Today on Sugar Spun Run I'm showing you how to make Swiss meringue buttercream.
Hey everyone Sam here and today I am really excited to be sharing my favorite
recipe for Swiss meringue buttercream. Now this buttercream is a lot different
from traditional American buttercream that just uses primarily powdered sugar
and butter. We are going to be whipping egg whites into a nice meringue. I'm
really excited to share this one with you. It has a great flavor. It's not too
sweet. It has a great texture. It pipes beautifully. So let's go ahead and get
started. Now the tools that you use for this recipe are very important, and the
first one that you need is a very clean mixing bowl. Now you really, I really
recommend making this buttercream in a stand mixer because it takes a lot of
whipping. So you want to make sure that the bowl of your stand mixer is spotless.
There should be no grease in here. It shouldn't be even a little bit wet. It
really needs to be completely clean or your egg whites might not whip properly.
Now you're going to need six large egg whites, and I recommend using egg whites
that are at room temperature. At least that's what I always use. Now you want
to make sure that there's absolutely no bit of yolk in your egg whites. So just
the egg whites. Again if you have even a little bit of that yellow yolk in there
your egg whites are not going to whip up properly. You're gonna have to start all over.
So I'm gonna add these to my bowl.
And now you're going to need 1 and 3/4
cup of granulated sugar, and yes this is granulated sugar. I know all of my other
frostings use powdered sugar. We are using granulated today.
And I also like to add 1/4 teaspoon of salt. I usually make this a scant 1/4 teaspoon, so just
under 1/4 teaspoon. That's just my personal preference. And then once you
have everything in that bowl we're just gonna whisk everything together until
it's nicely combined. Just a brief whisking
At this point we're about ready to head over to our stovetop, but first you are going to need a medium sized
saucepan, and you want to fill this with about an inch and a half of water. Now
you want to make sure that this saucepan is large enough that your mixing bowl
fits in it nicely. Let me show you how it should look.
So our mixing bowl fits in here perfectly, and another important thing is
that you don't want the bowl to be touching the water in your saucepan. So
this one is not, it's not touching the bottom of the saucepan. It's not touching
the water at all, but it fits in there nicely. So we're not going to put our
mixing bowl on there just yet. We're going to start by just taking our
saucepan with one and a half inches of water over to our stove top and we're
gonna heat this until it's simmering. I usually just keep my stovetop heat on
medium low while I'm doing this. Now once our water is simmering, we're gonna go
ahead and place our bowl right in that saucepan.
And now we're going to start whisking. You're going to want to whisk the contents of this bowl pretty much
constantly at this point. Now there are two things we're looking for before we
can remove our egg white and sugar mixture from our saucepan. The first
thing is you want to make sure that it's not gritty or grainy, so I'm just gonna
take a little bit of that syrup. Now it's gonna be hot, or pretty warm, and I'm
going to drop a little bit between my fingers and I'm just gonna rub that, and
if that feels gritty at this point the sugar is not dissolved. We're not ready
to go on. This is actually feeling pretty good. Now the other thing that we're
looking for is that we want these eggs to reach 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Now this
is very important because it's going to kill any bacteria or anything that might
make you sick that could be in these eggs. Since I'm currently pregnant that's
obviously very important to me right now. So I'm just going to be using my
thermometer to periodically check the eggs, and you want to make sure that it
reaches 160 degrees Fahrenheit. We're in pretty good shape now. Our egg whites
have reached temperature. They're not gritty or grainy or anything like that
so our sugar is dissolved. So let's go ahead and take this bowl over to our stand mixer.
Now we're ready to start beating our egg whites until we get a
nice thick glossy meringue. Now at this point I like to use a whisk attachment
So I'm going to fit this in.
And like I said we're gonna now beat these egg whites until we have a nice
thick and glossy meringue. So I'm just gonna turn my mixer speed to about medium, medium-high.
Now it is gonna take about 10 to 15 minutes for egg whites to
reach stiff peaks. So you're gonna be waiting for a little while.
This is perfect. We have that nice thick volume. It's very stiff. As you can see
you've got stiff peaks. The meringue is not folding over on itself, or receding back
into the bowl of our mixer. So we are in really good shape with our meringue now.
The only thing at this point is if you feel your mixer bowl it's probably still
gonna feel a little bit warm. Now if you'd like you can just keep running
your mixer on medium speed until the bowl no longer feels warm to the touch,
but sometimes I worry that I'm just gonna kill my stand mixer by doing that.
