- Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on "Preppy Kitchen,"
I'm showing you how to make silky smooth
Italian buttercream, So let's get started.
To make this frosting, you'll need water,
granulated sugar, egg whites, cream of tartar,
I'll give you a substitute for this,
a little bit of salt if desired,
some room temperature butter, and a flavoring.
It could be vanilla or a ton of other things too.
First off, we're gonna prep our two components.
Italian merengue buttercream has
a meringue with egg whites and a sugar syrup.
For that meringue, You need to have a clean bowl.
So if I'm doing this, sometimes I'll wipe my bowl down
with a little bit of lemon or vinegar,
just to make sure there's no residual fat in there
because while it will work and you'll get a buttercream
out of it, the best practice is to have
a clean, squeaky clean bowl.
So four egg whites.
You cannot break the yolk
So when you make this, here's the deal.
Separate it out, however you like.
I like using my clean hands, but I know a lot of people
really like using the water bottle trick
with an empty water bottle to suck the egg yolk out.
The yolk goes into a bowl and each egg white
goes into your mixing bowl one at a time.
This way, if a yolk breaks,
it doesn't ruin the whole batch.
A lot of people ask if you have to have
a stand mixer for this, and the answer is no,
you do not need a stand mixer.
You can make this with a hand mixer at home.
However, be prepared to be standing over it for a while.
I will give you some tips later on in the video
for how to expedite the process so you're not just
hovering over a bowl for a while.
Set those egg whites aside.
We're gonna use them in a moment.
And these egg yolks are liquid gold,
perfect for a custard, flan, pastry cream, the works.
So you can use those later. Even French buttercream.
Now we're gonna get to the sugar syrup.
So get a small-ish pot out and we need
200 grams or one cup of granulated sugar.
There we go.
We also need a third of a cup of water.
Straight from the tap is fine.
And I'm just gonna kind of drizzle that in there
and let it incorporate for a minute.
So that water just really seeps into the sugar right away,
and now I'm gonna place this
over medium-low heat in a moment.
The one complication for Italian buttercream
is you're doing two things at the same time.
You're gonna heat the sugar up and whip the eggs,
so they're ready together and you can just keep going.
If you do the one first, it's gonna take longer
and consistencies can change.
You might not have the best results.
So get that stand mixer out, and now,
that gets locked into place with a whisk attachment.
And for this recipe, you're gonna use the whisk
and the paddle if you're using a stand mixer.
So while it's great to have a candy thermometer,
you can still make this delicious frosting if you just have
a cold glass of water to tell that sugar's temperature.
Into my eggs, I'm adding a quarter teaspoon
of cream of tartar.
This is an acid derived from the wine-making process.
If you don't have cream of tartar at home,
you can skip it in a pinch, or you can add
just a couple of drops of lemon juice or vinegar.
Both of those acids will also help stabilize your meringue.
Every frosting is better with a little bit of salt.
I'm adding almost a quarter teaspoon of salt into there.
Now we're gonna give this a mix.
(mixer whirring) Get it light and frothy.
The sugar, medium-low heat.
These egg whites aren't gonna whip themselves
into a beautiful consistency without a little bit of sugar.
So I'm gonna get a third of a cup or 67 grams
of granulated sugar, and once this gets light and frothy,
I'll start drizzling it in.
Whenever you make a merengue
and you're adding granulated sugar in,
you need to drizzle it in super slow
because you want that sugar to dissolve completely,
and it gives you a wonderful thick marshmallowy consistency.
If you just dumped the sugar in,
it would just deflate the egg whites,
and it's not gonna be great, so just slowly.
Just pretend you have all the time in the world
because you do have some time.
You're waiting for that sugar
to reach 235 to 240 degrees Fahrenheit.
Your sugar is gonna heat up pretty quickly,
but then it'll climb to 235, 240 fairly slowly
after it gets to 200, so you're not in a rush
to make this meringue.
If you're wondering, what's the difference
between Italian merengue and Swiss meringue buttercream,
they're very similar in consistency and flavor.
However, the Italian meringue, I feel,
has a little bit more structure to it
so sometimes it's nicer for making cakes
and also doing some more detailed buttercream work.
