How to Make Swiss Meringue Buttercream _ My Favorite Frosting!

Hey , I'm John Connell .

And today on Preppy kitchen , we're making a dreamy creamy Swiss Ring Butter Cream .

So let's get started to make this frosting .

You'll need room temperature butter , five eggs , granulated sugar , a pinch of salt and a flavoring like vanilla .

But you could use anything you want for this broth .

First off , I'm gonna get my double boiler ready .

We're gonna cook our egg whites over a very low heat coming from the steam in a water bath .

So I want a medium sized pot and maybe two inches of water .

We're gonna get this nice and hot over like medium high heat , but it will be reduced to a simmer before we add the eggs .

I'm so excited about today's video .

Swiss Morning Butter cream is one of my all time favorite frostings .

And I'm gonna be answering a ton of questions from viewers today .

So I really want to give you like a full accounting of how to make this frosting and what to do when things go wrong .

First off , we're separating the eggs and best practices to dump this into a bowl one at a time .

You're making a meringue for this and when you make meringues , you do not want any egg yolk in there .

Any fat is actually gonna inhibit your egg whites from frothing up and getting maximum fluffiness .

I'm using my clean hands to separate the egg yolks .

But a lot of you have tricks at home that you love like the water bottles that you like them , suck them out with .

Or some people like egg separators too .

So these five egg yolks will make a delicious .

You can make a creme or if you want to go crazy , you can make a French butter cream too .

My water boiling , I'm just gonna turn it down to a simmer .

Now we're gonna add 300 g or 1.5 cups of granulated sugar right into our Equis .

A lot of people ask , can I use castor sugar ?

Can I use super fine sugar ?

And the answer is yes , those will both work fine .

But here granulated is great because it's gonna melt and you're heating it up .

So a lot of times when you make meringues , you don't want to use granulated sugar just because you're like , oh no , the grana are too big .

It's gonna take too long to whip and no one wants a gritty meringue but because we're cooking it , no need to worry .

That's perfect .

All you need to do is grab a whisk .

We're gonna give this a little start just to mix it up and I wanna show you what the texture looks like right away .

So initially it's like gloms of egg white , filled with granulated sugar .

If you felt it in your fingers like this , it would feel super sandy from all that sugar today .

I'm using a thermometer .

But if you don't have one at home , I'll show you how to know when this is cooked through and done placing this overheat right now and you're gonna stir this occasionally at the beginning .

You don't have to whisk whisk , whisk whisk whisk and hover over .

Just an occasional stir is fine .

It's gonna take a while to warm up and I just want to point out like I take a little bit and feel it pure is like very , just like watery with tons of sand in it .

You're gonna see the texture change completely as it warms up .

This is a great meringue for people who are worried about food safety by the way .

So if you're someone who does not want to eat raw eggs , like you would have in a French meringue , you can make a Swiss meringue .

Skip the butter , just stop at the meringue part and it is perfect for tarts and pies and everything else .

It's been completely cooked through and it's just a wonderful marshmallow , thick , silky consistency .

I love it and just to be crystal clear , the water should never touch the bowl .

It's steam heat .

So it's gently heating all of those egg whites .

Otherwise they'll get cooked and scrambled and that's not gonna be silky and delicious .

There are a couple of points in this recipe where you're gonna think , oh my gosh , this is not right .

This went wrong .

And if you don't keep going and have faith in the recipe , it's not gonna turn itself around .

So I'll tell you when that happens .

But as long as you complete this through and just move forward with confidence , everything's gonna be OK and you're gonna be so happy .

This has been cooking for just a few minutes .

You can see the consistency is changing .

It's becoming a little bit more like gooey if you will .

And if I use my thermo pen , it's at like 1 10 right now .

I want this to get to 1 60 .

That's why I know it's cooked through and safe .

And if you feel it with your fingers , if you don't have a thermometer , it should feel like basically hot , not burning hotter scalding , but it should feel like on the very hotter end of warm and you'll feel no sugar Granules , it'll be completely smooth , but I can still feel some sugar .

I know it's not ready and it's also not hot .

It's just lukewarm as this warms up , you're gonna stir more frequently .

And one thing to watch out for is the edge right here where the bowl comes into contact with your hot pot .

That's a warm spot .

So you wanna make sure that your whisk is kind of scraping it and just keeping things moving there because it's not gonna cook the egg completely .

