Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream: An Exercise in Perseverance

August 5, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 16 Comments

Not the most attractive photo…

*** UPDATE: CLICK HERE FOR A NEW METHOD THAT ACTUALLY WORKS!!

** EDITED TO ADD: After having frosted the wedding cake using this frosting, I have to say that I do not recommend this recipe – it just plain did not work very well and was extremely hard to work with, unfortunately 🙁 I almost want to take down the recipe, but this was a pretty epic post and I’m kind of proud of it, so I’m going to leave it. The frosting tasted awesome (like liquid cheesecake – emphasis on the liquid) but it would not thicken up enough to spread easily; it would not un-curdle no matter how long I stirred it, chilled it, or left it at room temperature; and it was so soupy that I had to frost the cake in several coats, chilling between each coat to build up the frosting layer. And because it was curdled, it didn’t have a smooth finish (which was OK because the look of the wedding cake was kind of rustic, but it was still annoying). Bottom line: cream cheese has too much water in it to make a proper Swiss meringue buttercream, which relies on the high fat content in the butter to emulsify with the egg whites. If you’re looking for a cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream frosting recipe, check out this one – it works around the cream cheese/high water content problem.**

Alternative titles for this post:

Zen and the Art of Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Testing Your Patience with Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream

How to Give Yourself Gray Hairs and an Anxiety Disorder

So. After the wedding cake trial I did a while back, I discerned that I needed to find a cream cheese frosting not made with confectioners’ sugar – more specifically, that I wanted to make a Swiss meringue buttercream frosting with cream cheese. A quick Google search turned up a recipe for Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream, and lo and behold, this very frosting had been used on a wedding cake! Double score!!

For those who don’t know, a Swiss meringue buttercream frosting is made by beating butter into a whipped meringue base of egg whites and sugar (heated to 140˚F to make them safe). I was a bit apprehensive at the thought of this, mostly because of the amount of egg whites that are required (being that I’m on a budget, and egg whites are more expensive than confectioners’ sugar). However, this frosting is seriously delicious – creamy, light, buttery, and not overly sweet; basically it blows any confectioners’ sugar frosting out of the water – so I was willing to overcome my initial qualms in favour of deliciousness. I had made Swiss meringue buttercream once before, back when I was in high school, and I don’t remember it being terribly difficult or onerous – I was only about 16, so it can’t have been *that* hard – but I had also read a few posts about how this type of frosting can be the most demoralizing endeavour because it just. won’t. come. together, and I knew I needed to do a test run.

I scaled down the recipe to use only 1 egg white and got down to business. A full 3 hours of beating/whisking/stirring later, I still had soupy, curdled glop (albeit delicious, cheesecake-flavoured glop). I was reluctant to give up, because this recipe and all others I had read tell you to just keep beating it and not lose hope – it will eventually work out. But I had to go to bed, so I declared this small test batch a failure. I did not, however, lose faith in the recipe or the method: I figured that the amount was too small, that the beaters of the KitchenAid weren’t able to get into the mixture far enough to really do anything, that it was just too hot in the kitchen and the butter and cream cheese were melting. I made plans for a second test run with a slightly larger batch.

At this point, I got a few tips from Jackie of Foodology, including a link to Sweetopolita’s post Swiss Meringue Buttercream Demystified. Reading this helped a lot, and introduced the idea of chilling the mixture when it gets too soupy. I started on the second test batch with renewed hope and things went marginally better – however it was really hot in the kitchen (mid-day at the end of July) so I had to alternate between bouts of chilling and beating the tar out of the frosting in the KitchenAid. And finally, over two hours later, it started to come together. Whew! Up until this point, I was planning on making the frosting in Vancouver, but now I decided I was going to make it beforehand and just refrigerate it, because if it didn’t come together when I needed it to, I would seriously lose it.

So, based on all I had learned, I made a larger batch (half of what I needed in total, to accommodate the size of my mixer), starting early in the morning to avoid the hot kitchen issue. You are supposed to let your butter/cream cheese come to room temperature, but I decided not to let either get too soft, thinking that the heat of the kitchen would be less of an issue that way. I whipped up the meringue, beat in the butter and cream cheese, and then set the mixer on high to do its thing. And two hours later, nothing. Still a curdled mess. I took the whisk attachment off the mixer and half-heartedly stirred at the frosting by hand a few times – and EUREKA! With slow stirring, the frosting somehow started to come together in a thick, fluffy mass. I put on the paddle attachment and turned the speed to low, and a (long) while later, I had proper frosting!! But seriously, it still took all bloody day. And I still had another batch to make.

