Now that the first birthday festivities are less than a week away, I've turned my attention to edible crafting. The cookie dough is in the fridge and will baked off tonight and I made my first
buttercream yesterday.
Dear lord, do you know how much butter goes into
buttercream frosting? Well, a
crapload, to be exact. But, whatever, the first ingredient you start with is
egg whites, so how fattening can it really be?? I found a
good recipe at epicurious (there are other sites out there with recipes, but this is the one I turn to again and again) and it involved a candy thermometer. Score! I needed a reason to buy one of those (up next, homemade caramels...) and man, was it fun to use. There is something about making candy that really brings my inner dork out. Cooking is always about chemistry, but something about candy-making just makes me feel like I'm in a lab concocting magic potions. I needed to heat the sugar solution to about 140 F which is some stage in candy-making that I haven't memorized yet, but at one point a little bit fell of the spoon I was working with and hardened immediately and I instantly thought (with all of the possible energy and emotion of a complete dweeb): I just made
candy! Then I ate it. Yum.
So: whipped up egg whites, boiled sugar solution, and 4 (count 'em, 4) sticks of butter later and we have
buttercream! That's right,
buttercream...which, I believe, is named for its final resting place upon ingestion.
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