Maria, here is a link for repairing broken swiss meringue buttercream
- Thread starter marilynfl
- Start date
mariadnoca
Moderator
Thanks, but sadly this doesn’t address the meringue deflating before dealing with the butter. I’ve fully dealt with the whole butter/looking curdled breaking issue w smb before. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened and I can’t really find any info on the Internet about what did happen. My only guess is humidity.
The eggs and sugar came together perfectly using a double boiler and whisk. I got the eggs/sugar to 140°F. I took the ka bowl off the heat and moved it to the mixer itself, with the whisk attachment and after a few minutes it went to perfect stiff, very stiff, peaks. However, things went wonky from that point. As I continued to whisk, just looking to cool things down, the meringue deflated about 2 inches in the bowl. So at this point I didn’t have stiff peaks anymore, the whole meringue had gone soft. I barely had soft peaks, if peaks at all. With having the experience of doing this three times, I can safely say that beating it for longer was not returning it to stiff peaks. I added the butter anyway hoping it would all come together in the end. It did not. It was almost like the eggs had melted and turned into liquid and no amount of beating it would make it come together. At one point I think I left the KitchenAid running an hour trying to bring it back together and it just wasn’t gonna happen.
If I didn’t want to end up with more Swiss meringue buttercream at this point, it would be interesting for me to try to repeat this process once the heat wave here hits tomorrow because we’re expected to have humidity at 10% or under. (High fire danger.) That’s a nice little experiment I would like to try, but I don’t need another 10 cups of Swiss meringue buttercream right now, lol.
I’m currently trying to freeze layers w turned into strawberry via the dehydrated pulverized strawberries. I took it out of the fridge, let it warm till I could whip it more, but it still has small chunks of butter (see photo, in real life it looks pink not gray). If I were to let the butter cool to whip able room temperature the eggs would be fully liquid.
It’s all so weird. All I know was I bought the eggs fresh from Trader Joe’s for each batch of batch of icing.
The eggs and sugar came together perfectly using a double boiler and whisk. I got the eggs/sugar to 140°F. I took the ka bowl off the heat and moved it to the mixer itself, with the whisk attachment and after a few minutes it went to perfect stiff, very stiff, peaks. However, things went wonky from that point. As I continued to whisk, just looking to cool things down, the meringue deflated about 2 inches in the bowl. So at this point I didn’t have stiff peaks anymore, the whole meringue had gone soft. I barely had soft peaks, if peaks at all. With having the experience of doing this three times, I can safely say that beating it for longer was not returning it to stiff peaks. I added the butter anyway hoping it would all come together in the end. It did not. It was almost like the eggs had melted and turned into liquid and no amount of beating it would make it come together. At one point I think I left the KitchenAid running an hour trying to bring it back together and it just wasn’t gonna happen.
If I didn’t want to end up with more Swiss meringue buttercream at this point, it would be interesting for me to try to repeat this process once the heat wave here hits tomorrow because we’re expected to have humidity at 10% or under. (High fire danger.) That’s a nice little experiment I would like to try, but I don’t need another 10 cups of Swiss meringue buttercream right now, lol.
I’m currently trying to freeze layers w turned into strawberry via the dehydrated pulverized strawberries. I took it out of the fridge, let it warm till I could whip it more, but it still has small chunks of butter (see photo, in real life it looks pink not gray). If I were to let the butter cool to whip able room temperature the eggs would be fully liquid.
It’s all so weird. All I know was I bought the eggs fresh from Trader Joe’s for each batch of batch of icing.
mariadnoca
Moderator
I found this on spruce eats:
“Over-Beaten Egg Whites: If egg whites are beaten past the point of stiff peaks, the matrix of proteins will begin to break down and the foam will collapse. The egg whites will become grainy, watery, and flat. They can not be salvaged.“
But if I hadn’t kept beating them how am I supposed to get them cool enough to add the butter? Recipes always say beat until the bowl is no longer warm to the touch. However, the above does seem like what happened as they basically deflated till they were like water after I added the butter. The weird part is if (over) whipped caused it, why didn’t it do this before?
“Over-Beaten Egg Whites: If egg whites are beaten past the point of stiff peaks, the matrix of proteins will begin to break down and the foam will collapse. The egg whites will become grainy, watery, and flat. They can not be salvaged.“
But if I hadn’t kept beating them how am I supposed to get them cool enough to add the butter? Recipes always say beat until the bowl is no longer warm to the touch. However, the above does seem like what happened as they basically deflated till they were like water after I added the butter. The weird part is if (over) whipped caused it, why didn’t it do this before?
mariadnoca
Moderator
Just when I thought I had an aha moment and had over beat the eggs because I used the whisk on my stick blender on the stove and couldn’t recall if I’d done that before, I watch them use a mixer on the stove with smb on the great British baking show today. So back to I don’t know. Neither did the 60 year pro baker at the baking supply store today. She did say maybe if it happens again try adding some meringue powder to save.