Keeping: Dairy or Buttercream?

[Stephanie Wallace]

Imagine that I have excellent, fresh, local butter/eggs/cream. (It's all true; really). I need to prepare a rose butter cream (Italian) for use in three days. Will my final product be at its peak (eaten on Monday night) if I prepare it the day of or am I better off preparing it tonight?

[JeanneCake]

I usually make buttercream the day before I use it; mostly because of how I'm scheduling things (it's one of the last things I am doing while waiting for cakes to cool). You could use it immediately after making it (Saturday) and keep your cake refrigerated until a few hours before serving on Monday and you will be fine.

The Cake Bible has storage recommendations with the recipes and for IMBC, the recommended storage is 2 days at rm temp; then there's refrigerated for some number of days (10?) and frozen (2 months?) but I am not positive about those numbers because I go through so much of it that it doesn't last more than a day.

[Stephanie Wallace]

Unfortunately the rest of the piece cannot be made until late Sunday (It's not a cake and will not last as long). While I would like to knock the BC out early for efficiency's sake, the real question is in what condition will the dairy products--particularly the butter--retain their peak flavor? Will making the butter cream actually stabilize those ingredients? And, could making it too early result in loss of texture (lightness)? The only truly important consideration is the excellence of the final product.

[alanamoana]

if you make it ahead of time, you just have to be careful how you store it. make sure it is covered, etc. so it doesn't absorb odors from the fridge etc.

also, you'll have to reconstitute your buttercream before you use it, which will result in less volume (not as fluffy as freshly made) but will make the texture perfectly acceptable on whatever you bake.