Easy Italian Buttercream That’s Good For Warm Weather!

Are you a fan of shortening in your buttercream? I am not. I can understand why plenty of bakers choose to put it in their buttercream though. In our climate where a typical day reaches 35*C you tend to look for icing that will hold its shape in that kind of heat. A lot of bakers have kitchens with air conditioning but since I don’t have that luxury, I adjust. When it comes to frosting my cakes, I look for something that won’t sweat and melt, which usually happens in a lot of all-butter-based buttercream.

As I’ve said, I don’t like shortening. Unfortunately, even if I put half a cup (or even less) in my frosting, I feel like I can still taste the grainy, sickly sweet texture of it in my mouth. The Crisco vegetable shortening that I’ve used in the past has got a rather strange aftertaste that makes me want to gargle with mouthwash even after a small bite. I also don’t like icing that tastes like I’m eating spoonfuls of butter.

I found this recipe online for Swiss meringue buttercream. I love that this all-butter recipe was SO easy to follow. I decided to try the Italian buttercream recipe in the article. The author of the article also said that this was ideal for warm weather so I was stoked!

To be honest, one other thing that I liked about this recipe was that it only needed one cup of butter. Since I was only trying this out and I wasn’t sure if my first attempt would be a success, I was hesitant to use up so much butter. However, I couldn’t get the frosting stiff enough with only one cup of butter. After reading some of the comments beneath the article I ended up adding one more cup of butter to this recipe!

Make sure you have a mixer when you do this, a hand mixer should be fine although I do have a stand mixer which makes it more convenient. You have to whip the buttercream to a meringue which I personally find difficult if I were to do this without a mixer. Here’s the recipe with some of my tweaks!

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 cup water

4 egg whites (about 1/2 cup)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, cubed and softened at room temperature

Pinch of salt, optional

Directions

1. Combine sugar and water in a medium-sized saucepan. Heat over low heat, stirring with a metal spoon, until the sugar has dissolved and the syrup is clear. Increase heat to medium-high and allow syrup to come to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, place egg whites in a stand mixer fitted with a whisk, or in a medium bowl if using a handheld mixer, and beat until whites are almost able to hold soft peaks.
3. Cook syrup until it reaches 235°F (I used a candy thermometer to check), then immediately remove from heat and slowly drizzle the hot syrup into the bowl with the egg whites, mixing continuously to prevent the eggs from scrambling: don’t pour the syrup onto the whisk, or the syrup may splatter against the sides of the bowl; instead, aim for a spot close to the whisk. Once all the syrup has been added, keep mixing until the bottom of the bowl feels cool to the touch and the meringue has cooled down to body temperature.
4. Add butter gradually, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla and salt. The mixture may start to look as if it’s separating, but don’t panic: just keep mixing and whipping until the buttercream comes together and becomes smooth and gorgeous.
5. Use immediately or refrigerate in an airtight container or a zipper-lock bag in the fridge for up to two weeks or in the freezer for up to two months. To use buttercream that has either been refrigerated or frozen, first allow to come to room temperature then beat until smooth and spreadable again. Cakes or cupcakes decorated with buttercream generally keep up to 3 days, stored in an airtight container in the fridge. Serve buttercream at room temperature.

My only quibble with this is that in our hot and humid weather it still didn’t seem like this Italian buttercream would hold it’s shape for piping flowers or more intricate details. This would be fine for borders, and maybe some lettering. I wanted to pipe flowers in the beginning but after seeing the consistency I decided to just spread it on my cake. The wonderful thing about this buttercream is that it colors beautifully. I wanted three different pastel colors for my daughter’s Frozen cake, and using gel colors I made blue, pink and green. So nice!

This Italian buttercream is so wonderful to spread, silky rich and smells so good! I have never had an easier time frosting a cake before this one.

I ended up decorating my daughter’s cake with Frozen royal icing toppers I bought from the store. I added it on top of the buttercream cake and it looked gorgeous! I know you’re not supposed to place royal icing anything on top of buttercream but since my kids and I would be eating this cake right away I decided to lay it on there anyway!

The Italian buttercream complemented the chocolate cake so very well! The taste is not too strong and sweet, plus it has that subtle butter flavour which I was looking for. Like I said, this Italian buttercream won’t be stiff enough to pipe flowers BUT(!) I left this cake sitting in my hot kitchen for a day and a half and the icing didn’t melt! I didn’t have a wet, sloppy mess and that’s what matters. I will definitely make this again and again!