19 Comments

It is so helpful to know that you can reduce sugar in American buttercream to 1:1 with the butter. The way most recipes are written it is so sickly sweet. Will definitely try it with less sugar.

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Hi, question about making buttercream plant based that you mentioned under American Buttercream! Could you give some advice about how to do this? Ideally I’m looking for a non dairy adaptation - I don’t need to avoid eggs for it

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Hi! If you have a good dairy free butter you can literally just swap the butter out for a plant based alternative in any recipe, you'll need a block "butter" rather than a spread. If you're in the UK, naturli baking block or flora baking block are my favourites, I'm not sure about the options in other countries.

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Thanks this is really helpful!

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Thank you so much! This is my first time on this site and I learned so much. I bake lots of cakes for a volunteer organization called Cake4Kids. We bake for kids I. The social services system. I’m not great with a pastry bag and have trouble getting American buttercream smooth. I’ll definitely try your ratios and also move on to Swiss buttercream too.

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Yay Sophie!!! Thanks for this detailed rundown of buttercream - I learned a TON

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Good! I can’t wait to deep dive into all of the individual buttercreams! I’ve still got so much to chat about 😂

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This is everything I've always wanted to know about buttercream and I'm so grateful for it!!!

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I'm so glad it was helpful!!!

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This was such a great read. I love the intricate details of baking—so much thought went into this one post, and it’s only one part of the process.

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thanks for the extensive effort!

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I hope you found it helpful/interesting 😊 I now have a freezer full of buttercream to use up!

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Whole egg buttercream: so underrated.

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100% I’m baffled that it isn’t more popular

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This is 100% the rundown we all needed! (I’ve made most of these - maybe not the whole egg - in one form or another over the years, but some of the names are definitely new).

Definitely going to be referring back 😀

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I’m glad you enjoyed it! It was really fun and educational for me to write this piece, I’ll definitely be using some of the more nice buttercreams more often from now on!

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Good roundup, I have not heard of whole egg buttercream before. For french buttecream I use Stella Parks recipe which uses the same method as the swiss meringue buttercream which makes it easier.

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Glad you enjoyed it!

Yes, you can use a double boiler for the whole egg and the French but I find that they’re more susceptible to scrambling for me (I always accidentally wonder off and leave it unattended) so I tend to stick to the syrup method.

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Nicola, I am having trouble reaching you regarding reinstating my annual paid subscription, which was canceled by mistake. Substack no longer allows readers to send you emails, and you are not accepting messages unless I “subscribe” again - but I already paid for a year.

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