[Sca-cooks] OOP-Buttercream Frosting

Jeff Gedney gedney1 at iconn.net
Wed May 10 11:34:55 PDT 2006


and here is a hint that I have found important...

DO NOT refrigerate your cake and unless you take it out seconds 
before serving.

...you know how moisture condenses on a cold surface on a humid day? 

happens on cold frosting too. 

I have seen an entire cake dissolve as though someone poured water 
on it, during the course of the lakeside wedding service. Just two 
hours were sufficent to reduce a finely sculpted confection into 
an amorphous pile of glop (It was a beautiful cake too, even used 
candied violets...) in plain view of the entire wedding party. It 
was a hot July day, mid 90's and humid. The caterer had it kept in 
the Walk-in cooler, and then pulled it out a half/hour before the 
service while they were setting up the hall. I still cringe 
thinking about it. It was like a slow motion train wreck.  

If you must refrigerate your cake at least let it fully come to 
room temperature in an dry dehumidified or air conditioned 
environment before taking it out into the weather.

When I was doing cakes, we called the crisco-type frosting 
"bettercream". 

In the summer I preferred to use rolled fondant for decorated 
freestanding cakes, with buttercream or royal icing just as 
decorative piping touches. 
Let the surface of the fondant dry a bit before decorating, that 
way you can use a stylus (I use a chopstick or bamboo skewer) to 
do a little light layout right on the cake as a decorating guide.

Fondant, BTW, is not iummune to the problem of condensation. 
There is no icing or frosting that is. 

Capt Elias
Dragonship Haven, East
(Stratford, CT, USA)
Apprentice in the House of Silverwing

-Renaissance Geek of the Cyber Seas
- Help! I am being pecked to death by the Ducks of Dilletanteism! 
There are SO damn many more things I want to try in 
the SCA than I can possibly have time for. 
It's killing me!!!

-----------------------------------------------------
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think
You stand upon the ravage and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur. 
  - Shakespeare - Henry V, Act III, Prologue






                 



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