Chocolate Swiss Buttercream Cupcakes

Here's an other new flavour I tested. Chocolate.
Yes, it's weird, I've baked for so long but never tried making a chocolate buttercream before.  It's actually so much easier then the fruity flavour creams I make that I don't understand why I didn't do it earlier.
Worked well on top of vanilla cupcakes but I can see chocolate lovers putting this on top of chocolate cupcakes as well. Double whammy.
I know some people use melted chocolate but I used cocoa powder instead.
The cream was smooth, no powdery clumps and nicely flavoured.

Why I used cocoa powder?

Several reasons:
1. I always have cocoa powder on hand as I use it for the cakes. Chocolate on the other hand, you'll want to buy specifically dark baker chocolate so it's deep in flavour and it has less added sugar.
2. It's bitter so it's great to use to balance the sweetness of the cream so it actually doesn't taste too sweet.
3. Easy to use! No need to slowly use a double boiler to melt the chocolate, wait for it to be the perfect temperature before you mix it in etc
All I did after the Swiss Buttercream was finished whipping was scoop in cocoa powder and mix.
4. Easy to adjust flavour. You can easily add more flavour by adding more powder where as if you melt chocolate, if you didn't melt enough, you have to go through the whole process to add more and it's honestly a pain.


Try it out! Easy and pipes very beautifully.

Green Tea Buttercream Cupcakes

I love drinking green tea and eating green tea flavoured food.
So I figured, why not make green tea buttercream?
If you can make it into ice cream, you can definitely make it into buttercream.

So, with my trusty matcha, I added it until I got what I wanted. It reminded me of the ice cream with a different texture.

The wonderful thing about matcha is that it's dried so you don't have to worry about the buttercream breaking due to too much liquid.
It's also bitter so you will not make your cream overly sweet. If anything, it'll help balance the cream out to be less sweet because of the bitterness.
Good matcha is also very strong in flavour. So depending on the cream's batch size, you may only need 2 Tbsp of Matcha.
I used around 2 for enough buttercream for 16 cupcakes.
I usually add a little vanilla extract as well to help enhance the flavours. Vanilla might be a little boring on it's own, but it's a wonderful enhancer and usually adds that little touch to your baking.

I've tried this cream on both vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. Both are wonderful with green tea.
People who have never tried green tea flavour food before like the results.
For the Asian people who love eating green tea ice cream, they couldn't stop eating the cupcakes and went back for seconds.
All in all, I believe that means success.
Next step, bake green tea cupcakes and then put the green tea buttercream on top.
Maybe I'll make it even more Asian and add red bean paste in the middle too.

(It looks much greener under bright lights)

Raspberry Swiss Buttercream on Chocolate Cupcake

It was time to make a new flavour and add it to my collection of buttercream flavours.

I personally love berries so I decided to try to make a raspberry Swiss buttercream.
I used the same method I use for strawberries.
Cook the raspberries down until it's concentrated and mash it up.
The more it's cooked down the better so you remove as much liquid as possible and left with flavour.

Even though the puree is about the same color as the strawberry one, the difference in the buttercream colour is huge.
I've never had such a dark deep beautiful red color before with strawberries.

I also find I have to use more raspberries then I do strawberries when flavouring buttercream.
It seems like out of the 2 berries I've tried so far, strawberry is the strongest flavour so you don't have to use too much of it.

An other difference between the raspberries and strawberries is the number of seeds. For such a tiny berry, there is a ridiculous amount of seeds in it.
Honestly, seeds makes the flavour feel more real but it's a pain to pipe roses as the seeds get stuck in the piping. I also feel like the seeds add more fibre so if possible I would like to keep it in.

My co-workers loved the result. As always, the sweetness is at such a level that people don't feel guilty eating multiple cupcakes so they went back for seconds.
I also asked them about the seed and no one seemed to care if there's seeds vs no seeds.

So my conclusion about this flavour, if requested, I can seed the raspberry puree and use the 1M tip for piping the cupcakes.
If I'm using it within cakes or just a circular tip, then I can leave the seeds in if they do not make a request.

Right now, I take personal orders from friends and family for cakes and cupcakes as I continue to grow the number of flavours I can create on a consistent basis.

One day I'll open up a store ;)

Birthday Cupcakes Oct 2014 - Strawberry Buttercream and Lemon Buttercream

It's been a while since I posted since I was crazy busy with moving and the wedding. But I finally did something I want to post about (besides my wedding cake, I'll do that when I get the official pictures)

This year we celebrated 4 birthdays at the same time as Thanksgiving. My husband, brother, niece and nephew are all born in October.
So what sort of cake do I make to celebrate 4 birthdays?
This year I went with cupcakes! Multiple for everyone.

Actually I was super excited this year to try out a new buttercream recipe.
I recently experimented with Swiss Buttercream and found out just how big of a difference methods contributes to the final product!
I used the exact same egg white:butter:sugar ratio as I normally do for my Italian Meringue Buttercream (minus the water because I don't need it anymore) and it was amazing!
It was every fluffier then normal!
I was so happy. This is now my new go to method.

Ratio-wise I'm still playing with it to see if I can decrease the butter and sugar a bit more to see if it'll get even fluffier.
I'll eventually settle on something I really like.
I also need to check if making my own butter helped too. That was also quite easy. Machine did all the work :)

Until then, here is the method I'm now using.

1. Mix sugar into the egg whites and whip over a double boiler set up.
2. Keep hand mixing until whites are 160 degrees F
3. Once it's at 160 degrees, remove from heat and mix in stand mixer Thick, glossy and cool. Can take up to 10 mins.**
4. Add in the whipped butter and mix until smooth. (if the butter is not pre-whipped, you can add it in little chunks at a time. I find with my stand mixer and pre-whipped butter I can drop in the entire thing)
5. Flavour accordingly

**Whipping time depends on the mixing stand you use!! I have a Bosch Universal Plus and it only takes about 3-5 mins to whip up on speed 4! I talked to the ladies at healthykitchens and they said with older Bosch machines you should use speed 3 and it takes about the same amount of time.
My friend uses a Kitchen Aid Stand mixer and it takes her about 10 mins. So please watch while it whips. I've tried whipping it for 10 mins before and nothing really changed too much, maybe a little less fluffy but at least it didn't collapse.

This time I made Strawberry and Lemon butter cream :) both were a hit.
I added a small fondant star for decoration on them just for cute factor

Have fun experimenting!