Pretty Please: Italian Buttercream

I've been sooooo busy! to the point, that i leave blogging for so long that i forget to even know what to write when i come round to it!!

Well last week, i was commissioned by the same friends as always, to bake her mum some cupcakes for her birthday- all experiences are good ones!

We decided on a super chocolatey sponge (naturally i suggested the buttermilk sponge that worked so well last time.) teamed with an italian buttercream- both recipes found from tea with Bea.

attempting to create less mess

piping my buttermilk poos

My funny little doggy poos

my nakie sponges

Now, i've NEVER made italian buttercream before, and never made anything quite so technically challenging. I even bought a sugar thermometer for the occasion.

Unfortunately, i wasn't even able to take many pictures of the actual buttercream being made as i was so stressed out on keeping my eye on the thermometer, i totally forgot :(

There were ups, and there were downs. More downs in my view, but then i'm a pessimist :P

So as this blog is more a diary of my successes and failures, let me tell you what happened (what i can remember anyway)...

So it all started well at the beginning, me happily separating out my egg whites and popping them into the mixer with the other ingredients and whizzing it up into a soft peak meringue- all good so far.

After this, i seem to remember making my sugar syrup, adding my precise measurements of golden syrup, egg yolks and caster to a saucepan, then brushing the sides (as advised!) with clean water to dislodge any rogue grains. Check.

Then i popped it on the heat to start boiling. Cue stress.

I wasn't sure whether to stir the sugar or not, as i remember that you're not meant to with some sugar recipes (caramel is it?) i can't remember. Anyway, i did timid little stirs and shakes as i didn't want it to burn.

I'm sure those that are more technically able might be able to see where i'd have gone wrong!!

So as soon as the syrup was boiling, i popped in the thermometer and read the temp. But "Mon Dieu!" the thermometer barely reached the surface of the sugar?!! because it's in a metal casing. So i had to do a little bit of a tilt the saucepan and try and read the temp.

As soon as the temp read 120C- well into soft ball stage, i took it off the heat.

Now, the recipe says to let it cool for a bit before you add it to your whites, but i wasn't sure just how cool it had to be? and by now, it was starting to set and soon i wouldnt be able to get it out of the pan! So i thought i'd put it in.

And soon, my beautiful soft beaked meringue became flat. I don't know if that's normal but it made me a little bit sad, because in the pictures, it still looks pretty airy.

Also, the sugar in the saucepan had strands. And i thought to myself, threading sugar requires less heat than softball... did i not heat it enough or is that normal?!

Obviously, having never made this, or seen anyone make it, i seriously started to doubt myself.

So i whisked up my meringue (until it cooled slightly), but this is again when i had troubles.

Do i seriously just whisk until it's cold?!! Meringue breaks up if you over-whisk it and i didn't want that to happen, so i just whisked it until it was as far as it would probably go and left it to go a bit cooler, before adding the butter.

And of course, with my luck, the butter melted the entire thing.

And i now had scrambled eggs.

I wanted to cry. So i put it in the fridge for an hour to let the butter go harder.

After that, I changed the attachment on my mixer, and whacked it on high and forced it back together again. Which resulted in a light, but rather yellow looking buttercream. Not at all like the one in the picture. Infact, it just looked like the normal buttercream you make with icing sugar and butter.

D'oh!

I had no choice but to use it. And it tasted just like butter. Like i was eating an actual block of butter.

My friend insisted it was fine and we just smeared it on the cupcakes. And i'll tell you why.