Brown Butter Caramel Meringue Buttercream

[Khadija]

I want to make a brown butter caramel meringue buttercream. Two questions:

1. Can I straightforwardly sub brown butter for regular butter in my favourite meringue buttercream frosting formula?

2. In the past, I've used lemon oil and zest and vanilla extract to flavour the buttercream. This time I want dark, dark caramel flavour. Should I just use homemade caramel syrup?

The frosting is for a caramel cake, which will accompany a milk stout at a friend's birthday. The party has a beer tasting theme, featuring brews from local breweries. My goal is to make a cake that will nicely complement the milk stout. For the cake, I plan to use Shuna Fish Lydon's formula, which was much discussed in a past Daring Bakers challenge. The cake is basically a butter-cake flavoured with very caramel. Lydon's frosting is a browned butter caramel frosting, described by many DBs as overly sweet -- it uses a full pound of icing sugar. I'm afraid that if I use it it will interfere with the beer, and I hate icing sugar, so I'm almost positive I'll go the swiss meringue buttercream route. I've also thought about covering the cake with a grapefruit flavoured meringue buttercream, or filling layers with something to cut the sweetness of the caramel. I know that it's possible to use chocolate to balance the caramel, but I'd rather not.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Khadija (log)

[JAZ]

I want to make a brown butter caramel meringue buttercream. Two questions:

1. Can I straightforwardly sub brown butter for regular butter in my favourite meringue buttercream frosting formula?

2. In the past, I've used lemon oil and zest and vanilla extract to flavour the buttercream. This time I want dark, dark caramel flavour. Should I just use homemade caramel syrup?

I don't know about the second question, but I substitute browned butter for regular in all kinds of recipes. Just make sure the browned butter is at the same temperature as is called for in the recipe -- so if the butter is supposed to be refrigerated, I refrigerate the browned butter so it's hard. If the recipe calls for softened butter, I let the browned butter set up to the same stage.

The only difference, as far as I know, is that you've cooked off the water in the browning stage, but that doesn't seem to make a difference in the recipes I've used.

[CanadianBakin']

This previous discussion may help:

As I was reading your question, marmalade came to mind. I don't know if it would work with your flavour profile but I thought I'd mention it.

[Khadija]

Thanks so much for the comments. JAZ, I'll go forward with the browned butter buttercream, and add the caramel syrup.

Canadianbakin, I did see the caramel buttercream topic. I probably should have posted in that thread. In the thread, the main suggestion for making a caramel meringue butter cream use Italian meringue buttercream as a base recipe. The sugar syrup is replaced with caramel syrup. I've only ever made Swiss meringue buttercream. But I can try my hand at the Italian. The worst case scenario is that the Italian doesn't work and I have to start over.

Last night, I was panicking a bit about this. The cake is for a party tonight, but I have not been able to practice or prepare much, aside from studying possible troubleshooting tips. I am using a borrowed stand mixer for the project, and won't have access to it until mid morning today.

And thanks, Canadianbakin, for the marmalade tip. I went to Loblaws last night to see if I could find decent looking marmalade, but wasn't sure. I'm still thinking about it.

[Khadija]

Success! I made the cake, with the experimental brown butter caramel meringue buttercream. Following advice outlined in the caramel buttercream thread, I made an IMBC and subbed caramel syrup for the regular sugar syrup and brown butter for the butter. The caramel syrup was very, very dark -- almost but not quite burnt. The brown butter was made with half salted and half unsalted butter, both from an Ontario dairy that I like for butter, Organic Meadows. The frosting was absolutely delicious, and I highly recommend it. On the cake, which was also flavoured with a dark caramel syrup, it was divine. Somebody told me that it captured the very essence of caramel. I could go on and on about making both this frosting and the cake. I thought the process was so interesting! Thanks so much for the help.

Edited November 23, 2009 by Khadija (log)