or plain chocolate, or 1 tablespoon cocoa powder mixed to a paste with about 1-2 tablespoons of hot water, into the buttercream.

Coffee
Mix about 1 tablespoon of instant coffee into 1 tablespoon of water and beat into the buttercream.

Flavored extracts
You can use vanilla, peppermint, lemon or almond extract to flavor buttercream. Just add a few drops and mix in.

Coloring buttercream
It is best to use paste colors as they are not as runny as liquid ones. Liquid colors can be used with buttercream but because of their consistency you will only be able to tint the icing lightly. If it starts to get too soggy and out of control, add more powdered sugar.

As buttercream has a naturally creamy color, some colors like pale blue and pale pink will never be quite as true as they would be were the colors being mixed into pure white royal icing. However, if you beat and beat and beat buttercream (and you'll need a food mixer for this otherwise your arm will drop off!) it will eventually turn almost white and will take very pale colors a little better. The other thing to remember when you are adding color that the shade will deepen as the buttercream sets.

1. Add the color using a toothpick.
2. Mix into the buttercream, ensuring that it is blended evenly.

"Setting/Freezing buttercream
Buttercream freezes extremely well.

If you are covering a cake and find that you have a lot of buttercream left over, it can be placed in a bag or plastic container and frozen until the next baking day comes around. Let it defrost at room temperature for a few hours, then give it a stir. As with all foods, never refreeze buttercream once it has been defrosted. Another useful fact is that because both sponge cake and buttercream freeze well, you can actually freeze a ready-buttercreamed cake. Protect it with freezer wrap. Defrosting will take anything from 5-12 hours depending upon the room temperature. Condensation will form as it defrosts but avoid the temptation to dab it, the cake will dry naturally. Occasionally, strong colors such as black may run a little.

Filling the cake
Have you ever sliced a cake up, filled it with buttercream, put it back together again and found that none of the layers now seem to fit properly? Here's a little trick to stop that happening.

Before you slice the cake into layers, make a buttercream mark down the side of the cake. You can mark it with a knife cut, but I prefer to use buttercream as I tend to lose the cut mark in a flurry of crumbs!

1. Slice your cake into layers and spread buttercream over the top of the base layer. Place the next layer on top of the bottom one - and here's the trick - line the buttercream marks up with each other. If you have a third layer, repeat the procedure, again lining the buttercream marks up.
2. Ensure that the layers are even.

Covering with buttercream
When covering a cake with buttercream, cover the sides first. This allows you to hold the top of the cake steady with your other hand without getting too sticky. Spread the buttercream around the sides and over the top.

Set-up" and avoiding crumbs
If you coat your cake with a thin covering of buttercream then place it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to "set up" before covering it with a second, final coating, you will help yourself in two ways. First, it prevents crumbs from being dragged around the surface of the cake. Second, it stops the cake from moving as you buttercream it.

Special effects
There are many different effects you can achieve in butter-cream by using different techniques, tools and colors.

Combing
An icing comb is a plastic tool with a serrated edge. As it is run around the outside of a cake, a combed effect is left behind. If it is wiggled as it is moved around the cake, it will produce a zigzag pattern.. If you want to experiment with combing but don't have a comb, you can very easily make your own. Cut a rectangle out of an ice cream container lid. Cut a few triangles out of one side and you have a homemade icing comb.

Marbling
By partially mixing a little food color into the buttercream you get a marbled effect—great for making water effects on novelty cakes.

Multicolored swirls and piping
Achieve a dramatic effect by swirling different colors of buttercream onto a cake's surface. You can also pipe with two or three different colors in the piping bag at the same time.

Piping
It is very easy to pipe with buttercream provided that the icing is soft enough to flow easily through the piping nozzle but still holds its shape when piped. If it is too stiff beat in a little more water.