Perfect Piping with Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I've had a score to settle with Swiss Meringue Buttercream icing since promising to post about it several times...since forever!!! SMB, as it's known in the cake world, is also the 'problem child' of frostings/icings and can cause much heartache to the amateur cake decorator, such as I am. But if I can do it, then so can you!

For those new to SMB, it is basically a meringue-based buttercream icing where the egg whites are pasteurised (heated) with sugar before whipping until stiff, then butter is gradually added by further beating. I first used SMB to pipe the rosettes on the cake below...

A bit blurry, but I was so proud!

My first source of SMB knowledge came at the same time as my introduction to the amazing inspiration that is Sweetapolita. Rosie's SMB Demystified post clears up most queries and encourages the most tremulous baker to have a go at making SMB. It is her recipe for SMB that I have adapted in this post and her photo diary along with her instructions are a great resource to look at while you make it for the first few times. I'm simply providing it here in the form that I use for clarity's sake. Martha Stewart's recipe is often recommended to cakers, but I prefer Rosie's because it uses less butter but still works perfectly. 

Personally I think the 'secret to success' for this icing lies in the butter: it needs to be nearly room temperature but not soft. A helpful test is that you should be able to leave imprints in it when pressing the butter with your fingers without it 'walling up' or bending the rest of the block or stick (see the second image in this clever blog post by Sonia of Nasi Lemak Lover to demonstrate the right butter consistency!). The difference between butter that is too soft or just right, is a tense half hour spent hovering over the mixer praying that it 'comes together', or ferrying small amounts to the microwave for short blasts then returning them to the mixing bowl and doing more hovering... More on how to fix the inevitable problems later!

Why bother, then, with such a temperamental icing-child? It is hands-down the most useful buttercream that I've used for piping. It holds up well (although is not ideal for the heat of summer), tastes rich without being overly sweet, and it can provide a bubble-free, silky smooth texture like no other frosting! Although I'm stingy with using egg whites, it's worth following the recipe exactly to get the right consistency of icing.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Adapted from Sweetapolita. Makes enough to cover (crumb coat and decorate with rosettes/frills) a two-layer, 9-inch cake. 

8 large, fresh egg whites (approx. 240g worth; be kind and buy free-range!)
2 cups white sugar
550g unsalted butter (that's right...a whole lot of butter!!!), chopped into inch-sized cubes
1 Tablespoon vanilla essence (or other flavouring of choice)

First de-grease the bowl and whisk attachment of a stand mixer using lemon juice or white vinegar. Rinse, and wipe clean with a paper towel (this protects the egg whites from any fat that will prevent them from whipping).

In the mixing bowl (or other heatproof bowl) place the egg whites and sugar. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water - make sure the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water surface. Whisk the egg and sugar mixture continuously while heating until the sugar has dissolved and the egg whites are hot - this might take ten minutes or longer. You can check by (swiftly) running your finger along the bottom of the bowl and feeling for any grits of sugar that aren't dissolved. Don't get burnt though!

Remove the mixing bowl from the heat and place in the stand mixer (if you have used a bowl other than your stand mixer bowl to heat the egg whites, transfer the mixer to your stand mixer bowl). Using the whisk attachment, whip up the egg and sugar mixture until it is a thick, glossy meringue that forms stiff peaks when the whisk is removed; this takes about ten minutes or so of whipping. IMPORTANT: Is the bowl still hot? It must be cold or at least neutral to touch before adding butter in the next step, otherwise the butter will melt. You can choose to place the bowl with meringue in it in the fridge for ten to fifteen minutes to cool it down. 

Perfectly whipped and ready to get all buttered up!

Change to a paddle attachment on your stand mixer (if you have Kenwood mixer, your K-paddle is perfect). With the mixer on low speed, slooooowly (i.e. at intervals of 30 seconds or longer) add the butter a couple of cubes at a time. The meringue mixture will deflate, like in the image below.

Continue adding butter until the mixture 'comes together' to have a smooth, buttery texture - just like you'd want to spread all over a cake! This takes patience and a lot of mixing - if in doubt, KEEP MIXING... It will look more like butter than 

Et voilà, it might look like a mess, but this batch has come together beautifully!

Lastly add the vanilla or other preferred flavouring and food colouring if desired, beating on low speed until mixed through. This icing freezes and de-frosts really well, just whip it back into shape after thawing.