But it'll change the consistency to be a bit thick and you could get little Granules if you're using a thermometer to test your temperature .

The thermometer should be in the eggs but not touching the bowl .

The bowl is a different temperature than what's inside of it .

This is a great job for those people who are like , oh , I'd love to help you but I don't know how to cook .

Stir , stir , stir my eggs .

Hit 1 61 thing I want to tell you before they go in the mixing bowl .

If anyone helped you in the kitchen to do the dishes and you're not 100% sure you could just wipe the inside of your bowl with some vinegar really quickly .

And what's gonna happen is it will just take away any residual fat like you made chocolate frosting in here .

And someone kindly offered to do the dishes .

Now , you know , it's perfectly clean , no fat and this will mix up really well .

Add that amazing eggy mixture in and let me show you what the consistency looks like .

By the way , it's really frothy marshmallow .

Y it feels hot in your fingers and it is super smooth .

No more sugar is left in there .

Pop a whisk on a lot of people ask , can I do this at home with a hand mixer and the answer is yes , you can , but you have to be super patient because it takes a while .

The nice thing about a stand mixer is you can set it , walk away , come back and check on it .

If you're using a hand mixer , you have to stay there the whole time .

But I will give you a couple of tricks to expedite the process .

We're going to move this up to high and this will mix up until it is an amazing marshmallow meringue .

I cannot wait to show you , you can probably see all the steam right here .

It is hot .

We cannot add room temperature butter into this .

It'll all melt and become crazy .

So this mixer is running until we get one a beautiful meringue but two a room temperature meringue , it's gonna come down from 1 60 all the way to like 75 degrees or so .

But just to show you this has only been mixing for a few minutes and you can see already like this 60 seconds in basically , it looks like marshmallow fluff .

Just wait till you see what happens while it mixes .

I'm adding in a generous pinch of salt .

Here we go .

If you want to use salted butter , you definitely can .

You taste the salt .

Don't add any extra salt .

Couple minutes in this texture is actually nice right now and really marshmallow , but my bowl is hot .

So here's the deal .

You can let this run until it gets to room temperature on its own or you can pop into the freezer and see what's here .

That's cold that I could press against the side .

Frozen peas work really well .

And if you're using a hand mixer in a big bowl , then you can either pack it with frozen peas and stuff like that or put it into another bowl with ice .

So it cools down more quickly that way you're not hovering over with the hand mixer thing .

Oh my gosh .

I want to go places but I'm stuck here .

I'm letting this run .

I'm gonna find those peas .

Yay cool down faster .

You know , a lot of people ask is Swiss me butter cream di the same or different .

Like what's the deal with Swiss Meringue and Italian meringue ?

Butter cream and they're very similar .

Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference in the texture and the taste .

They're creamy .

They're light .

The flavor will complement your cake or dessert that you're using it with .

It's not gonna overpower it like an American buttercream can .

It's ultra sweet , but the main difference is in the ease of making it .

If you're using this with like younger kids and they're helping in the kitchen or something much safer , less risk of burning for making a Swiss .

Marring butter cream .

Italian has a sugar syrup that's 360 degrees .

So be very careful with it .

But they're both so similar .

Really creamy .

Amazing .

Flavor .

I hope you make both of them and you can tell me which one is your favorite in the comments .

Look at that stiff , stiff peak so amazing .

I just wanna temp .

It means like just under 90 degrees , it can go for a little bit more .

So while this is mixing and you're getting closer , test your butter , it should be room temperature .

And what that means is you can use your finger and press into it and you're pressing in , not crazy pressure you're adding , but it's yielding to the touch .

However , it's not falling apart and really gooey .

So if I press into it , I see my finger , the whole butter doesn't do this , that's too soft while this is mixing .

Once it's getting closer , just open your butter packages up .

We're gonna use one full pound two cups that is 452 grams of butter .

And we're going to cut this into tablespoons sized pieces .

So you can cut it while it's mixing and just do some prep work .

If you want to know , can I use less butter ?

You may not , I'm sorry .

This is the exact amount of butter that you need to stabilize .

This .

If you add less , it's going to be too liquidy .

If you add more , you can honestly add a couple of tablespoons , more butter , but you shouldn't need to .

And if you add much , it sets up really firm once it's cold .

So it's like almost too firm and , uh , things can get weird .

So normally your mixer is running between 10 , 15 minutes .

So it seems longer when you're hovering , you can go do something else and come back to it .

Really ?

