Celebrity Baker shares icing tips just in time for Easter1
Gabriela Oporto, celebrity baker and founder at Bakalicious shares her icing tips just in time for Easter.
Gabriela says: “Now that Easter is coming and lots of people will be baking at home!, I’ll explain the most popular icings for cakes – people get confused all the time and often name things incorrectly.”
Swiss-Meringue Buttercream – not the easiest to make however it’s one of the most delicious and has a much nicer texture than many of the other icings out there! It’s made with egg whites, butter and sugar.
Gaby’s TIP Use a low moisture high quality butter. Good butters are 82% plus butter content and 16% moisture content approximately.
American buttercream – made with butter, sugar and a dash of milk.
Gaby’s TIP Have never used this as I don’t really like it.
Frosting – is the general term used to describe what we use to decorate a cupcake or certain types of cake. Normally a lot thicker than an icing. Although I’ve heard many people say buttercream frosting or buttercream icing ????
Icings – are a lot runnier and not as thick as a buttercream. Although you can regulate this according to your needs. It’s as easy as combining some water and icing sugar or you can use milk and egg whites. We use it on top of our Vegan and gluten-free Orange Cake.
Royal icing – is icing sugar, egg whites and a little bit of lemon juice. This icing goes hard after it sets so it’s great for decorating cookies, gingerbread houses and the traditional fruit wedding cakes. We use over Christmas for our Gingerbread Houses.
Celebrity Baker shares icing tips just in time for Easter
Gaby’s TIP store with a damp towel in the fridge and you can still use the following day
Cream Cheese – made with unsalted butter, icing sugar and cream cheese.
Gaby’s TIP many customers tell us we make the best cream cheese. Number one quality of the cream cheese used and number two how you mix it – patience patience patience and only ever use paddle attachment.
Ganache – Chocolate and cream normally 1 to 1 ratio. However, you can change this around depending on how hard or soft you want the consistency to be.
Gaby’s TIP Go for a good quality chocolate. We make ours runnier for the Mud Cake otherwise it tends to dry very quickly with the cold air from the fridge. Hence why it needs more moisture contents (cream). Our ratio is 1 chocolate 1.25 cream.
Custard – one of my favourites! It’s basically a milk based liquid – can even be cream! With eggs and sugar. Some people just use the yolk, and others use the whole thing. I like making it with cream, egg yolks and the best Vanilla Pod you may find in town! If you add cornflour to custard you end up making Cream patisserie!
Chantilly Cream – this is the sophisticated term used! I call it whipped cream and it’s what I use in all of my cakes. This is my number one difference with many other cakes shops. The taste is delicious and it makes cakes more moist. The downside is it’s not very shelf stable and doesn’t like transport. But oh Boy! Does it make a good cake!
Diplomat Cream- My number one favourite! Used for our popular Tres Leches Cake. This is basically a custard which you thicken up by using gelatin or cornflour and then you mix it with Chantilly Cream (whipped cream in my vocabulary). I honestly can’t pronounce these French words very well so would rather use names that I do know how to pronounce.