Trouble-shooting

Is your SMB not looking quite like the pictures? First, just breathe... it's ok! This is a VERY forgiving icing. Let's talk about what's wrong with it and see what we can do...

Help! My SMB is runny like yoghurt! Several possibilities: the egg whites weren't whipped to stiff peaks or they were still warm when the butter was added, or the butter was too soft. Either way, refrigerate the mixing bowl for at least 20 minutes and then beat again for five minutes. Repeat this 20/5 pattern until the mixture starts to offer some resistance to the beating and thickens a bit. Add the rest of your butter when this starts to happen.

Help! My SMB seems to have curdled and taken on the texture of cottage cheese! It's likely that your butter was too cold/solid - or too warm! - when you added it. You could try refrigerating then whipping as per the previous advice, or you could nuke it into submission! Remove approximately one fifth of the icing from the mixing bowl and place in a microwave-safe container. Nuke it for approximately 15 seconds, stir, and gradually add this back into the main mixing bowl while beating. Keep beating for five minutes more and if it doesn't make a difference repeat the process. This has happened to me several times, and often it takes two goes of nuking and straining back in, but it always works! 

Remember: keep breathing and keep mixing!!!

For more excellent advice see Sweetapolita's original posts here and here.

Frilly and Floral Continued

The following is the photo diary of a frilly and floral SMB cake. Previously I've posted how we made the gorgeous fondant decorations, so here I'm showing how we put it all together and piped the SMB frills into place. 

To create the vertical frills, we used a Wilton #104 tip, also known as the petal tip. It is shaped like a tear-drop, and when used it's important to keep the fat end pointing up/away from you, while the narrow end is down/nearest to you. Frills are pretty much an in-out, bottom-to-top motion, coming out approximately a centimetre from the cake which was the extra width of our cake board. Frill direction (along the side of the cake, like in Sweetapolita's post, or into it like ours) is up to the decorator!

For the cake itself I prepared one quantity of the recipe for Sweetapolita's easy and delicious Chocolate Celebration Cake that I re-blogged in this post. It made two decent 9 inch-diameter layers with which my friend D showed superb new skills at assembling and crumb-coating with a regular buttercream (recipe from same post as the cake). 

Filling: tick.

Cling wrap protects the cake turntable and the underside of the cake board from stray icing smears

Starting at the base, zig-zagging in and out, SMB piped into perfect frills

Rosette practice: use a plate so you can have a go then scrape off after each attempt and try again!

Finished rosettes to build up a floral fondant garden

Positioning the décor

Gorgeous flowers and frills!

A Farewell Feast

I should point out that I'm not 'farewelling' this blog - after less than six month's efforts! This post is about the farewell morning tea that I held a couple of months ago when I left my previous job. I'm well overdue for a post, and I've been meaning to share the shots and recipes of what I made then, so here goes!

Always trying to be classy, I designed a high-tea-like feast centred around sugar! I wanted to use my recently-aquired fondant skills and buttercream designs to get more practice and please a crowd, so I planned three cakey items: a buttercream rosette-decorated chocolate cake, a simple white choc-iced carrot cake, and rhubarb cupcakes with floral fondant decorations. For the 'extras', I had a failed attempt at macaroons (however, you may have noticed that I do not equate 'fail' to 'inedible' so I served them up as meringue bites anyway!) and made a successful batch of fig and ginger slice.

Recipe-wise, I once again leaned on the vast experience and creativity of Rosie at Sweetapolita for her delicious and attractive cakes. Her chocolate cake recipe with Swiss Meringue butter cream that I've blogged previously (and special post on making this butter cream yourself coming soon!) was three layers of decadence which I covered with rows of rosettes in graduated peach colours. For making butter cream rosettes, you need a large, 'open star' type of piping tip such as the Wilton #1M, fitted to a large piping bag. You start at the centre of the rosette and apply an even pressure to release the butter cream while moving the tip away from the centre in a tight spiral. Check out the photos below, taken by the j-amazing James for the detail...

I orientated the rosettes in each row in the opposite direction to the ones below them (i.e. I piped in the opposite direction) because I think that it emphasises the slight colour intensity change - and I like to add interest :-) To get the 'ombre' colour change, you start with a small portion of buttercream coloured as dark as you want to go, use it for the bottom row of rosettes, and with (hopefully!) the last bit of that icing, add a whole blob of uncoloured icing and mix to get your next shade lighter. 