You're just waiting for it to cool down .

So it's room temperature .

I , it could be a bit warmer , like upper seventies , maybe even the lower eighties .

But just be careful because that butter will turn into a soup and we'll talk about that in a second .

Ok .

This feels like warmer room temperature .

That's fine .

And now I wanna tell you about a best practice switching to a paddle for most butter creams .

You make like an American buttercream or many other things .

You wanna use a paddle on low speed because you don't want to beat a tonn of air into it .

It sounds weird here because this is like nothing but air .

It's like air full of billions of air babbles .

You can totally use a whisk attachment for this entire thing .

But I just feel like a paddle will give you best results for beating that butter in and having a creamy texture that doesn't have a ton of big bubbles in it paddle attachment on .

Now , while mixing on lowish speed , we're gonna add our butter a tablespoon at a time and this is the point where I've had friends and also readers on the blog , tell me that they started adding the butter in and it turned into soup .

So people panic and like , oh my gosh , wait , I'm gonna stop adding butter and keep mixing .

So it fixes itself before I add more butter in .

It will never fix itself .

It's not gonna happen .

You have to add all the butter in every last drop and then like magic , it's gonna come together and be amazing .

And if it doesn't , we can fix that .

And I'll tell you how , add this in a tablespoon at a time , like making a meringue where you casually add the sugar in it .

A little drizzle , just dropping little coins of butter in .

It's also something really fun for kids to do that .

If they wanna help , just adding the butter and after you cut it to make a frosting .

So right now I've added in like half a cup of butter and this is what's happening is really becoming soupier and gloomier .

Remember those beautiful stiff peaks , those are gone and this is with like making it the perfect way .

So the butter colder room temperature , this room temperature I warmish .

If your butter was too warm and like really soft , it's a pool , it's a pool of liquid , but it's OK .

Just keep adding it in and we'll see what happens .

This is like the very best case scenario .

If it's looking really liquidy though , that's fine too , just keep adding it .

Keep going .

A lot of people will ask , how does this taste like I've never had it before .

And the answer is it tastes however you flavor it .

If you flavor it with vanilla , you will really taste the vanilla .

If you flavor it with chocolate or caramel or orange blossom water , those flavors will come through really strongly but it's not gonna be overtly sweet .

It won't be like , oh my God , what's going on ?

This isn't really compliment the cake and um honestly , I love it because you can eat more .

You never feel sick .

You're like , oh that was like so light and refreshing and delicious .

Most of the butter is in and it's only gotten worse .

It looks like a lake in the middle here .

But I will point out that this is not totally mixed .

You have pure meringue on the bottom and that's not OK .

You wanna have a homogenous mixture .

So just scrape the bowl down really once is all you need to do it .

And then we're going to keep adding the butter and this amount of frosting is enough to decorate two or even three layer eight inch cake .

You could decorate a three layer , six inch cake and have a ton of frosting left over for really great designs or you can decorate , I would say about 24 cupcakes with it .

And the nice thing about Swiss Maring Butter Cream is it stores really well .

So you can add this onto your dessert .

And if you have any extra leftover , it'll store for a week in the fridge in an airtight container or a month in the freezer .

Also in an airtight container .

One caveat though is if you just try to use it out of the container after it thaws you thaw it on the counter , it's gonna look horrible .

So it will not have this consistency , but the fix is really easy .

We'll show you how that happens .

Last one , two tablespoons are in let this mix for a minute and then we're gonna see how this looks because one you no lumps can be here .

I see little lumps of butter .

You got to keep mixing it up and you can increase this to a medium .

Oh My gosh .

Wait , I'm gonna stop this so you can come look .

So you saw the texture was like that like kind of very liquidy .

And I just out of the last piece of butter and all of a sudden do you see this ?

It's cloudy now .

It's like a cloud of delicious frosting .

You wanna see the consistency look like this ?

It looks like beautiful baroque clouds in the air .

It's not gloopy .

If it's gloopy after you add the butter , it's OK .

Things were a little bit warm .

Sometimes it's a hot day just happens .

Pop the bowl into the fridge for about five minutes .

Give it a mix if it's still gloopy , another five minutes , give it a mix .

Check it again .

It will fix itself every single time .

So sometimes it's just too hot that day .

I'm just gonna mix this for one more minute because I see some tiny clumps of butter .

I want to be silky smooth and now that one extra minute made even more of a difference because beautiful buttery silky and look at that mirror smooth finish , come and take a look at this finish .

