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French Butter Cream
1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1 teaspoon corn syrup 1/8 teaspoon cream tartar 3 egg yolks 1 square chocolate melted 1/2 cup butter 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Cook sugar, water, syrup and cream of tartar until it forms a thread. Beat egg yolks until light and lemon colored and pour hot syrup on them slowly, beating constantly. Add melted chocolate and beat until mixture cools. Cream the butter and add to sugar mixture, a tablespoon at a time, beating well. Flavor. It may be necessary to set mixing bowl in ice water to stiffen. Use only on cold cake. Chocolate may be omitted, and vegetable coloring used instead.
A classic French buttercream: hot sugar syrup beaten into egg yolks, then softened butter worked in. The order and the temperature of each stage are what make or break it.
- Thread stage"Forms a thread" means about 230-234F on a candy thermometer, when syrup drawn from the spoon falls in a fine strand. Below that the buttercream will be soupy; much above it the yolks set into scrambled flecks.
- Pour slowly, off the beater's pathStream the syrup down the inside of the bowl in a thin line while beating hard. Dribbling it directly onto the whisk throws it against the cold bowl wall in threads, where it hardens into candy shards.
- One square of chocolateThat is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, the standard wrapped square of the period. The recipe has it melted and beaten in directly after the hot syrup, while the base is still warm and before the mixture is beaten cool.
- Corn syrup and cream of tartarBoth are there to discourage crystallization, by different means: the cream of tartar inverts some of the sugar, while the corn syrup adds glucose that interferes with crystal formation. Skip both and the finished cream may turn gritty as it sits.
- Cool before the butterThe egg base must be at room temperature, no warmer, or the butter melts and the cream separates into a greasy pool. The ice-water bath mentioned at the end is worth doing as a matter of course rather than a rescue.
- If it does breakA curdled or soupy cream almost always comes back with continued beating. Warm the outside of the bowl slightly if it is too cold and stiff, chill it if it is slack and glossy, and keep the mixer running.
- Cold cake onlyThe instruction is literal. Butter is soft well below body temperature and melts around 90-95F, so any warmth left in the layers will slide the frosting off the sides.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; the ingredient volumes suggest roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups, about enough to fill and thinly frost a two-layer cake. It will keep some days refrigerated, or longer frozen; bring it fully back to room temperature and re-beat before spreading.
French buttercream is the richest of the three standard buttercreams -- yolk-based, as against the meringue-based Italian and Swiss versions. A boiled syrup poured over eggs and half a cup of butter make for a considerably richer frosting than butter simply creamed with confectioners' sugar. The note that the chocolate may be left out in favor of vegetable coloring suggests the tinted fillings of the period.