Last bit of sugar is going in. That was fun.
Now this is gonna beat on high
until you get to the soft peak stage.
When you take a look right now, this is what we have.
This is not a peak yet.
See how that's just flopped over?
No, we want it to have more structure, so keep mixing.
And right now, this is at 220 degrees.
So that happens fairly quickly.
For the cold water test, let me show you what the deal is.
(mixer whirring)
Grab a little bit, carefully, of this hot sugar.
Be very careful, it's hot.
Sugar burns aren't fun.
And add it into the cold water, just a drop.
If it forms a little stream,
that means it's not ready yet.
You want it to form a soft ball.
So you'll be able to pick it up
and it'll feel like sap in your fingers.
This is almost there, it's really close,
so it came close to forming that ball, but it dissolved.
If it forms a hard ball, it's too hot.
(mixer whirring)
This is ready now.
See this, it's a soft ball.
Let's just take a look at our meringue.
This is a soft peak.
Look, ah, see how that timed itself?
That is beautiful, I love meringue.
This is like a work of art to me.
Now for the fun part.
While this is mixing on kind of low speed,
you're gonna drizzle this hot sugar in carefully.
Try and get it towards the center where the beaters are
because you do not want it on the edge.
Otherwise it'll just kind of form a sugar ring.
So slowly drizzle that hot sugar in carefully.
We're mixing on high actually, more of a high-speed.
So what's happening here,
the sugar is cooking those egg whites
so now it's totally safe to eat and stabilized,
and also giving it the most silky amazing structure ever.
And the other thing that's happening
is this is becoming really, really warm.
So we're gonna mix this up
and it's gonna keep mixing until it cools down.
Another reason it's fun to use a stand mixer here
because you can walk away while it's mixing
and it's cooling itself.
Look what happens now.
It's still at the soft peak stage,
but look how dramatic that is.
Paper thin, has a lot of structure.
So it's really pretty, and look at that little wiggle,
however, it's hot. It's really hot right now.
So if we added our butter in,
the butter would melt instantly and it would be a mess.
So here's what we're gonna do.
Let this mixer run, medium-high speed,
until it's almost room temperature.
You do not want to rush this part, but if you're in a hurry,
raid that freezer, find your frozen peas and vegetables
or ice packs and just line the bowl,
because that'll speed the cooling process down.
If you're using a hand mixer, grab a bigger bowl
with some ice and put that bowl inside while you
mix this up, and that'll speed that process down too
so you're not standing over this all day.
So if you look at the bowl,
you can see there's steam coming up from this.
It's so hot right now.
Let's just take some frozen peas and corn, pack that bowl.
It'll cool down a little bit faster.
And about the butter.
You want this butter to be room temperature.
People are confused about what room temperature is
because everyone's room is different, I get it.
If you can press into the butter
and it yields, it's room temperature.
If you're really (growling) trying to gouge in there,
it's a bit cold.
So if it's too cold, give it a few seconds
on half power in your microwave.
Okay. It's been a few minutes.
Give this a little test with my knuckle.
It's kind of the best way.
It should feel a little warm.
That's fine, not hot.
And actually the temperature is,
it's in the seventies.
That's totally great.
So now we're gonna do the best practice and
(mixer whirring)
move on from the whisk.
So our whisk is done.
It frothed everything up, pumped a lot of air in here
and now we're gonna fold the butter in and specifically,
we're gonna add two cups of room temperature butter,
and now we're switching to a paddle attachment.
While mixing on a lower speed, we're gonna add
a tablespoon of butter in at a time.
(upbeat music)
All right. Things have only gotten worse.
Look at this. It's just getting more and more soupy.
I'm just gonna scrape the bowl down with the beater,
because I know on the outside, there's a lot of meringue,
you might be able to see white streaks here,
and on the inside, it's just incredibly like a soupy mess.
That's okay. Do not panic.
It should be like this right now.
(mixer whirring)
I just added the last of my butter and this is looking good.
But a lot of times you can have a situation
where things look soupy and it's like,
"Ah, the butter is all there.
Should I add more butter? What do I do?"
You have two options.
You can just keep mixing it
and normally it'll come together.