You'd be amazed at how little coloured icing you start with for each consecutive row - colouring goes a long way! I used Wilton's gel colouring in 'creamy peach'. The lighter shades look more orange-y due to the natural yellow of NZ butter! This can be fixed a bit by using a shortening (Crisco, Kremelta, Chefade, etc) to replace some of the butter in the icing.

Cake number two was an interesting but delicious one: ginger carrot cake with white chocolate icing (also of Sweetapolita). Although it took FOREVER to cook (and even then wasn't quite done, as I found out when I cut it...), it was definitely tasty, and a nice change to raisin-and-walnut-ified carrot cake.

I wish I'd been able to take some shots of the inside of these cakes, but I was pretty busy being farewelled and all...

The macaroons, well, I'm probably not the expert on those. I had two goes, being careful with everything from ingredients to macaroonage (the technique for folding all the ingredients together), so I have no choice but to blame my tools and say that my very basic oven could not hack it. The one other time I have made macaroons they were perfect, and I wasn't nearly as careful but I DID have a fan bake oven to use at the time. Meh. People still ate them, and they were gluten-free. I used Christine's recipe from her inspiring blog, 1001 Makron - yes, that is my question in the comments for her base recipe post; it's really nice to have some interaction in the cold, hard world of blogging (hint hint!!! ;-)

These cupcakes were a bit too numerous for all the other baked goods on offer, but they were eaten up as leftovers (who knew that rhubarb was a favourite of architects!). I adapted Julie Le Clerc's vanilla cupcakes recipe by adding some rhubarb - a couple of cups, chopped and 'marinated' in castor sugar in the fridge. The icing is the simple buttercream recipe used here and the fondant flowers I covered in this post. 

I think that's all - oh wait! The ginger fig slice! I LOVE ginger slice, with a love that probably (just) tops my love of brownie. All I did was use the Edmonds Ginger Crunch recipe (which Chelsea Sugar appear to have permission to publish in that link!) and added a cup of chopped dried figs. Crystallized ginger would also go nicely in the topping. When I make ginger crunch, I at least double the topping ingredient quantities and use a good quality butter (so that it sets well), and sometimes halve the base quantities using a margarine instead (so that it doesn't set so well!). Goes nicely in a high tea set-up :-)

Mmmm... my mouth waters at the memory! When you have to say goodbye, sometimes cake is the only way to say it ;-)

By the way... you may have noticed that I've started to watermark some of my images with the blog's URL. I'm doing this in particular for the one-of-a-kind, special items that I make (not many at present, but hopefully a growing number) after reading this interesting post about copyright for images. Since my blog is being accessed around the world (hi overseas friends!) I'd love to have people come back to the source to check out where the random images spinning around the web come from. And if one day I ever want to make a dollar out of this, that's the way to play the game.

Happy baking, irrepressible ones! xo

Long Weekend Baking: Brownie Galore and Memorial Day Cupcakes

What better use for a long weekend than some time in the kitchen, baking up a storm. There are few things that make me happier! However a poorly-timed cold/flu took me down during the week so I've been trying not to go crazy with baking, let alone blogging about it. 

('Poorly-timed' because a) when is a cold ever welcome, and b) it was my BIRTHDAY, plus my parents were visiting from out of town. The cold sent my tastebuds AWOL and so I couldn't taste much of the two birthday dinners that I had :( ). 

But..............................................................................................

...would I be an 'irrepressible' baker if I could be stopped?!?!? In addition I have been reminded by a certain faithful reader (my MIL :) that I am overdue for a new post. I've been working myself up to posting about Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting/icing, but obviously I haven't reached the motivation threshold for that yet. So here's a 'filler' til then - albeit a delicious one!

While Monday (yesterday) was a holiday in NZ known as Queen's Birthday, I hear that those in the States are celebrating Memorial Day around about this time. The main reason I know this is because a friend of ours, an expat American married to a Kiwi lass, had his birthday party this weekend and it was M-Day themed. So we decked out in red, white and blue and I turned out these wee Red, White and Blue Berry Cupcakes.

I used Julie Le Clerc's delicious and super-easy Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from this post, adding about a cup and a half of mixed berries to the batter just before dividing it between cupcake cases. It gave a lovely red and blue tinge to the batter. 

