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by Ann Warren & Joan Lilly
Unless you want to eat your cake neat—no frosting, just cake you'll need to prepare butter cream to frost (or baste) the outside of the cake and between the layers. (A good jam is nice between the layers, too.) The butter cream you use to baste your cake is the same stuff you'll use later for writing on the cake-and decorating it, if you choose to go the whole way.
Butter cream does not take very long to put together, but the syrup you make must cool adequately before it is added to the buffer, so consider making it a few hours (anywhere from 2 to 12 hours) before you plan to do your frosting. Also, remember to set out the butter to temper (that is, come to room temperature) if you will not be assisted by a microwave. Your eggs should also be room temperature (uncracked in the shell).
Equipment you will need:
Optional but very handy:
Humidity:
Humidity can adversely affect butter cream; so can barometric
pressure (changing weather conditions). After butter cream
is almost mixed together it will sometimes separate somewhat,
looking "cracked" and not smooth at all.
What To Do with "Cracked" Butter Cream:
If the butter cream separates a bit after it has been well
beaten, try melting about 1 or 2 cups of it in a microwave
(or slowly over hot water) and adding it back into the cracked
butter cream, beating until the butter cream comes together
again.
Barometric Changes:
On "bad butter cream days," when the weather is not clear,
butter cream may tend to be less stable and is more likely
to separate a bit. To avoid this, you should pay careful
attention to the following:
From:
The Cupcake Café Cookbook
by Ann Warren & Joan Lilly
Doubleday
ISBN: 0-385-48339-2
208 pages
12 full color photographs
Black & white photographs throughout
$25.00 hardcover
Reprinted by permission.
Recipes
This page created October 1998

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