Saturday, April 19, 2014

Cutie


Oh, here she is.  She doesn't have a mouth and has chocolate chip eyes but she is sitting up and her ears are on and her head didn't fall off so I'd say she was a success.  I used Swiss buttercream for the frosting.  It's a little like frosting with shaving cream.  It tastes light and wonderful.  It can be tricky. It didn't work for me the first time I tried it but this time was good.  I cut the original recipe in half. Here's the recipe and proportions I used:

Swiss Buttercream

1 1/4 cups sugar
4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups butter at very soft room temperature  (yes, three sticks) cut into chunks
1 tsp. vanilla


Whisk egg whites and sugar in a stainless steel bowl over a pot of simmering water until  sugar is dissolved and mixture is quite warm...about 160 degrees F.   Remove the bowl from the pot and beat until fluffy and cooled down.  This is important because the next step is to slowly add the butter and if the egg/sugar mixture isn't cooled then you'll melt the butter. 
So, slowly add the butter chunk by chunk and the vanilla.  Beat until smooth and it looks like shaving cream.  Same consistency, too.  You will be able to tell if it's too runny.  This morning mine was because the sugar mixture wasn't cooled down enough and my butter was melty but I let it all sit for awhile and whipped it again and it worked.  Save yourself the hassle and just make sure the egg/sugar coming off the stove is whipped up nice and is cooled down.

It really is a delicious frosting. 

Happy Easter

1 comment: