![]() | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
![]() | |
Alternative names | Butter Icing |
---|---|
Type | Icing or filling |
Main ingredients | Fats (usually butter; sometimes lard or margarine), powdered sugar |
Buttercream, also referred to as butter icing or butter frosting, is used for either filling, coating or decorating cakes. The main ingredients are butter and some type of sugar.
Buttercream is commonly flavored with vanilla. Other common flavors are chocolate, fruits, and other liquid extracts. Food coloring is commonly added if the buttercream is being used as decoration. Buttercream can be piped or spread in decorative patterns and shapes.
Mock cream or buttercream is a simple buttercream made by creaming together butter and powdered sugar to the desired consistency and lightness. Some or all of the butter can be replaced with margarine, or shortening. [1] [2] A small amount of milk or cream is added to adjust the texture. Usually twice as much sugar as butter by weight is used. Some recipes also call for powdered milk or meringue powder.
Compared to other types of buttercream, American buttercream has fewer ingredients, and is quicker and easier to make. [3] It is also sweeter because of the high amount of sugar. [3] Because it does not have an egg or cooked base, it is more stable and melts less easily in warm temperatures. [1]
Meringue buttercream is made by beating softened butter with either Italian or Swiss meringue until the mixture is emulsified and light. [1] [4] The meringue must be cooled to room temperature in order not to melt the butter (which has a variable melting point below 35 °C (95 °F)) [5] as it is subsequently beaten in.
The meringue gives buttercream a structure that is more stable in warm temperatures. [1]
Swiss meringue is made by heating granulated sugar and egg whites until the sugar dissolves, then whipping it until it forms a meringue. The meringue is then whipped with butter and flavorings.
Italian meringue is made by drizzling a hot sugar syrup into already whipped egg whites while continuing to whip. [6] The meringue is then whipped with butter and flavorings.
Ermine frosting is also known as boiled milk frosting or cooked flour frosting. It is made by cooking flour and milk until it becomes a thick paste or roux. [7] The cooked milk mixture is then beaten with butter until light.
Ermine frosting is considered to be old-fashioned, and is less common than other types of buttercream. It is less sweet and has a texture similar to whipped cream. [7] [8] Traditionally, ermine frosting was used to frost red velvet cake. [8]
French buttercream (also known as pâte à bombe -based buttercream or common buttercream) is made with whipped egg yolks. [9] [10]
Custard-based buttercream, also known as German buttercream or crème mousseline, [11] is prepared by beating together pastry cream and softened butter, and may be additionally sweetened with extra confectioners' sugar. [1] [12]
Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts. In some parts of the world there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
Custard is a variety of culinary preparations based on sweetened milk, cheese, or cream cooked with egg or egg yolk to thicken it, and sometimes also flour, corn starch, or gelatin. Depending on the recipe, custard may vary in consistency from a thin pouring sauce to the thick pastry cream used to fill éclairs. The most common custards are used in custard desserts or dessert sauces and typically include sugar and vanilla; however, savory custards are also found, e.g., in quiche.
Caramel is an orange-brown confectionery product made by heating a range of sugars. It can be used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons or candy bars, or as a topping for ice cream and custard.
Icing, or frosting, is a sweet, often creamy glaze made of sugar with a liquid, such as water or milk, that is often enriched with ingredients like butter, egg whites, cream cheese, or flavorings. It is used to coat or decorate baked goods, such as cakes. When it is used between layers of cake it is known as a filling.
A mille-feuille, also known by the names Napoleon in North America, vanilla slice in the United Kingdom, and custard slice, is a French dessert made of puff pastry layered with pastry cream. Its modern form was influenced by improvements made by Marie-Antoine Carême.
Hot milk cake is a butter sponge cake from American cuisine. It can be made as a sheet cake or a layer cake, or baked in a tube pan. The hot milk and butter give the cake a distinctive fine-grained texture, similar to pound cake.
Chocolate cake or chocolate gâteau is a cake flavored with melted chocolate, cocoa powder, or both. It can also have other ingredients such as fudge, vanilla creme, and other sweeteners.
A génoise, also known as Genoese cake or Genovese cake, is a French sponge cake named after the city of Genoa and associated with French cuisine. It was created by François Massialot in the late 17th century. Instead of using chemical leavening, air is suspended in the batter during mixing to provide volume.
A chiffon cake is a very light cake made with vegetable oil, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and flavorings. Being made with vegetable oil, instead of a traditional solid fat such as butter or shortening, it is easier to beat air into the batter.
Lane cake, also known as prize cake or Alabama Lane cake, is a bourbon-laced baked cake traditional in the American South. It was invented or popularized by Emma Rylander Lane (1856-1904), a native and long-time resident of Americus, Georgia, who developed the recipe while living in Clayton, Alabama, in the 1890s. She published the original recipe in Some Good Things to Eat (1898). Her original recipe included 8 egg whites, 1 cup butter, 1 cup sweet milk, 2 cups sifted sugar, 3 ¼ cups sifted flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 tablespoon vanilla and called for the layers to be baked in pie tins lined with ungreased brown paper rather than in cake pans. The filling called for 8 egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup seeded raisins, 1 wine-glass of whiskey or brandy, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Dobos torte, also known as Dobosh, is a Hungarian sponge cake layered with chocolate buttercream and topped with caramel. The layered pastry is named after its inventor, Hungarian chef József C. Dobos, a delicatessen owner in Budapest. In the late 1800s, he decided to create a cake that would last longer than other pastries in an age when cooling techniques were limited. The round sides of the cake are coated with ground hazelnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, or almonds, and the hardened caramel top helps to prevent drying out, for a longer shelf life.
The poppy seed roll is a pastry consisting of a roll of sweet yeast bread with a dense, rich, bittersweet filling of poppy seed. An alternative filling is a paste of minced walnuts, or minced chestnuts.
Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.
Crème brûlée or crème brulée, also known as burnt cream or Trinity cream, and virtually identical to crema catalana, is a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hardened caramelized sugar. It is normally served slightly chilled; the heat from the caramelizing process tends to warm the top of the custard, while leaving the center cool. The custard base is generally flavored with vanilla in French cuisine, but can have other flavorings. It is sometimes garnished with fruit.
Bumpy Cake was created by Sanders Confectionery, of Detroit, Michigan, in the early 1900s and was known as "The Sanders Devil's Food Buttercream Cake" when it was first introduced. It is made of chocolate devil's food cake that is topped with rich buttercream bumps, and then draped in a chocolate ganache. Now more than a century old, this is a classic confection.
Ube cake is a traditional Filipino chiffon cake or sponge cake made with ube halaya. It is distinctively vividly purple in color, like most dishes made with ube in the Philippines.
Pie in American cuisine has roots in English cuisine and has evolved over centuries to adapt to American cultural tastes and ingredients. The creation of flaky pie crust shortened with lard is credited to American innovation.
Butterscotch pie is a pie in American cuisine made by cooking brown sugar with egg yolks, corn starch, milk or cream, and butter to make a butterscotch custard pie filling which is topped with meringue and browned in the oven. Variations on the basic pie can be made with grated chocolate or orange rind which are sprinkled on the warm filling under the meringue topping.