Strawberry SMBC

I am still intimidated by SMBC (Swiss Meringue Butter Cream). I know I like it, but I can never get to the fluffiness of the pro's SMBC. Since I could not find my candy thermometer, I went with Dyanne Bake's recipe for Swiss Meringue butter cream, since she has the very easy 1:2:3 measurements for the ingredients, AND she doesn't boil her sugar to pour into the meringue. 1=eggwhites, 2=sugar, 3=butter (all by weight). So I only wanted to use one stick of butter worth, so I had my engineer brother do the math.

So I started with a double boiler. I just used the bowl from my stand up mixer and whisked up my egg whites and sugar by hand until I couldn't feel the sandiness of sugar in the meringue anymore. this took about 5 minutes.

This was the consistency after about 5 min.

Then take it off the heat, and on to the stand up mixer. Whip it up until a stiff peak forms

isn't this beautiful?

When it reaches this point, you can start adding the butter. One Tbsp at a time.


Like every other ppl you talk to will tell you, it is going to look curdled and unsuccessful, but it's OK! just keep beating and beating... it WILL come together!

a little curdled..

When all the butter is in an you whipped it up to a beautiful butter cream, you can add any flavoring you'd like. I added my mother's strawberry jam. She doesn't use too much sugar in her jam, but if you are using some store bought jam, I would reduce the sugar amount in the cream.

So mine looked like this

I used it to fill the macaron I was making and oh it was delicious. I usually just fill my macaron with ganache or dressed up-ganache... but I will definitely try SMBC again and hopefully become comfortable with it. I remember the macarons when I lived in NYC... those usually had some buttery cream inside. mm mm mm...