Sometimes it gets a little hot. So once I have my thick full meringue I give it a
little bit of a break, and I just wait until the bowl cools down completely. Now
you want, if you touch the outside the bowl of your bowl the bottom of the bowl
it should not feel warm to the touch. If it's warm, what's gonna happen when you
add your butter is you're gonna have a soupy mess. So have patience wait for
that to cool down. Once your meringue has cooled completely, remember it's
important that it cools completely. I like to switch for my whisk attachment
over to my paddle attachment. I just find that it helps everything get combined a
little bit easier. The paddle does a better job of reaching the sides of the
bowl. So let's switch that out and next you need your butter. Now for this recipe
I use two cups, or four sticks, or one pound, of unsalted butter. Now the
temperature of this butter is actually really important. You want to make sure
that it is softened, but you don't want it to be so softened that it's melty. So
especially if you set this out on a warm summer day, sometimes it'll get a little
oily. That's too soft. You also don't want it to be too cold. I like to set mine out
about an hour before I'm ready to start using it. It should, if I press my finger
into it should make a nice little indent, but it shouldn't just come apart and be
oily in my hands. This is at the perfect temperature. So what I'm going to
do is I'm going to turn my mixer speed to medium.
And then I'm going to start adding this butter. I'm just going to be adding one
tablespoon of butter at a time, and I won't add the next table spoon until it
looks like the previous one has been absorbed.
Now even if you've done every step pretty much perfectly up to this point, you still might notice that your
buttercream starts to break down a little bit, or even look a little bit
curdled. Don't panic. If this happens you're gonna want to just keep mixing
everything together and it should come together for you by the time you're done;
by the time you're finished adding all of your butter.
Now if you're mixing your buttercream and it's still not coming together, and still not coming
together, and it just seems like it's not gonna happen, after you've added all your
butter, what you can do is you can actually take the bolt put it in the
fridge for about 10 minutes. Take it back out and start mixing it again, and
hopefully that will help bring everything together for you.
Once you have all your butter combined you're gonna want to grab a spatula and just
scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl, and then we're gonna beat
everything together again for just another minute on medium, medium-high speed.
We just want to make sure that we have all of our meringue and our butter
completely combined. This is looking beautiful. Our Swiss meringue buttercream
is just about finished. Now all we want to do is add a little bit of flavoring.
So I'm just gonna be using the vanilla extract. I'm gonna add one and a half
teaspoons of vanilla extract right in there, and then I'm just gonna beat
everything together again medium high speed another 30 seconds to a minute.
Just until everything is completely combined, that flavors nicely distributed.
I mean take a look at that. This is beautiful. This is perfect Swiss meringue
buttercream. It tastes, mmm tastes so good. It's not; one of my favorite things about
it is it's not too sweet. It's not like an American buttercream. That's always
just a little bit too sweet for me. This is perfectly flavored it's so good I think you're gonna love it.
And we are ready to go ahead and pipe this on whatever you want. I found that
this Swiss meringue buttercream, this amount, tends to cover 12 cupcakes, if you
want to really generously frost them like I like to do. 24 if you're just
doing a nice little smear on top. It'll also frost a 13 by 9 inch cake, or a 2
layer 8 inch, or 9 inch round cake. I love these large piping tips this is
my Ateco 848. I'll leave a link to it in the description, because I'm really
bad at decorating cakes or cupcakes but these always make me feel like a pro. And
that is how you make a Swiss meringue buttercream. I really hope you give this
frosting a shot, especially if typical American buttercream is too sweet for
you like it usually is for me. This is a nice balance. it's got a great texture. I
can't say enough good things about it. It's my new favorite frosting, maybe next
to cream cheese frosting. Alright if you try this out please let me know what you
think. I love hearing from you and make sure you check out my next video where I
will be using this frosting to cover up some fun gender-reveal cupcakes, and I'll
be announcing whether Zach and I are having a boy or a girl,
Oh take a guess leave a guess in the comments. I would love to know what you
think. Alright. Thank you guys so much for watching, I'll see you next time.
I'm sorry but there's no way I'm going to bite into this without making a total mess.
This frosting is so good. It's so silky the way it melts on your tongue. Not too sweet. Try it out.
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