Buttercream Icing Success!

Buttercream icing is amazing. It's super light and airy (and if it wasn't for the mountain of dishes to do afterwards, I would make this for every cake). I first handled buttercream in an art class in my last year of college. I was so proud of how they turned out that I was determined to make my own buttercream and roses!

The white roses were my favorite!

I didn't get to personally assist in making the frosting, but every student had a chance to mix colors into the frosting as a practical application of color theory. I lost the recipe that we were given in class, but I found another one in a recipe book Tea with Bea that I ordered along with my Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas.

The original recipe calls for caster sugar and golden syrup. Both are things I only was able to find in specialty stores, so I settled for only buying golden syrup and just substituting caster for regular white sugar since the sugar is melted into a syrup. According to several google searches, golden syrup is similar to light molasses and it's possible to make golden syrup at home but it's very time intensive process.

Honestly I failed miserably trying this on the first two times. The instructions in the book assumed that the reader was familiar with meringues and mixing speeds (which I'm not). It took a lot of youtube watching and other food blog skimming to understand the recipe completely. 

Failure 1:
Boiling syrup to "soft-ball" stage. The sugar syrup is made of golden syrup, sugar and water heated to 248F. I don't own a thermometer so I used the method I was taught to tell the temperature which is dropping some of the syrup into a cup of cold water. If the syrup is too cold, the syrup turns into something like maple syrup consistency when you try to pick it out of the water. If the syrup is too hot, the syrup turns into hard blobs at the bottom of the cup. At the right temperature between those two stages, the syrup becomes moldable like play-doh when cooled and spreads like the cornstarch/water mixture when you don't exert any force on it. If you try to use syrup that has entered the "hard-ball" stage (which is what I did), the syrup cools into a hard brick of sugar on the bottom of your pan, mixer, spatula, and basically makes your life miserable.

Failure 2:
Beating egg whites to "soft peaks". The Kitchenaid mixer manual says soft peaks are achieved when "tips of peaks fall over when Wire Whip is removed". Of course this is hard to determine since this happens also when the eggs begin to form finer bubbles. When the whites are not beaten enough, the eggs collapse when the syrup is added and what's left is an unsalvageable frosting soup.

Here's the final recipe with instructions. I hope the tips that I've learned help you if you decide to attempt this as well!

Italian Buttercream Icing
Yield: approximately 2 quarts


Ingredients:

• 1-3/4 c. white sugar
• 1 Tbsp. golden syrup
• 1/2 c. water
• 6 large egg whites 
• 5 sticks (2-1/2 c.) unsalted butter room temperature
• flavorings/colors

Other Equipment:

• Cup of ice water (or candy thermometer)
• Stand mixer

Instructions:

• Combine sugar, golden syrup, and water in a pot. Stir to combine until mixture begins to boil. 
• Use a brush dipped in water to clean the sides of the pot to prevent crystallization of the syrup. 
• Boil mixture for 5-10 minutes on medium-high heat. Use a clean spoon to periodically sample mixture and pour it in cold water to test which stage the mixture is in. 

• While mixture is boiling beat egg whites for several minutes until the peaks hold their shape (at speed 8) and look somewhat like this: 

• When the syrup reaches the "soft-ball" stage. Remove the pan from heat and slowly pour the syrup on the side of the bowl in a steady stream (speed 6). The mixture should turn into a meringue-like consistency. It's not necessary to scrape all of the syrup from the pot.

•  The mixing bowl will be very hot from the syrup. Continue mixing at the same speed until the bowl cools to approximately room temperature (about 5 minutes). Test the temperature by adding a few tablespoons of butter into the frosting while the mixer is running. If the frosting appears to deflate, stop adding butter and continue mixing to cool the frosting.
• Add remaining butter in 1-2 tablespoon chunks while the mixer is running. The frosting should look like this:

•  If you like this flavor and color, great! You're done! Else you can add a few ounces of chocolate, few tablespoons of vanilla, and other flavorings while the mixer is on its lowest setting. I added dark chocolate to mine.