Best Temperature for Buttercream

Hello, I am Anita Algiene, and I'm going to talk to you today about what is the best temperature for buttercream. So, buttercream being the basics for all cake decorating, it is best to know the limitations of the medium that you're working with, and that being the main ingredient is butter. And first of all you need to choose a high quality, high fat content butter that will give you great consistency or great stability for your product. Having a high fat content will allow more air to be distributed throughout, and then makes your buttercream more stable. You also need to then... As you're working with it, of course, you can't work with it in the refrigerator, you have to work with it at room temperature, you have to keep an eye on your buttercream and just watch for signs of warming. It starts to get a shiny in appearance, it starts to fall, and then that way if that ever happens you do need to stick it back in the refrigerator. Of course, you don't want your buttercream too cold, who can work in a bakery when it's like 60 degrees? Although that's really nice, keeps your buttercream nice and fresh, it'd be super hard on your hands, you won't be able to work. However, it is good at times to use cold buttercream if you're doing flowers, for example, if you're doing roses, a nice cold- Sometimes I'll pop my decorating tube in the refrigerator for a minute, and that will give me really nice, fresh petals that stand up nicely. So, that's some examples of how you can use cold buttercream. But we all know the enemy for all cake decorating is warm buttercream. Any time your cakes are out of the refrigerator for any length of time, in 70 degrees or higher, you need to be very wary. A lot of people, of course, want their cakes on display for more than an hour , there's a couple solutions for that, you wanna 1/2 that recipe with a high ratio, or a high quality shortening, that will give your buttercream more of a tolerance for the temperature being colder or higher, or when it gets to hotter. So, you could do that. We also just keep it near the refrigerator, and as you're working, you can put it away for a while and bring it back out and keep working on it. So, again, just watch for signs of warming, it starts to separate, it looks oily, so, that's what's happening when it's warming, is the liquid is separating from the fat content. You also need to consider where you live in the country. I live in Alaska where I don't have much of a problem with being too cold, however, if there's a few sunny days in the Summer. But those of you who live in hotter, more humid climates, should be very concerned about how long your buttercream is out. So, especially if it's you're in a humid climate, buttercream, like I said, is super porous, you've introduced, you've opened up, you've given buttercream a lot of... As you're mixing buttercream, you're introducing a lot of air bubbles, and it's very porous, and it's going to absorb anything in the air around it being that if you're in a humid climate, you're introducing a lot of air to your buttercream. And as your cake starts to warm up to room temperature, it's gonna release that water, and then that's when we see a lot of softening and slidings of the cakes. So, just be very wary of that, don't keep your cakes out in the sun for any amount of time, and if you do just keep a close eye on it and put it back in the refrigerator if you can, keep it out of the sun, and you should be good to go. So, buttercream is a beautiful, lovely, medium to work with it as long as you consider the Goldilocks Rule where it's not too hot and it's not too cold, but it's just right, it'll do everything you want it to.