My buttercream was always grainy until a pastry chef told me this one thing

I used to always whip my butter straight from the fridge, figured it was fine. Then this older pastry chef at a workshop in Portland watched me and said "your butter has to be at 65 degrees or it'll never emulsify right." I went home, actually temped it with a thermometer, and my frosting came out silky for the first time ever. Has anyone else found that specific temp rule applies to other baking steps too?

2 comments

2 Comments

sethm5813d ago

Wait, are you telling me there's an actual temp for the butter itself? I always thought room temp was just "leave it out for an hour and hope for the best." That 65 degree trick makes so much sense now. I had the same problem with cream cheese frosting too, kept getting lumps until I started letting my cream cheese sit out on the counter next to the butter stick and checking both with a thermometer.

caseywalker13d ago

Buddy of mine spent three hours on a batch of sugar cookies once. Pulled them out, they looked perfect, but the frosting just slid right off like the cookies were oiled. Turns out his butter was at 72 degrees, which sounds close but might as well have been lava for how it acted. He threw the whole batch in the trash and started over with a timer on his phone set to check the butter temp every ten minutes.