But now I *finally* had it figured out. While the previous batch was going, I read this Swiss meringue buttercream tutorial and had two more epiphanies: 1) beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form; and 2) once the butter is added, stir on low speed with the paddle attachment. I had sort of figured this out for myself, but this was the first time I had actually read that SLOW SPEED was the important thing here (I don’t know if I just missed it in all the other tutorials I read, or what). The fourth time is apparently the charm, or maybe I was just used to it, because the frosting came together fine – but it still took over an hour of stirring!

If you’re still reading, you’re probably wondering why the heck I went to all this trouble to make this particular frosting. The answer is that is it freaking delicious – it tastes just like cheesecake without being sickly sweet. Nate watched me make this frosting four times and thought I was crazy because of how long it was taking, but then when he tasted it, he said, “Now I know why you persevered.” It’s that good. So here is the recipe, along with all my tips for making it….

Cake for 60

August 3, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 233 Comments

My friend’s wedding is coming up this weekend, so the cakes were baked last week and are happily camping in the freezer, wrapped in plastic and tinfoil, awaiting transport to Vancouver in a few days. Baking the cakes was something I was a little worried about, despite the relative success of the trial run – would they bake evenly, would I have enough batter, would they taste good enough? Turns out all my fears were totally unfounded: the cakes turned out perfectly. They baked in flat, even layers (thanks so the wet towel/cake diaper trick) and they all baked in exactly 50 minutes, no matter which pan size. Even the big 10-inch baked evenly all the way to the middle without a heating core or anything.Remember the confidence I had in my math skillz when I calculated how much batter I would need and how I would need to scale the recipe? I was fairly sure that I would end up with just shy of the right amount of batter, but I got that part totally wrong: I ended up with about 2 cups of extra batter, which is definitely better than 2 cups too little! This meant that I got to use the extra batter to make these sweet little shell-cakes:I made one-and-a half times the recipe below and ended up with about 16 1/2 cups of batter, enough for two 10-inch, two 8-inch, and two 6-inch rounds, each 1 1/2 inches high when baked, plus a bunch of little shell cakes 😉 I mixed the batter in three batches (a half recipe each), then mixed them all together in one big bowl to make sure the batter was uniform. Some of the batter sat for quite a while because I could only bake two cakes at once, and I was concerned that the baking powder and baking soda would lose their leavening power before they hit the oven, but it didn’t seem to make any difference 🙂 Success!

Update: here’s my tutorial for how to frost and assemble the wedding cake from start to finish.

…

Daring Bakers: Fresh Fraisier

July 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 21 Comments

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

A fraisier is a French pastry consisting of two layers of cake soaked in simple syrup with strawberries and pastry cream sandwiched between. Essentially, it is a free-standing trifle, but the special thing about a fraisier is the exposed fruit around the sides. To make a true fraisier, you have to use strawberries (fraise = strawberry), so I’m not really sure what to call my strawberry-raspberry-blueberry combination – a baies mélanger-ier doesn’t really have the same ring to it. But whatever you want to call it, it was tasty!

I did this challenge while I was in California visiting my aunt and uncle, and it was extra challenging because I was baking in an unfamiliar kitchen and also contending with a wheat and corn allergy. But it turned out beautifully and just proves that you don’t need fancy equipment or lots of space to make a spectacular dessert. …

Dobos Torte Birthday Cake

July 21, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

I’m back from California, and after I recover from the travel part (which was horrendously awful) and get a chance to go through all the photos I took of food, I’ll have some posts about the awesome restaurants I visited in California… but in the meantime, you can hear all about my birthday cake 🙂

I turned 28 a few weeks ago, and it required a cake. Since baking is pretty much my favorite pass-time, I was more than happy to bake it myself – it meant I got exactly what I wanted and I also got to have the fun of doing it. I came across this recipe for Dobos Torte on Smitten Kitchen, where Deb had made it for her own recent birthday, and I immediately promised I’d make it for myself. So I did 😉…

Wedding Cake Trial!

July 11, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 15 Comments

I finally got the replacement power cord for my computer so I can post about the wedding cake trial run I did a few weeks ago – yay!

First of all, cake size: there are about 55 guests at the wedding, so I’m making a three-tiered cake with 10-inch, 8-inch, and 6-inch round tiers, each about 4-inches high. I used the Wilton party cake serving guide and Earlene’s cake serving guide to come up with those sizes, which should yield about 60 pieces of cake (including the top tier, which will be eaten at the wedding rather than being saved for the bride and groom’s first anniversary). Wilton’s wedding cake serving guide gives much smaller servings, so I opted for larger pieces and slightly more cake than might be needed, to be on the safe side.

Based on the comments from the post where I asked for advice on which flavour to make the cake, the lemon cake with raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting is the clear winner! This was actually the combination I was going to go with in the first place, so thanks for validating my choice! So, now that my paralysing indecision was dealt with, I had to actually choose recipes for a lemon cake, raspberry filling, and cream cheese frosting, and then do a test run to figure out recipe yields and make sure they came out alright and tasted good!

After looking at dozens of cake recipes, I finally settled on a lemon butter cake from Margaret Braun’s book Cakewalk (she did the swirly yellow and white cake from my previous wedding cake post). I chose this recipe because she uses it for stacked cakes, so I know it will hold up, and also because it doesn’t require whipping egg whites separately, which is time consuming.

I halved the recipe to make two 6-inch cakes, and ended up with 4 3/4 cups of batter, which turned out to be more than enough (I’ll need two cakes to get the 4-inches of height). I took some advice on baking a level cake from i am baker and sacrificed a towel to cut into strips to wrap around the pan before baking.This is supposed to act as insulation and stop the edges of the cake from baking faster than the middle, thus preventing a domed top (which has to be trimmed off when stacking the layers, meaning you’re wasting a bunch of cake). As you can see, it didn’t really work. Later I realized that the towel strips are supposed to be wet, so I’ll give that a try when I bake the cakes for real! (Also, doesn’t it look like the pan is wearing a diaper?)

2 cups of batter = too much

Anyway, using the amount of batter suggested by Wilton, I baked the first cake with 2 cups of batter and it rose up in a dome about an inch higher than the pan, which meant I would have to slice off a bunch from the top, so I scaled back on the second cake to 1 1/4 cups of batter. This one baked in a shorter amount of time so it didn’t get the same golden crust as the first one, but it didn’t overwhelm the pan and I wouldn’t have to trim as much off the top.

1 1/4 cups of batter = just right

Based on this second cake, I calculated that I will need about 14 1/2 cups total for all the cakes, which is one and a half times the original recipe (or three half-batches, which will be easier for my mixer to handle!). Doing this required all of my math skills and I definitely can’t explain how I figured it out, but it does make sense. Thank goodness for calculators! Math problems aside, the cake itself tasted really good, with a pound-cake like texture (firm rather than airy) and a nice moist crumb. I will add a bit more lemon juice and zest next time though – it could have been more lemon-y.

The frosting: cream cheese frosting is usually quite soft and heavy and not exactly fluffy, so I spent a long time looking for a recipe that would give me something both spreadable and light, but that would also be able to sit unrefrigerated for a while and not lose its shape. I found this recipe for Professional Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting, and the only thing that I wasn’t sure about was that it contained shortening. I know that lots of decorators use shortening-based frostings because they are light, fluffy, pipeable, and hold up well at room temperature, but I’ve never even bought shortening (ie, Cristco) before, so I was wary. I made a quarter batch for this 6-inch cake, which gave me 2 2/3 cups of frosting. I liked that it got really firm in the fridge, which would make moving and stacking the cakes easy, but it was not as fluffy as I wanted and WAY too sweet. Upon further research, apparently this is usually the problem with confectioner’s sugar-based frosting, so I’m going to try a cream cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting instead, like this one. This method sort of scares me but I think it will taste much better, so I will just have to get over my fear! I got the idea for vertical stripes on the sides from i am baker. The swirly stuff on top was just me trying to use up the rest of the icing (actually I was trying to do this, but I failed. Among other things, my star tip was too small!)

I used store-bought raspberry jam to spread between the layers, because I figured that making my own jam or filling would be too difficult, but now I’ve changed my mind. The jam was not quite raspberry-ey enough, so I’m going to try a no-cook freezer jam recipe instead, which is essentially just mashed berries with sugar and pectin. Hopefully this will result in a suitably rasberry’d filling!