But if it's a warm day, if everything was too warm,
just stop, put the bowl in the fridge for about five minutes
and then keep mixing and it'll come right together.
It happens quite often and don't worry, you can fix it.
This time, however, I really, really timed it out well
and it looks like amazing clouds of frosting
and we haven't even flavored it yet.
(mixer whirring)
Just mix until the butter is totally incorporated,
and it has some nice cloudy, silky structure.
Okay, it's mixed in and now,
you have to come close and see this.
This is like a solid cloud of amazingness.
It has a wonderful silky texture.
You can see it'll be completely smooth,
really, really creamy, and it's so strong too.
It's a strong frosting that's great for building cakes.
It really holds up.
So you can see it just smooths incredibly.
You can cut into it and it keeps its shape.
It's an amazing frosting for decorating.
So there's a caveat.
If you don't use this now, it turns into sea foam,
and you try and do that smoothing,
like you saw it was mirror smooth just now,
it's gonna be like a billion bubbles.
What is this nonsense?
I did everything correctly.
It was perfect a second ago.
And the answer is that meringue-based frostings
lose their consistency quickly.
So as soon as you flavor the frosting, use it.
If you don't, I'll show you what happens,
but we're gonna flavor this first.
This frosting's the perfect vehicle for flavor.
So right now it has just like a light buttery taste,
but a little vanilla, rosewater, peppermint extract,
orange blossom water, almond extract, these all work.
Just mix them in at the very end,
and if you're wondering how much, add to taste.
One to two teaspoons of vanilla,
less of the other flavorings
'cause they tend to be very strong.
Today, I'm gonna divide this batch up
and just show you how amazing it is
to make chocolate Italian merengue buttercream.
It's so easy, too.
So I melted about half a cup of bittersweet chocolate.
Ooh, look at that.
It's cooled down, so now it's room temperature.
All you need to do is drizzle that in.
You can have more chocolate, less chocolate.
It's totally up to you.
And the nice thing is that this frosting
is stable enough to really take almost anything.
So you could add a ton of caramel into it
for an amazing caramel frosting.
Here I'm just folding this chocolate in
and the frosting's getting even more structure.
If you want a secret tip,
instead of using plain butter like we did today,
you can brown the butter, just in a small pot,
cook over low heat, stirring. Occasionally
until it gets a deeper caramel color.
The flavor is gonna be beyond.
You'll see little specks of brown butter mixed in.
I do that for a lot of my cakes in fall and winter.
Your Italian buttercream will last in the fridge for a week,
just keep it in an airtight container,
or in the freezer for up to a month,
also in an airtight container.
You need to make sure this thaws overnight,
so if it's in the freezer, thaw it in the fridge,
then thaw it on the counter
to bring it to room temperature slowly.
You can't microwave it.
And if it's in the fridge, go ahead and thaw it
on the counter until it is room temperature too.
When you do that though, it's gonna look crazy.
We talked about consistency and how this is silky smooth.
But look at this nonsense, it looks like cottage cheese.
You see that?
That's how it'll look and there's no fixing it.
You can't just keep smoothing it
if it's on your cake already.
So once your buttercream is thawed and at room temperature,
and by the way, this goes the same
for if you just made the buttercream,
but you let it sit for five minutes.
'Cause it will, like within 10 minutes,
it's gonna lose its consistency.
The only thing you need to do
is give it a quick 30-second whip.
You can put it on your stand mixer,
use an electric hand mixer, or.
You should see, it has those beautiful peaks again,
it has that creamy look again and see, I can smooth this out
and it's looking silky smooth and perfect.
When you're ready to use your delicious frosting,
give it one final whip.
You can use a spatula and just make sure
it looks nice and silky, not bubbly.
Then pop that into a piping bag, do whatever you want.
I just want to show you how beautiful this is when it pipes.
Look at this.
Do you see that wonderful little tip you get,
and just the nice definition?
This isn't gonna melt and be really gloopy.
It's gonna taste amazing and everyone's gonna love it.
And just like that you have
what might be the best frosting ever.
Mmm.
That is eye-wateringly delicious.
I'm gonna eat the rest of this. Don't tell anybody.
I hope you get a chance to make those recipe
and if you liked this video, check out my frosting playlist.