Hello! And welcome to part four or my buttercream deep dive series, it’s been a while since we chatted about buttercream and I figured it was about time I get back on the buttery bandwagon. Today we’re chatting about some of the lesser-known buttercreams all of which have some kind of milk base. I’ve already covered Swiss meringue buttercream in this post, syrup-based buttercreams in this post and a general breakdown of all of the different types of buttercream on this post over on Kitchen Projects. And, if you’re not a fan of buttercream, I also have a cream cheese icing deep dive which you can read here.
Let’s meet today’s line up, we’ve got:
Ermine - Milk, sugar and flour cooked together to make a sweet paste whipped with butter.
Mousseline aka German - Pastry cream (crème pat) whipped with butter.
Russian - Condensed milk whipped with butter.
If you fancy making a bake using one of these buttercreams, this week I’m sharing a recipe for an Earl Grey And Milk Chocolate Dacquoise with Earl Grey mousseline (or ermine if you fancy), chewy almond dacquoise and Earl Grey ganache. This recipe is exclusively for paid subscribers so if that sounds like something you fancy, please consider upgrading your subscription. You’ll receive an exclusive recipe every week, plus access to the full archive of over 200 thoroughly tested cake and dessert recipes. And you'll be helping support me so I can continue creating and sharing recipes! 🩷
Ermine Buttercream
Ermine is a buttercream I don’t tend to gravitate towards and I’m not really sure why, perhaps it’s because it’s slightly trickier to use than Italian or Swiss, it doesn’t give you that super crisp finish and can get a bit sloppy in warm weather. However it has it’s advantages, it’s lovely and smooth, not too sweet, you don’t need to separate any eggs and you can easily play around with flavours. After messing around with it all week, it’s really grown on me and I think it’s a buttercream I’ll be using more in future bakes.
When To Use It
What I really love about ermine is the potential to infuse the milk with various flavours - herbs, teas and spices all work wonderfully. The finished result is remarkably similar to mousseline so it’s a good option if you want that texture and flavour without messing around with egg yolks. I wouldn’t use this buttercream if you plan on using a lot of add-ins like purees, caramels or pralines, it already contains a lot of liquid meaning that it can collapse or split easily when adding extra ingredients, Swiss and Italian are best for that.
Because this buttercream doesn’t require any eggs, it’s also an excellent option when it comes to plant-based buttercreams. I made one of my tests using oat milk and plant-based “butter” block and the texture was great. However, as is often the case with plant-based “butter”, the flavour was somewhat lacking. If you’re planning on making a plant-based ermine buttercream, I would highly recommend infusing the milk with some strong flavours, it really benefits from some punchy flavours to distract from the slightly off-putting margarine aftertaste.
The Ratios
The ratios for ermine buttercream tend to be pretty similar when it comes to milk, butter and flour, a standard ermine buttercream recipe usually looks something like this:
Milk: 30%
Butter: 35%
Flour: 5%
Sugar: 30%
However, when it comes to sugar, we have the opportunity to reduce this significantly without it affecting the overall texture too much so for my ermine base recipe I reduced it until I was happy with the sweetness and was left with these percentages:
Milk: 40%
Butter: 40%
Flour: 5%
Sugar: 15%
This is just the right balance for me but feel free to adjust it to suit your preferences, if you make it and it isn’t sweet enough, throwing in a bit of icing sugar at the end won’t hurt.
The Method
This method involves making a sweet milky paste out of flour, milk and sugar, the process is fairly straightforward, you just need to mix the dry ingredients, add the milk and then cook until thick. When I was in pastry school, it was drilled into my head that flour must be cooked out on the hob for at least 10 minutes however, when I tested this buttercream, I found that boiling it for 2-3 minutes was adequate, and really, who has time to be standing over the hob for a full 10 minutes? The most important thing is that the paste boils for a few minutes so that the flour can start to gelatinise properly.
A lot of the recipes I came across recommended adding the butter a bit at a time to the base and I have to admit that that’s how I’ve always done it but on refection this is insane, it takes forever and almost always results in split or sloppy buttercream. For every single one of these milk-based buttercreams I found that it was much easier to whip the butter first and then add the base to the whipped butter.
