Sunday, March 13, 2011

Buttercream cautionary tale

I tried to make Alton Brown's buttercream today and it was pretty much a fail. It seems to have a lot of potential, but mine fell apart after I got about 1/3 of the butter blended in. The egg foam just collapsed and it got very runny. After refrigerating and adding a bunch of powdered sugar it seems to be stable. (Of course that defeats the less-sweet purpose of the whole thing.) After reading the comments, I discovered a lot of people had the same issue. There were others who thought it was the best thing ever. Who knows?

If I tried it again, I would definitely pay close attention to the room temperature butter and egg thing (my butter may not have been quite that warm), and I would use white corn syrup instead of brown. It affects the color and flavor too much, imo.

1 comment:

Margaret Mary said...

Actually, this was my weekend for recipe failures. I also tried to make little cakes for the Tea using this mold and it was a terrible product! I tried several different methods and all produced cakes that did not turn out cute. Which would be the whole point of making a daisy-shaped petit four, don't you agree? I'm returning it.
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&rlz=1C1AVSX_enUS413US413&q=bite+size+daisy+mold&bav=on.2,or.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=16758666917503543891&sa=X&ei=ult9Tba5KIz5rAH88eHfBQ&ved=0CDQQ8gIwAg#