Teh BF and I had our second anniversary on May 5th (yes, Cinco de Mayo…it’s very convenient for remembering).  Naturally, I want to bake a cake.

I had actually planned on cooking up an entire spanish fiesta for the both of us and forgoing dessert (<3 Mod Mex Cookbook), but due to time constraints, instead we decided to go out to eat (we had insanely good thai food.  More on that another time, though).  That being the case, I figured a home made dessert would definitely be in order.

Ever since I baked up the strawberry cake a few weeks ago Teh BF has been lusting after it, so that became my default cake base.  But what to do for icing this time?  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten the hang of ganache frosting – and it’s deliciously tasty – but I wanted to try out something new and different.  Cut to the chocolate swiss meringue buttercream.

With the advent of the WeddSplosion, icing has started becoming one of my primary concerns.  With the heat down here in Georgia it’s easy for icing to melt and become an awful mess.  After some research and an exceedingly helpful tip from Stephanie at Clockwork Lemon, I came upon the awesome swiss meringue buttercream.

SMB is apparently a go-to icing for wedding cakes and can hold up well in hot (or at least room temperature) weather.  Additionally it looks great, pipes well, and instead of being sickeningly sweet as many basic buttercreams tend to be, it has a mellower sweet flavor.  Oh, and the real icing on the cake (hur hur hur) is that it refrigerates and freezes well, meaning I can make it days or even weeks ahead of time and simply re-whip it and apply to the cake the day before an event.  Sounds perfect, right?

Of course because it’s so awesome, it’s also finicky.  It was a slightly intimidating task to undertake, but I was definitely ready to give this a try – especially with the fantastic walkthrough by Sweetapolita.  If you ever want to tackle the SMB, you should really read this – she makes it sounds simple and goes through tricky moments in its creation.  Give it a read!

But how was my experience?  Well…it was definitely a challenge…but mostly because for a really long time I had no idea if I was doing it right.  I definitely made a lot of mistakes.

Prime example: the first step of a swiss meringue to melt the sugar into the egg whites in a double boiler.  On my first attempt I was thinking this was the easy part – but no.  It turns out I was a little too…hasty with the melting process.  I’d turned the heat up too high and was boiling the water in my make-shift double boiler instead of simmering it…meaning that after I’d waited the allotted “approximately 5 minutes” for the sugar to melt thoroughly I definitely had melted the sugar…along with a bunch of little bits of cooked egg.  It was kind of gross.

What’s scary is that for a second I actually tried to convince myself it was salvageable.  Not wasting food in baked into my DNA and for a moment my fragile little mind couldn’t cope with the fact that I was going to have to throw away a cup of sugar and 5 egg whites.  “No,” I told myself, “those white bits in the bowl are just froth.”

But as the saying goes, if it smells like egg and looks like egg…yeah you see where I’m going with this.

So I dumped the mess down the drain and started again – this time doing it correctly.  And hooray, it worked.

Tip: An easy way to tell if the sugar is dissolved into the egg white, if you don’t want to stick your fingers in it: as you whisk them together, you’ll no longer hear the grainy sound of sugar against the bowl, and you won’t feel it either.

After you melt them together the next step is your basic “whip it into a meringue”.  This step is awesomely easy.

Next came adding the cubes of butter into the swiss meringue.  At first I was concerned about how well the butter would integrate – would it melt in smoothly, or stick to the bottom of my bowl?  Wonderfully it blended in smoothly, no issues on that count.

Then things got scary.

After incorporating all the butter, the mixture did get soupy enough where I had to put it into the fridge to firm up before further whipping; this is apparently a really common issue for SMBs.  But even after putting it into the fridge for multiple 15 minute periods, nothing seemed to be happening.

In a concerned state (not panic – concerned state) I sent some tweets to Sweetapolita asking for advice.  Graciously she reminded me to add more chunks of cool butter, chill again in the fridge, and to keep on whipping whipping whipping!  I slowly did this, methodically adding 1-2 tablespoons of butter, chilling, and whipping again, but to no avail.  I was getting worried that I had gotten this far and would have to start over yet again.  But I went ahead and added an enter 1/2 stick extra of butter and simply walked away from my mixer for about 10 minutes.

A word to the wise: do not stand over your SMB while it whips, fretting over its current state.  You are wasting your time, making yourself crazy, and probably giving yourself unnecessary gray hairs.

But after those 15ish minutes?  BAM.  Magic happened – suddenly I hit the fabled “gross-curdled-scrambled-egg-looking” stage.

 

It’s kind of tough to tell from this picture since the focus is unfortunately on the beater instead of the ingredients, but you can still tell that the buttercream is congealing and looks little gross.  This is, believe it or not, is a really good sign of progress.

I was really surprised when this suddenly happened; I had shortly before resigned myself to the fact that I would be dumping more food down the drain.  With bated breath and higher spirits I kept on with the whippin’.

Maybe another five minutes later it finally smoothed out and looked – amazingly – like real icing.  At this point I whipped in 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla and microwaved some chocolate.  I added the melted chocolate in slowly, afraid that I might melt the icing by adding too much hot ingredient at once, but I had nothing to worry about.  It turned out amazingly.  And holy moley, did it taste good.

 

Just as I’d read, this icing is incredibly stable.  Despite it being a warm day in Atlanta and me having my doors and windows open it did not melt.  It was obviously softer, but it didn’t collapse and turn into a mess – it manned up to the job.  I was proud.

It was a little more difficult to apply to the cake than the ganache frosting was since it wasn’t as firm, but it still turned out okay.  If I’d taken more care in my decoration I probably could have made it look nicer…but I was a bit harried by then and was ready to be done.  Still, the anniversary cake turned out well.  And delicious.

 

Will I make this again?  Absolutely, I will.  Now that I’ve done it once I have a much better understanding of how it should work; I can tell it’s one of those recipes that gets easier every time you make it.  My biggest issue was not realizing exactly how much extra butter I had to put in; I wasn’t expecting an entire additional half stick.  Also, I think I needed to better integrate my butter initially; it was pretty lumpy for awhile.

If you decide to do this definitely set aside several hours to experiment with.  And definitely read both Sweetapolita’s Demystifying Swiss Meringue Buttercream as well as the Whisk Kid’s How to Make Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  Both were immensely useful.  And extra thanks to Sweetapolita herself for helping me out in my time of need.  It was really nice of her. ^_^

Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Slightly adapted from Whisk Kid.

Yields ~2 cups

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into tbsp cubes
• 1 cup sugar (200 grams)
• 5 egg whites (185 grams)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 4 oz (120 grams) bittersweet chocolate, melted

Instructions:

1. In a double boiler, mix together the egg whites and sugar on low heat until melted (~5 minutes).  Don’t cook the egg whites!
2. Whip the mixture into a meringue until the bowl is neutral to the touch and a stiff meringue is reached.
3. Mix in the butter, fully incorporating 1 cube at a time.  The meringue will deflate – that’s okay.
4. After the butter is incorporated if the mixture is soupy, try chilling for 15 minutes until firm and whipping again.  If this doesn’t work, add a cube or two more of butter to thicken it up.  Above all, don’t just throw the mixture away – add butter, chill, and whip until it firms up.
5. Eventually the mixture should turn into a gross-curdled-scrambled-egg-looking mess.  This is good – you’re progressing correctly!  Just keep whipping!
6. Shortly thereafter the mixture should smooth out an you will have your swiss meringue buttercream.  Whip in the vanilla and slowly add the chocolate.  If still hot, do not add the melted chocolate all at once – you could melt the buttercream.
7. Enjoy!