I’m sharing with you how to make the silkiest Swiss Meringue Buttercream you’ve ever tasted.
It’s perfect for making layer cakes and pipes beautifully onto your cupcakes.
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Swiss Meringue buttercream is a little more involved to make than traditional American
style buttercream, both have their pros and cons and many people will have their favourite.
Swiss Meringue is a more delicate, silky and much less sweet buttercream so to me it works
best with flavours like vanilla where as well as the flavour you want a really beautiful
texture to add to the cake or cupcakes without it being over powering.
To start we want to seperate the eggs into a heat proof bowl.
If you would like the full recipe for this Swiss Meringue Buttercream it will be on my
website as well as the full measurements listed in the description box below.
This recipe will make enough for 12 cupcakes or 1 8 inch or 6 inch layer cake.
Make sure your eggs are at room temperature and place the whites in the heat proof bowl
and the yolks in a seperate bowl for saving for another recipe later.
I’m just separating the eggs between the shells but there are many different ways to
do this to make sure you don’t break the yolk.
We’re going to be making a meringue so one tiny bit of yolk in the whites and it just
won’t whip up so make sure to be as careful as you possibly can.
Place the leftover egg yolks to the side.
These will keep in the fridge for a few days so make sure not to waste them.
A few recipes ideas to use them up would be lemon curd, custard, mayonnaise or hollandaise
sauce or adding them to your scrambled eggs, omelette or quiche for a richer flavour.
To the five egg whites measure out a cup and a half or 300g of white sugar.
You’ll notice I give the recipe amounts in metric and imperial, cups grams and ounces
so no matter where you live in the world you should find this recipe easy enough to follow.
Place the bowl of egg whites and sugar over a water bath or bain marie which is essentially
just a pot of simmering water.
This provides much gentler heat so theres no chance of over cooking the egg whites.
You don’t need to worry about eating them raw here, we’re going to cook the whites
to about 70 degrees celsius or 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
Using a whisk, give them a good whisk every 30 seconds or so to make sure they’re evenly
combined and the bottom isn’t getting too hot.
As it heats the mixture will completely change consistency from being incredibly thick and
stringy to very thin and syrup like.
There’s no need for a thermometer here if you don’t have one, a simple way to check
is to feel a small amount of the egg white and sugar mixture between your fingers, if
it’s smooth and you can’t feel the grittiness of the sugar it’s dissolved and the meringue
is ready to be whipped.
The sugar dissolves at about the same temperature that the egg whites are cooked safe enough
to eat raw.
To make this recipe it’s easiest to have a stand mixer as it’s hands free but you
can also make this with a hand mixer.
There’s no way you’ll be able to make this recipe by hand though as the meringue
needs to be whipped for over 10 minutes and you can’t physically do that yourself at
the speed a mixer can.
If you don’t have one I would recommend picking up a hand mixer, you can usually find
ones that aren’t too expensive and it’ll make baking a lot easier.
Remove the egg whites and sugar from the heat and place them into the bowl of your stand
mixer or the largest bowl you have if you’re using a hand mixer.
Make sure you’re using the whisk attachment here and turn the speed to low.
Your meringue will be very hot at this point, it’s much easier to cool it down if you
have a metal bowl as it won’t hold heat but I only have glass that fits my mixer so
I’m working with that.
After a minute or so when the mixture has turned opaque white you can turn the mixer
up to medium high speed.
We want to start it off on a low speed first as this creates smaller bubbles meaning your
meringue is more stable, once it’s become opaque we can turn it up.
As the meringue whips check the bowl often with your hands to feel the temperature, we
need it to be room temp so it definitely shouldn’t feel warm or hot.
It’ll take about 10 minutes to fully whip to the stiff peak stage on a medium to high
speed, as you can see here it’s bearly holding its shape and we still have a while to go.
Once your meringue is at the stiff peak stage and is at room temperature we can start adding
the butter.
If it’s fully whipped but still feels a little warm you can place the bowl in ice
water for a few minutes and that should help a lot.
We need 1 cup, 2 stick or 225 grams or in other words a lot of butter.
Make sure it’s fully at room temp here, that really important for Swiss meringue.
With the mixer on low we’re going to start adding a little at a time.
While my butter was cold I cut it up into about 1 tablespoon sized cubes which makes
this part so much easier.
Make sure each piece of butter has been fully incorporated before adding the next.
It should take at least a couple of minutes to add the whole lot.
Your buttercream should become a lot thicker and depending if you have as yellow butter
as we do in New Zealand, change with a tinge of yellow.
One quick tip here I have for you if you are after a more colourless or whiter buttercream
is to use the smallest amount of a violet coloured gel colouring, it’s the exact opposite
on the colorwell to yellow so it completely counteracts the colour.
At this point there are a couple things that can go wrong but it’s usually completely
fixable.
I’ve added my butter a little too quickly here to show you how it may look a little
curdled and separated.
This is really common with swiss meringue and 9 times out of 10 will just be fixed by
turning your machine back on to a medium speed for a few minutes until it’s silky smooth.
Another common issue is soupy or runny swiss meringue buttercream.
This is usually caused by not cooling it enough before adding the butter so the butter will
melt.
To fix this place your bowl in the fridge for 10 to 15 minutes before whipping again
until you have a really spreadable consistency.
Once your buttercream is looking pretty perfect we need some flavouring.
I’m using vanilla here but you can use any other type of extract, essence or zest you
would like depending on what flavour of cake or cupcakes you have.
Add it to the buttercream and turn the mixer back on until fully combined.
This swiss meringue buttercream is best kept in the fridge before you use it or it can
be stored in the freezer for up to 3 months.
In both cases let it come back up to room temperature and whip it in your stand mixer
or with hand mixer again before you use it.
I’m using mine to decorate this 3 layer vanilla cake.
It’s the perfect spreadable consistency and I can use a thicker amount between the
layers to get that delicious looking cake without the buttercream being far to over
powering to the cake.
Thank you so much for watching.
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I’ll see you in my next video.