The cupcake/patty pan cases were the closest I had to red, white and blue! The ones with babuska dolls I just couldn't say no to...

Although these cupcakes didn't rise as much as they would have without the addition of berries, they were beautiful and moist.

I iced them with a half-quantity of the regular buttercream (using my favourite margarine as I didn't have any butter softened at the time) from this post by filling a piping bag attached to a size #1M Wilton (large open star) piping tip, and topped with some sweets in suitable colours :)

~~~~~~~~~~ } ~ { ~~~~~~~~~~

Now for her Majesty the Queen, the very best must be presented. The obvious choice (to me) was brownie. What could be more cakey than cake, more chocolatey than chocolate, more decadent than decadence itself?!? Few things in the world can make me happier than a perfectly gooey, yet fully-cooked, fudgey bite finished with a crisp top and chewy underside. I can't imagine a heaven without brownie.

And brownie was also what I promised to make my colleagues at work for my (delayed) birthday morning tea 'shout'. I'm hoping they'll enjoy my efforts with these two amazing flavour combinations!

Bring on the brownie: Peanut Butter & Caramello Chocolate and Raspberry Dark Choc brownies

All I seem to get as gifts these days are recipe books (not that I'm complaining!), and for this birthday just gone my mum got me the fabulous Whittaker’s Passion for Chocolate recipe book. Both my sovereign-worthy brownie recipes were inspired by this fantastic publication.

NB: My conscience has recently been checked in the area of copyrighting. As a result, my general rule will be, if a recipe (that's not my own original - ha!) isn't available on the net/to the general populace by the author themselves, I shouldn't be taking the credit by putting it out there. However...if someone else has already put it there...ahem, may I present, incredibly scrumptious and drool-worthy Peanut Butter Chocolate and Caramel Brownie. 

The recipe is faithfully produced by those links belonging to the 'someone else's (not me!), but I have a few hints for making it:

1. Make sure you dissolve all the sugar in the butter and vanilla over the heat at the start, so that you don't find granules in the bottom of the cooked brownie. I did this before adding the peanut butter chocolate so that the chocolate only *just* melted and maintained its gooey peanut buttery nomminess... (sorry got carried away salivating)
2. Take the chocolate mix off the heat and let it cool for 5 to 10 minutes before adding the eggs. This is more a precautionary step that stems from a childhood nightmarish baking memory of mine, which involved eggs scrambling themselves inside cooked brownie...*shudder-worthy*
3. If you can't be bothered with (or are a little hesitant about) making your own caramel, you could do as I did and chop up a block of Caramello or other caramel-filled chocolate. I've had (other) bad baking experience where my caramel wouldn't set and my choc-caramel slice failed...so a block of Caramello gifted for my birthday by a thoughtful brother-in-law was the perfect alternative here!
4. If your oven tends to singe baked goods, make sure you put another tray or container underneath your brownie tray while it's baking to prevent the bottom from burning.

Cadbury and Whittakers, co-existing peacefully

Dark cocoa for seriously dark and decadent brownie

Someone should really stop that chocolate thief...not that I can blame her...er, them...!

All the ingredients (bar the caramel) mixed together.

Caramello dotted through the brownie batter

The delectable final product - fudgey, rich, decadent! Surely fit for a Queen :)

Brownie Number Two: Raspberry and Dark Chocolate. I've heard that this recipe is the 'best in NZ' but I shirked the 7 eggs it takes (although it probably feeds an army - let me know if you ever try it out!). So instead I tried the NZ Women's Weekly version (4 eggs) and it worked a treat :-) No shortcuts this time!

Raspberries dotted on top - attractive, healthy and oh-so-tasty!

The perfect dessert - brownie, brownie and more brownie (how could her Majesty not approve?!)

Hope you had a great long weekend and that you got some time to bake up some celebratory treats - or even to have a right royal rest! 

xo Claire

Foodie Goes To The Food Show... and finds Julie Le Clerc's Best Ever Vanilla Cupcakes!

Always in search of food-related inspiration and advice, I hurried to The Food Show when it came to Christchurch earlier this month. In particular, I was hoping to get some good baking tips from Julie Le Clerc (pronounced 'clear', as in my name!), who was running a demonstration on cakes, having just returned from India where she had been teaching the craft in a posh hotel.