I also made a simple syrup of sugar, water, and lemon juice and zest to sprinkle on the cake layers before spreading them with raspberry. This tasted great and helped keep the cakes moist.

And finally, the cake base: my trusted friend Martha suggests that you can use regular 3/16-inch foam-core board to put the cakes on, which I did, but I covered it in foil because I wasn’t sure how well cake and paper go together. The foil was a bad idea though, because when I cut the first slice of cake it came off with a chunk of foil stuck to the bottom. Now I don’t know if I should buy real cake boards from a bakery, or just use the foam core au naturel, as Martha suggests…

You can see the perfect wedge of foil that was removed with the first slice of cake

So, the plan: I will bake the cakes ahead of time and freeze them, then fill/frost/assemble the cake the day before the wedding. I will add more lemon to the batter, be careful about sifting and not over-beating, and use wet towel strips when baking in hopes of ending up with a level cake. I still need to try the cream cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting, and make the raspberry filling. Figure out what to do about the cake base. Oh, and did I mention I need to transport all of this plus equipment on the ferry from Victoria to Vancouver and assemble it in my grandparents’ kitchen before moving the cake to the venue?? Did I also mention how EXCITED I am about this?!?!

Here’s some helpful wedding cake-related links:

My trusted friend Martha puts together a tiered wedding cake from start to finish

A helpful video on how to get a smooth finish on a frosted cake

A really pretty decoration idea for a wedding cake

Cake and filling/frosting recipe ideas from Martha

Deb at Smitten Kitchen made a wedding cake for her friends: read about it here

PS: I’m off to California for a week to visit my aunt and uncle starting tomorrow, so I might not update again until I get back. Rest assured, however, that I will have lots of delicious things to write about!!

Daring Bakers: Baklava with Homemade Phyllo Pastry!

June 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 37 Comments

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

Did you read that? Homemade phyllo pastry… do you have any idea how thin that stuff is? It’s really really thin!!

Anyway. Baklava! I love it, but I’d never made it myself, so I was excited to give it a try. The challenge this month was in making the dough, and we could be as creative as we wanted with the baklava. I’ve had my eye on a cherry chocolate baklava recipe from Canadian Living for a long time, so I knew I wanted to try that flavour profile.I also wanted to do a more “traditional” one (based on the conversations in the Daring Bakers’ forums, there are many different traditional versions of baklava!), so I followed the suggested recipe and used walnuts, pistachios, and almonds.
And then, of course, I had to get creative with the shape. I did the traditional flavour in the traditional stacked layers, and the cherry chocolate one in a roll.I made a 9″x5″ pan of each kind – turns out that one pan would have been plenty! And after spending 3 HOURS rolling out enough dough for two half batches, it was definitely enough!! This was a fun challenge though, and making something like homemade phyllo is exactly why I joined the Daring Bakers – but be warned: it is very time-consuming! I’m pretty strong and I’m actually quite handy with a rolling pin, so it wasn’t a question of me being wussy or too weak to roll out the dough. The rolling plus the stretching just took forever! And now my hands feel bruised and I won’t need to do any push-ups for a week……

If you have a chocolate craving…

June 21, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

… these chocolate-mocha-nut cookies will satisfy it. And if you’re like me, you crave chocolate on a near-daily basis. (This is why I exercise every day!) I was reminded of the awesomeness that are these cookies the last time I was on Salt Spring and Lynette’s mum, Elaine (of banana bread fame), made them… and I knew I had to make them myself, and soon! Luckily I already had the recipe, it just took me nearly two weeks to get my act together and actually make them! But the wait was worth it. They are SO GOOD.These cookies are super chocolatey, with a chewy, fudgy texture, a good hit of mocha, and a nice crunch from the nuts. One batch gave me 18 large cookies, and they barely lasted past the first day. Seriously, if they last longer in your house, I take my hat off to you and your iron-clad will power!The original recipe calls for walnuts, but I’ve had these cookies with almonds, and I made mine with pecans, so use whatever you prefer. The only changes I made to Elaine’s recipe were to toast the nuts and reduce the sugar by a little bit. I used chopped chocolate because I had a massive bar of dark chocolate in my baking cupboard, but chocolate chips are fine too. Now go make these!…

Wedding Cake Dilemma

June 17, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

Inspiration cake from Project Wedding

My good friend Markianna is getting married in August and she has asked me to make her wedding cake. I’m very excited and have been making all kinds of plans and doing wedding cake research – how to stack it, decorate it, move it, cut it… It’s a small wedding (only about 55 people) and the “inspiration cake” (above) is quite simple and rustic, so baking and decorating it should be fairly straight-forward.

