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Murdered buttercream

post #1 of 7
7/3/11 at 10:52am
Thread Starter 

I messed up on some Italian buttercream recently and wanted some experienced opinions on fixing it. I'm mainly wondering if it's worth it to mess up my mixer and have to clean up. I inadvertently read the butter wrong on the recipe and only used about half as much. It had the consistency of smooth gravy. I kept it and made a new batch. Can I just add more whipped butter at room temp using a paddle or whip attachment to fix it? This is what I get for procrastinating during the day and working late at night. But the cake ended up fine.

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post #2 of 7
7/3/11 at 11:33am

Yeah. Remember if it looks broken or curdled, that just means you have to beat it more.

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post #3 of 7
7/3/11 at 4:33pm
Thread Starter 

I figured as much. It works on paper. It was just interesting that I beat it for EVER and it remained soupy. You can only imagine the profanity when I realized what had happened the next morning.

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post #4 of 7
7/3/11 at 6:57pm

bl,

adding whipped or softened butter?

If you're going to bring it back you will need to get you soupy mixture a little cooler the the new butter. If you haven't actually killed

the mix you will want to gets your so called curds big. Then add butter. I have actually chilled it down and brought it back with a small bowl of warm water under the bowl as it comes back.

Good luck

pan

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post #5 of 7
7/18/11 at 5:07pm

Are you waiting until the whites are thoroughly cooled before attempting to add the butter?

 

Getting 'soup' confuses me, although sometimes room temp is too hot and the butter doesn't have ANY structure because of it. I have on a few occasions had to move my mixer into the walk ins and now keep an extension cord for that reason. Particularly when 'room temp' is 114deg and 90% humidity from my proofers and bread ovens!

 

Tincook is correct though.. it will definitely look curdled at the 'midway' point

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post #6 of 7
7/22/11 at 7:18pm

sounds for sure like your whites werent cooled enough. Waiting extra long wont hurt the meringue it should not feel even the slightest bit warm when you touch the whipped whites, OR try a different receipe, the one we used in school was this...

 

yield: 1lb 11oz

 

italian meringue

sugar 8oz

water 2 oz

egg whites (room temp) 4 oz

 

butter, soft 14oz

lemon juice 1/2 tsp

vanilla 3/4 tsp

 

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post #7 of 7
7/24/11 at 3:31pm

If you read the butter incorrectly (and added only half of what you needed), there wasn't enough fat to hold the emulsion, which is why your texture was soupy; given the amount of time since the original post, you might not have that batch any longer; but you could warm it up, make another batch of meringue, add the butter and half way through start adding your failed batch (the soup) a little at a time.  Then proceed to add the rest of the butter from the original batch and what you were missing from the soupy batch.

 

 

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