White Chocolate Buttercream - Comfortably Domestic (2024)

FAQs

Why is my white chocolate buttercream lumpy? ›

If your butter is too cold, you'll find there are still small lumps of butter in your buttercream. If you use salted butter, omit the salt included in the recipe. Icing sugar: Also known as powdered sugar or confectioners sugar. It's important to sift your sugar, otherwise, your buttercream will be lumpy.

Ganache holds its shape better, and sets up more quickly than buttercream, allowing you to keep smooth and crisp ganache edges when covering with fondant. Ganache also has a higher melting point than buttercream, which means that on warmer days, buttercream would melt faster than ganache.

The best way to distinguish frosting from buttercream is through the ingredients. While both contain powdered sugar, fat, flavouring and sometimes milk or water, frosting does not contain any butter whatsoever. Instead, frosting is usually made with shortening or cream cheese.

One common reason is using cold butter straight from the fridge, which can result in lumpy buttercream. To avoid this, it's best to use softened butter at room temperature, so it can easily mix with the other frosting ingredients.

And, if it's gritty, first try mixing it some more to make sure you have given the sugar enough mixing time. However, if it's still gritty perhaps you need a little more moisture. Another proven method has been to let the buttercream rest for a few hours or overnight. Then whip it again, and it should help fix it.

Chocolate ganache sets so much faster than buttercream, and it's a lot harder for it to melt once it sets. It also sets a lot firmer than buttercream, so once you stack cakes on top. it is so much safer to do so without denting the bottom tier.

Yes, white chocolate ganache should eventually stiffen up at room temperature, but does to go back to a completely solid state. Depending on the chocolate you're using, this can take anywhere from a few hours to overnight. The fridge or freezer can help speed up the process (see above).

There are two common reasons ganache breaks: Too little liquid: Using chocolate with a very high percentage of cacao (above 70%; e.g., very dark bittersweet chocolate) means your ganache will have too little sugar (which melts to form liquid), and too much solid chocolate.

Swiss meringue buttercream is probably the most standard buttercream for pastry professionals. It is incredibly smooth, making it an extremely popular choice for icing cakes.

Buttercream, cream cheese frosting, and ganache are particularly popular choices due to their rich texture and flavor.

What is the best buttercream for smooth finish? ›

SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM

Pros – It is soft, smooth and not too sweet. SM buttercream is arguably the best frosting in terms of cake decorating because it is the easiest way to get those smooth clean lines.

Yes, this is absolutely correct. The longer you beat, the more air you incorporate in your buttercream, thus, it will have lots of holes or air-pockets, it will also make the colour lighter. If you will use your buttercream primarily for filling or maybe as simple swirls, then this is ok.

But the taste was so good, because we chose to make this frosting with the Extra Brute cocoa powder. And the most surprising thing was the mouthfeel. The buttercream made with the cocoa powder looked a little grainy, but actually had a smoother and softer mouthfeel than the one made with melted chocolate.

A: Buttercream curdling or 'splitting' after adding milk is a common problem, especially in winter. The reason for this is that butter is essentially an emulsion and when you add milk the additional water (full cream milk is almost 90% water) causes butter emulsion to split.

After you've mixed powdered sugar with butter to make buttercream you might notice little white lumps or specks in the buttercream. The reason for that is that the butter hasn't been left to come to room temperature so the butter is too cold.

Chocolate is very sensitive to heat and melts at just above body temperature. But if it gets too hot then it will turn grainy or lumpy and the fats will start to separate out. Sometimes this can be corrected by adding some cream or water.

Take 1/4 of the buttercream out and microwave it until it melts into a liquid and is no longer gritty (or heat it in a Bain Marie aka double boiler). Pour the liquid buttercream back into the rest and whip it up. The heat should melt those residual sugar crystals.