Our Delicious Swiss Meringue Buttercream Recipe
Our 2024 wedding season has been all about buttercream. Between lambeth piped cakes and playful buttercream designs, we’ve been experimenting with every piping tip imaginable and loving every minute of it. Here are a few photos from a recent shoot where we let our creativity run wild.
Photos by Alicia Frances Photography
The buttercream that we use for our cakes is an adapted version of Swiss Meringue Buttercream that is slightly less sweet with a more nuanced flavor. It holds up well for large stacked cakes and is a dream base for our buttercream fillings.
Sweet Heather Anne Buttercream
Yields about 6½ cups of buttercream, a little more than you’ll need to cover a 10 inch cake.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup egg whites, at room temperature
½ tsp salt
1 cup white sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
2 pounds unsalted butter at room temperature (never cold butter!)
1 TBL Nielsen-Massey vanilla paste (I prefer the flavor of paste to extract)
DIRECTIONS
In a large mixing bowl over a double boiler, whisk together the egg whites and sugar. Stirring occasionally, warm until the mixture is very hot to the touch. (145 degrees F) Remove from the double boiler.
Transfer the mixture to the bowl of your stand mixer. With the whisk attachment, beat on high until the meringue is cool and forms very stiff peaks. You will know it is ready when the meringue starts making little strings on the side of your bowl.
Slowly add the soft butter, about 1⁄4 cup at a time while beating at medium speed. When all of the butter is added, it should be thick, creamy and shiny.
Add vanilla and blend well. Taste and adjust recipe if needed.
If at any time your buttercream appears to be curdling, don’t worry. The butter may have been too cold, but this is easily fixed. Return the buttercream to the double boiler or add heat to the bowl with a torch and then mix on medium until the buttercream is smooth and creamy.
We use this as a base for all of our buttercream flavors. You can be creative when adding flavors, but be careful not to add too much liquid to the buttercream.
You can download a printer-friendly version OF THis recipe for your kitchen HERE:
Looking For More Buttercream Tips?
Check out our Go-to Tools for Perfectly Smooth Buttercream Cakes, Our Secret for Perfectly Smooth Buttercream in Small Batches and our Cake Building Fundamentals tutorial.
