Ermine Buttercream (Flour-Based Buttercream)

I have been wanted to explore different buttercreams to top cupcakes and frost cakes. The most common buttercream is the powdered-sugar-and-butter-based American Buttercream. It's a simple and fast buttercream that produces a fluffy frosting, yet I always had some issues with the overall taste and look. To make enough frosting for a batch of desserts, you need 4 to 5 cups of powdered sugar, which is more cups than the standard bag of powdered sugar contains! I always opted to make a smaller batch of frosting when I didn't have enough powdered sugar or only had a small batch of cupcakes to frost. Trying to use less sugar resulted in a buttery frosting that was too dense. The classic American Buttercream is an unforgiving recipe if you are trying not to use a full bag of powdered sugar, and I started looking for a better recipe that matched my preferences and needs. I first learned about honey buttercream, which was essentially using honey instead of sugar, but the wrong type of honey creates a bad taste and looked for other options after a bad batch of that buttercream. Ermine Buttercream was my solution to my buttercream struggles, as it was a light frosting with less sugar and great taste. There are a few more steps involved, but I feel that they are fairly easy to achieve the delicious buttercream. It is a great topping to cupcakes or cakes and is stiff enough to pipe decorations effortlessly.

Milk and Flour

To make the ermine buttercream, you start on the stove with milk, flour (learn how to measure flour), and salt. On medium heat, you are slowly cooking the milk and flour to create a thick, translucent paste. Make sure to whisk often as you don't want lumps of flour to form a lumpy buttercream. Whisking fast will help to get any lumps that are forming. I found that it takes some patience and attention to make sure the milk ad flour mixture is coming together smoothly, as well as some elbow grease to whisk the thick paste. Take the pan off the heat and add in vanilla or the flavor of your choice. With extract flavors like vanilla, almond, or mint, you add it after the paste forms. For flavors like chocolate, adding cocoa powder to the flour before mixing with the milk could work, but I would recommend doing more research on that for this buttercream.

Place the thick paste in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap pressed to the surface, and let cool compeletely. The plastic wrap is so that it doesn't form a skin, which can also happen to pastry cream. Now you are going to cream together equal parts butter and granulated sugar. I haven't tried powdered sugar, but I would expect it to give a different texture. Creaming together the butter and sugar whips air into the buttercream, so it is important to whip it enough to get a light buttercream. I added about 3/4 of the sugar to one of the batches and found that the texture was the same, so the recipe allows for variation of the sweetness level to your liking. To ensure I was creaming the mixture properly, I used a stand mixer and scraped down the sides of the bowl often. With the butter and sugar creamed, add in the milk paste and continue to whip the mixture. Initially, the mixture looked slightly curdled but smoothened out shortly after whipping it up some more.

Once the paste is fully combined, whip on high until there are stiff peaks visible. The texture should be soft but hold its shape, providing the perfect buttercream. I used some of the buttercream to pipe a border around a cake and to create some flowers on a birthday cake. Making frosting is a fun way to watch butter and sugar turn into a light, fluffy cloud to fill and decorate cakes. Ermine buttercream is a great way to make enough of a light frosting without the cups and cups of powdered sugar, adding in a few simple steps to achieve beautiful desserts.