Aquafaba Swiss Buttercream Recipe - Gretchen's Vegan Bakery (2024)

FAQs

Why is my vegan buttercream grainy? ›

It's essential to sieve your icing sugar (aka confectioners sugar) before adding to the softened butter, so do this first. Then you're going to add little by little to the vegan buttercream frosting, beating between additions. This again stops the buttercream from splitting or becoming grainy.

The Cons of Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

Special equipment makes the job easier. A candy thermometer, stand mixer, and a double boiler really help. You can break your SMBC by adding too much liquid. Breaking means it turns soupy.

Ingredients for the Swiss meringue buttercream

Egg whites – you could use fresh egg whites or the ones from a carton.

Your ingredients were too cold or too hot

If you use vegan butter straight from the fridge, you might end up with small lumps of it throughout your buttercream. This can also happen if you add cold (vegan) milk at the end. Similarly, adding fat or milk that is too warm can cause buttercream to curdle.

Vegan Butter: I like to use Country Crock Plant Butter, it needs to be room temperature. Vegetable Shortening: This is very necessary. While normal buttercream is just made with butter, vegan butter doesn't hold up and needs this extra ingredient. Powdered Sugar: Most organic powdered sugar is vegan.

Swiss meringue buttercream is probably the most standard buttercream for pastry professionals. It is incredibly smooth, making it an extremely popular choice for icing cakes.

Maybe the meringue whipped too long, cooling to well below 75°F (24°C). Maybe the butter came straight from the fridge. Maybe your buttercream was even frozen in advance, but didn't fully thaw. Doesn't matter why—if your Swiss meringue buttercream looks dense and greasy (or even tastes that way), it's simply too cold.

Swiss Meringue buttercream is silky smooth and light. It's perfect if you're looking for a slightly less sweet buttercream. It is, however, more time consuming to make than American buttercream. Italian Meringue buttercream is the least sweet of the three.

One thing to note is that Swiss meringue is commonly made with too little sugar and not enough heat, producing something that's eggy, fragile, and raw. From there, adding butter only makes it greasy and dense, a frequent gripe among detractors of SMBC (as it's called online).

To remedy a soupy buttercream, all you have to do is chill it. I place the entire mixing bowl containing the buttercream including the attachment in the fridge.

Can I use powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar in Swiss buttercream? ›

Powdered sugar: Classic Swiss Meringue Buttercream calls for granulated sugar. Since we are eliminating the cooking in this recipe, we need to use sugar the will easily dissolve. Powdered sugar is perfect for this! Salt: Salt enhances the flavor of the buttercream.

Substitute some of the butter in your frosting recipe with a fat that is solid at a higher temperature. I would use a solid vegetable shortening. It won't taste as nice, and the texture will be a bit more greasy, but it won't melt quite as quickly. I'd try more/better refrigeration too, if possible.

In a KitchenAid mixer, it usually takes about 20-25 minutes to make a good, stiff meringue from start to finish. If you're at the 20-minute mark and the meringue still isn't at stiff peaks, check your temperature. Is it hot and humid in your kitchen? Then a 15-20 minute meringue timeout in the fridge will help!

Too thick: If you over-whip the frosting, it will appear chunky and curdled. While my fix isn't perfect, it will certainly help—by hand, stir in more liquid heavy cream 1 Tablespoon at a time until the frosting smooths out again.

If the buttercream is still grainy, you can try warming it up over a double boiler or adding a little bit of heavy cream. It's important to find the right balance of ingredients when making any kind of buttercream. Too much sugar or not enough liquid can cause the buttercream to break or become too gritty.

American buttercream (ABC) is one of the easiest and most commonly made frostings, but the biggest problem that most people have with it is that it often has a 'gritty' or grainy feel to it. This is because of undissolved icing sugar (also known as powdered/confectioners sugar).

No matter what type of frosting you make, I recommend mixing your frosting on the lowest speed for a couple minutes with a paddle attachment at the end of the process. This helps push excess air out of the frosting, which makes it nice and smooth. Don't be afraid to let your mixer run on low for a few minutes.

If your frosting tend to be too warm or too cold it will appear grainy or chunky. Take note on the milk adding in have to be in room temperature as well.