This is why everyone loves swimming , buttercream .

Besides the taste , it decorates so beautifully .

Do you see that if you're frosting , sitting out for a while like this or if you stored it in the refrigerator or freezer and brought it back to room temperature ?

You'll see it has a crazy foamy texture , not silky smooth , it's not ruined .

All you need to do is give it a whisk for 30 seconds .

Look at this frosting and take a look at that foamy consistency .

You see how it's full of air bubbles , that's what it looks like .

It's full of these foamy air bubbles and it just won't smooth out .

You can use a whisk or pop it onto your machine and just give it a really quick 32nd whisk .

And you'll see .

Look at that beautiful meringue .

It came right back to life and it's a silky smooth .

There are a couple more huge things I need to discuss .

One , the flavor .

If you want a vanilla butter cream , just add in .

Oh , a couple of teaspoons of vanilla .

It's totally up to you .

Mix it in , it'll be amazing and delicious and really highlight that vanilla .

You can also mix in melted chocolate that you could mix in caramel .

You could have made this with brown butter .

Instead , you could brown the butter like we talk about in this channel all the time .

And that has a wonderful depth of flavor .

But any single flavoring will work in this even like the juice from Marino Cherries .

But there's another thing you saw that consistency .

It was amazing .

It doesn't last .

You have to use this frosting either right away or like let's say I want to go have lunch in a minute .

So I'm gonna come back and I made my frosting or the cakes still warm .

I have to wait .

That's fine .

I'm gonna let some frosting sit and show you what it looks like you're gonna see .

It looks like sea foam .

It gets all these crazy big air bubbles .

You're like , oh I don't like this .

What happened ?

That just happens if it sits for like five minutes or more .

So if you're making the frosting , give it a quick whip just 30 seconds and it'll be silky smooth again .

That's all it needs is like 30 seconds of whipping up and it'll be amazing .

The last point I need to show you is how to color this .

This frosting does not color like regular frosting .

It will never have a saturated hue unless you do one kind of like tricky step .

Uh which I'll show you right now .

Normally with the frosting , you just add the color in and it's like , oh , perfect or you add a little bit more , gets a deeper color here with a meringue based frosting like Swiss or Italian .

I'm gonna add in some fua gel food coloring , which is very strong and very pink .

So I'm gonna mix this up and you're like , oh , that's not what I expected .

It's like such a pastel .

I actually love this color the way it is right now , but it's not the color of the food coloring and it's never gonna get deeper .

This was enough food coloring to color the entire batch of frosting .

What happens is there's little micro beads of color suspended throughout this after you mix it and you always get these pastel colors , which I actually love , but we're not always making pastel cakes .

So if you want to get a true color and not add a ton of food coloring in , you take a little batch of this like a couple of tablespoons , add food coloring in more than you think you might need and you microwave this for 30 seconds to melt it .

I'm gonna pop this in the microwave and show you what happens .

So here this is it after microwaving , this is the color it was so you can see the difference , mix it up , it gets even darker .

Now this is the base you use to color the frosting .

So Now , if I want to have the entire batch be magenta or fu I would just pour that in and mix it up .

So if you add the frosting in now , it will have the color .

The moral of the story is melt little batches of the butter cream with food coloring and mix that in to make your amazing colors .

Then it'll be just right and so beautiful too .

So if you're coloring batches of frosting , grab some more frosting now and plop that into your melted colored frosting and mix it up .

This frosting is the perfect vehicle for delicious flavor .

So for example , if you wanted a chocolate butter cream that's gonna beat to die for just melt as much chocolate as you want , it's really up to you and add this in .

Do you want chocolate peanut butter ?

Just melt chocolate and peanut butter together and you can mix that in and it's gonna be the most amazing frosting ever .

It really lets the chocolate shine through without adding a cloying sweetness that takes away from the dessert .

Look at this so beautiful instantly and the nice part about adding chocolate in is it sets up even firmer .

So your cake will like not topple over or melt .

It'll be nice and strong .

I've got to show you how this pipes fill up your piping bag .

And have you ever seen a more perfect dollop ?

Look at that .

That brings joy to my face .

This is gonna be your new best friend in the kitchen .

This frosting is so delicious .

You'll be eating it by the spoonful .

That is incredibly delicious .

You've gotta make this recipe .

If you like this video , check out my frosting playlist .