It’s not like I have to make a 7-tiered cake to feed 360 (really, Martha has DIY instructions for this!):

Or paint a stained glass design on it:

Or pipe swirls and grape clusters all over it:(This one is made by Margaret Braun, who is a cake superstar. I have her book. It is AMAZING.)

Thank goodness for that.

No, for me, the overwhelming part is not the making or decorating of the cake. The overwhelming part is deciding on what kind of cake to make. The bride and groom have given me free-reign in the flavour department (one less thing for them to worry about, and apparently I’m “the expert”), but of course now I am paralysed with indecision about what flavours to choose. So, people of the internet, I am relying on you: please tell what kind of cake I should make!

Keeping in mind that I want the cake to look pretty when sliced (ie, colour contrast) and also that I want the outer layer of frosting to be white (I think!), the combinations that I have come up with are as follows:

1) Lemon cake with raspberry compote filling and cream cheese frosting (or plain white buttercream?)

2) Butter cake with caramel and chocolate fillings and vanilla buttercream frosting (or maybe chocolate?)

3) Coconut cake with chocolate filling and white buttercream frosting (or 7-minute frosting?), decorated with shredded coconut curls

4) Chocolate cake with mocha filling and vanilla buttercream frosting (or maybe chocolate?)

So which one should I make? Please leave your feedback in the comments!

Amazing Struesel-Topped Muffins

June 14, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

These muffins are so good I made them twice. Once for myself, and again the next day for my friend Heather, who just had a baby girl. For the last seven and a half months of her pregnancy, Heather was sick every single day, and obviously had a really hard time eating anything. This would be my own personal hell. Thankfully, now that the baby is out, she can actually enjoy eating again. I visited her and baby Zephyra on the weekend, and when Heather told me to “bring food!” I was more than happy to oblige with these muffins.

The original recipe from Smitten Kitchen is for rhubarb struesel muffins, and I came across it about a week after I posted the recipe for strawberry rhubarb coffee cake made with whole wheat pastry flour – I had been dreaming of a muffin incarnation, and then this recipe appeared, using whole wheat pastry flour to boot! The first time I made them I used (frozen) rhubarb, and they were delicious: not too sweet, with a delicate, springy texture, a crunchy golden struesel layer on top, and a good tang from the rhubarb. Not to mention the fact that they smelled HEAVENLY while baking. The second time around, I used fresh strawberries and frozen blueberries, because Heather has two older kids and I figured berries might be more kid-friendly than slightly sour rhubarb. I also played around with yogurt instead of sour cream, and switched it up with the flours, using a combination of whole wheat and all purpose in place of whole wheat pastry flour. Both times, they came out perfectly, and I think I may have found my new favorite muffin recipe. I’m fairly confident that you could put any kind of fruit in these – fresh or frozen – and they would be fantastic. Thank you Deb at Smitten Kitchen for this recipe!!…

Daring Bakers: Mexican Chocolate Marquise

May 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 22 Comments

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle. Check out the challenge details and all the other Daring Bakers’ interpretations of it at the Daring Kitchen.

Last week Nate and I agreed that we’d been eating like crap lately – too much sugary junk, not enough vegetables – and we made a pact to eat better. Then the next day I started making this Daring Bakers Challenge, which is definitely sugary and doesn’t contain any vegetables, unless you count cocoa or tequila as a vegetable.

They were both vegetables/plants, once upon a time, right? Right?!

Oh well. Our fridge is overflowing with lettuce right now, so we’ll make up for it in salads 😉

This is a complicated looking dessert that is actually fairly straight forward, once you get your ducks in a row. The original recipe comes from a restaurant in Seattle, and the yield was for 18 servings!! Thank you Audax Artifex for cutting it down to a more reasonable 6 servings – although this could have easily made 8 servings. It was so rich that only Nate and I managed to clean our plates – everyone else tapped out, so next time I’ll definitely serve smaller portions!…