Transcript
“Hi My name is Elizabeth Sutton and I’m one of the decorators her at Amanda Oakleaf’s Cakes. I really enjoy working here and being a cake decorator and more specifically, cupcake decorator. You can come visit us at our store front it’s at 1 Pauline Street in Winthrope, Massachussetts and you can also visit our website at OakleafCakes.com, and today I’m going to be talking to you about cupcake decorating.
Today I am going to be showing you how to make Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream. To start that, we are going to take a quarter cup of water and pour it into the boiler along with one and one fourths cup of sugar. It seems like a lot of sugar, but believe me it’s enough. So to measure the temperature of the sugar water we’re going to use a candy thermometer, and we want that to get up to about two hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Just watch it, it takes a little while. When the sugar starts to bubble and get thick, that’s probably a good time to check it because it should be about two fifty at that point. Now while that’s going on, you want to pour eight large egg whites, it comes out to about a cup, into your stand mixer along with one teaspoon of cream of tartar. The cream of tartar helps to stabilize the egg whites, helps them whip up really nice. So you want to let that go until soft peaks form. Now that soft peaks have formed in the egg whites we’re going to add a third cup of sugar. I usually keep it separate next to the bowl so I don’t forget because it’s really easy to forget to add it, it’s the oomph of meringue, so it makes it taste a lot better. While that’s going on you want to check your syrup. So now that our syrup has reached two hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit, we’re going to turn our stand mixer down to very slow because you don’t want this to splash up at you, and you’re going to pour it in, making careful you’re not going to hit the bowl or the whisk, or else the sugar will harden instantly and then you will get lumps of sugar syrup in your frosting. You want to let everything mix in and then turn your syrup back up to a medium-high level. Okay. So the bowl feels about room temperature, it’s been about 7 minutes, and now it’s time to add the butter. So you want to turn it back up to a low speed. For this we’re going to be using six sticks, or a pound and a half of butter. You want to add the butter in slow increments, about two tablespoons at a time. You want the butter to be soft, but not melted. So once you’ve added all the butter, you want to turn the meringue up to a pretty high speed. You want to let everything to incorporate, about two minutes. All right, once your mixture looks light and fluffy, you want take the last step and add a tablespoon of vanilla extract. We use the real stuff, I wouldn’t recommend using imitation vanilla extract unless it’s a necessity. And then you’re going to turn it back on to incorporate, and once that’s done, that’s it that’s how you make Italian Meringue Buttercream.”
