# Butter cream icing



## wannabechef (May 7, 2008)

Me again...I also want to make a buttrecream good for making roses... I made some last night but it was too soft...can i just add more powdered sugar? Or is it all together no good..it was an icing sugar, shortening and vanilla recipe
Any help is greatly needed and always appreciated!:roll:


----------



## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

Here's the real thing, buttercream--made with (drum roll please!) Butter!

150 gr water
10 gr corn syrup
400 gr sugar

150 gr Eggwhites

500 gr butter (room temp)

Bring water, sugar and corn syrup to 119 c. Whip eggwhites, add in hot syrup on low speed, whip until cold. Beat in softened butter. Flavour with just about anything under the sun.


----------



## m brown (May 29, 1999)

for flowers, you want to avoid butter as it melts. shortening will give you the stability you need. 

chill your shortening bc to make thick again.


----------



## cakesbysarah (Apr 7, 2008)

You can make a stiff buttercream and have virtually limitless possibilities... I agree with M Brown on the shortening -- it's a lot more stable. But...anything with a fat for a base will eventually melt, even if it's a stabilized, saturated fat like shortening. Even more stable than stiff buttercream would be royal icing. You can make your flowers ahead, they'll harden, still be technically edible, and look a lot nicer in the long run.


----------



## wannabechef (May 7, 2008)

Could you give me a recipe for the stiffer butter cream? Thank you very much!


----------



## izbnso (May 12, 2007)

Wannabechef, 
You should be able to make a rose with a powdered sugar buttercream icing made entirely out of butter (butter tastes good , shortening tastes bad ). Play with your consistancy by adding more powdered sugar. If it gets too stiff thin it with milk or cream.
It sounds like you are having trouble with roses. Are you teaching yourself? If so, do your roses look like a crayon on a hot sidewalk? It may not be due to the icing, but a case of what I call "over shooting the rose".
If you are teaching yourself, some book or some body probably told you that the Wilton tip #104 is the standard rose tip, and it is. 
However, it has been my experience (lots of students have taken classes from me because they taught themselves a good bit but still couldn't get the rose) that most folks learning from a book get the basic hand movements correct but are attempting to make a rose the size of one they see on a cake in the grocery store bakery. Well, the grocery store bakery isn't using tip #104, they are using the giant rose tip (cant' recall the # off the top of my head, but it's the one that is too big for a standard coupler). 
If your icing is too stiff the tops of your "rose petals" will kind of crack and split, I sometimes make the icing too stiff to get that effect on purpose. To get rid of that you can add a small amount of corn syrup which gives a sort of elastic quality to the icing.
I hate to tell you, but my standard recipe is to throw 2 sticks of butter in the bowl and when it's soft I cut open a two pound bag of powdered sugar and keep adding until it hits the consistancy I want, throw in some vanilla extract and if I add too much sugar I add some cream to compensate.
Hope that helps.


----------



## jbd (Mar 17, 2008)

That would be a tip # 127. As I recall there is also the slightly smaller 126 and 125. I can't verify that at the moment as all that stuff is packed away.


----------

