Raspberry Buttercream

Well, it is the weekend again! That means it is time to get back to work in the kitchen. Not too long back I was asked if I could make a wedding cake. I haven't had much experience baking/decorating cakes, but I figured this would be a good opportunity to learn everything there is to know about cakes! So I am going to start developing the perfect cake for such an occasion.

The cake that was requested was a raspberry buttercream on a white cake, so this is going to be my starting point. While there are many different recipes for white cakes, first I want to figure out my frosting. This weekend I plan on going through different types of buttercream frosting to determine the initial recipe to work with. Once I choose a recipe, I hope to tweak it to make it just perfect. Future work will focus on developing the cake recipe, and finally creating cake decorations. This will be a long process, so bear with me.

So, a bit about buttercreams. There are three main types of buttercream frostings: American, Swiss, and Italian. While they all have their similarities, they are also quite distinct from one another. American buttercream frostings are quite simple to make, and are very commonly found in store purchased cakes. The main ingredients are sugar, butter, and cream, with added vanilla or other flavorings as desired. This type of frosting is both easy to make and delicious!

Swiss buttercream frostings are a bit more complicated. This involves heating a sugar and egg white solution on the stove and whisking the heated solution into a nice meringue. Once it is cooled then the butter is added, followed by the vanilla or other flavorings. 

Finally the Italian buttercreams. Here, a sugar syrup is made on the stove top, heated to a soft ball state, and is added to egg whites which have been whipped to form stiff peaks. And once cooled the butter is incorporated followed by the flavoring, similar to the Swiss buttercream.

So, in the following days I will be making each of these different frostings, and filling you in on the secrets to my success and the causes of my failures. I don't expect all of them to turn out my first try, but who knows! I feel a lot of cupcakes are going to be made this weekend! So if you know anyone who wants any I could use taste testers, haha.

I will keep you posted on my buttercream adventures! Thanks for reading, and sorry it has been so long!

Jake