When I arrived at the CBS Arena, it was like walking into a dream: the Rush Munro's (ice cream) stand was right by the door, Peta Matthias was on the big screen demonstrating something with okra, and Pic's Peanut Butter was giving away free samples!! Well, 'free' after having paid the entry fee, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (whatever that means...). 

The Village Press is a slice of Hawkes Bay, where I grew up :) 

Peta Matthias on the big screen.

Another Hawkes Bay icon! Is my foodie obsession really surprising considering that I grew up in the Fruit Bowl of New Zealand?! 

The delectable wares of the Lewis Road Creamery, where the best butter on earth is made. True story.

Turns out I'm also a sucker for gadgets... a few minutes after walking into the show I'd bought Snapper clips for bags of half-opened food (made in NZ!) and a Miracle Whisk, of all things. Little did I know how useful this whisk would shortly be...

Jason Gunn adds a flourish during a cooking challenge - in front of a mouth-watering display of Kenwood K-Mix appliances.

Annabelle White co-hosts the cooking display with Jason Gunn.

Julie's demonstration was definitely the highlight for me - she was so professional and down-to-earth, I felt that she was speaking my language! Especially when she brought out the Swiss meringue buttercream icing... (I really must post on that soon!!).

Although her icing was a bit soft during the demo, I did pick up some new icing techniques. Aaaaaaannnnnddddd.....

......the recipe for Julie's Best Ever Vanilla Cupcakes!!! 

While at The Food Show, I got a text from a friend who was organising a fundraising pub quiz two days' out. Would I or someone I know be willing to do some baking to hand out after the quiz as a thank-you to the attendees? Not one to shirk from a good work (or a challenge!), I asked how many people she was expecting to attend. Oh, 80 plus people...

A no-fail vanilla cupcake recipe was just what I needed! In particular, I was glad to find a flavour-some recipe that didn't involve too many eggs to keep the cost down (two per double-dozen is a decent ratio, I think) - especially if you need to make four batches!!! I didn't have vanilla sugar at the time, so I just used more caster sugar and added an extra teaspoon of vanilla essence for each batch. But I now have a couple of vanilla pods in a sealed container to infuse a quantity of sugar for the next time I make these cupcakes.

I topped the cupcakes with the basic buttercream recipe that I used for this cake recently, flavoured lightly with vanilla essence. 

May I present...

Julie Le Clerc's Best-ever Cupcakes

1 & 1/4 cups plain flour, sifted
1 & 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup vanilla sugar
1/4 cup soft butter or margarine
2 small eggs 
pinch of salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil (not olive)
1/3 cup full-fat sour cream or yoghurt
2 tsp vanilla extract
150mL whole milk
maple syrup or sugar syrup to coat

Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Line 24 standard-sized muffin tin holes with paper cases. [I like to spray-oil my baking cases so that the cupcakes are easy to eat out of them without sticking too much]. 

Place flour, baking powder, baking soda and both sugars into a bowl. Add butter and stir together/rub in with a wooden spoon or whisk until the butter or margarine is evenly distributed and the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. [Julie called this process 'reverse creaming', but it's really similar to when you rub butter into flour when making scones. Of course, I used my miracle whisk...!] Make a well in the centre. 

Rubbing in butter with the miracle whisk

In another bowl, combine eggs, salt, oil, sour cream and vanilla and whisk until smooth. 
Pour this wet mixture into the well in the dry ingredients and stir for a minute or two to just combine. The mixture will be fairly thick but you shouldn't see traces of butter.

Lastly, slowly add add the milk, stirring until mixed together (mixture will be quite liquidy). 

Transfer the mixture to a jug or cup and pour into paper cases, filling cases until just over half full.

Obligatory baking-in-oven shot!

Bake for 15 minutes or until cupcakes are puffed and firm but not browned. Test one by inserting a skewer into the centre to see if it comes out clean. Alternatively, press on the top of a cupcake to see if it springs back rather than leaving a fingerprint!

These cupcakes don't fracture on their tops, which makes them easier to ice!

This batch are a little too browned - but doesn't affect the taste.

If desired, brush with maple syrup or sugar syrup before icing and decorating.

Iced, wrapped and ready to be favours for pub quiz attendees.

Yes, I do believe that I'll be back at The Food Show next year!