Adding the base cold, right from the fridge helps to keep the buttercream at good temperature to work with, keeping it slightly cool enables it to hold more air making it fluffier. If you’re not careful, adding the base cold can be a problem, if it’s too firm it can get lumpy but we’ve negated this issue by adding some butter to base while it’s still hot, this keeps it soft and makes it easy to whisk in. With this technique I managed to avoid split buttercream but if your buttercream does split, don’t panic, just keep on whisking, it will come together eventually!
Whilst ermine is generally considered quite stable, it can start to collapse if left sitting out for too long, you’ll see the texture change from fluffy and smooth to slightly sloppy and moussey (see below). If this happens, throw it in the fridge for 30 minutes before re-whipping it. This buttercream can be frozen, defrosted and re-whipped before use.
The Recipe
Let’s get on with the recipe, I’ve left this recipe completely plain but I’d almost always infuse the milk with something before starting, if you want to keep it simple, you can just use a vanilla pod or get experimental with teas and spices, just be sure to re-weigh the milk after infusing.
Ingredients - makes 700g, enough for a small 6” cake
100g caster sugar
35g plain flour
pinch of salt
300g whole milk
30g cold butter, cubed
270g soft butter
Method
In a medium pan, whisk together the sugar, flour and salt.
Mix in the milk and heat on medium, stirring or whisking continuously. I always use a whisk for this kind of thing but just use whatever you’re most comfortable with.
Keep heating until it starts to boil, once boiling, continue to cook for a further 3-4 minutes. You should be left with a thick, gloopy mixture that looks disturbingly like wallpaper paste.
Remove from the heat and mix in the 30g of cold butter.
Transfer to a tupperwear container, cover the surface with clingfilm to prevent a skin forming and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
Whip the soft butter until it’s as pale and fluffy as it can possibly get.
Add the cold base and whisk until smooth, this should only take a few minutes, it might look slightly split at first but will get smoother after a bit of whisking.
Use straight away. This buttercream will keep in the fridge for 7 days or can be frozen. Re-whip before using.
1. Milk base 2. Whipped butter 3. Finished ermine 4. Different ermine tests
Mousseline/German Buttercream
Onto mousseline! This is my most used of all of today’s buttercreams. It’s commonly used in lots of patisserie including choux buns, Paris-Brest, Dacquoise and Fraisier (although I use diplomat in my version). Mousseline is similar to ermine in texture but contains egg yolks (and sometimes whole eggs) making it extra rich and giving it a lovely custardy flavour and pale yellow colour.
When To Use It
Mousseline is typically the least sweet of all of the buttercreams so it’s a good one to use if you want a smooth, custardy buttercream with very little sugar and, like ermine, it’s great for infusing different flavours into the milk. I tested both ermine and mousseline with Earl Grey infused milk, thinking that one might carry flavour better than the other but I found the difference to be negligible, so if you’re choosing between the two I think the real deciding factor is whether you can be bothered to separate a load of egg yolks.
Mousseline is generally slightly less stable than ermine so it’s not the best for making tall layer cakes, however I’ve made some amendments to my mousseline recipe to tackle this, even so, I wouldn’t recommend it for very tall cakes or cakes that will be sitting out in warm weather. And again, I wouldn’t use this buttercream if you plan on using a lot of add-ins, it can collapse or split easily when adding extra ingredients.
The Ratios
Crème pat ratios can vary vastly so to keep things simple I started out with my base crème pat recipe which you can find here.
Milk: 41%
Butter: 41%
Egg yolk: 10%
Sugar: 5%
Cornflour: 3%
Once the butter had been added to turn crème pat into mousseline, the milk to butter ratio remains the same as with ermine however the sugar is significantly less. I know we always seem to be chasing after desserts that aren’t too sweet but there’s a limit to how “not sweet” I want something and this crosses that limit, after all, we’re making desserts and this little sugar just doesn’t cut it for me, I’m left feeling like I’m eating a spoonful of slightly soft butter.
If you’re adding additional sweetness to mousseline in the form of things like praline pastes or melted chocolate, around 5% sugar is fine but for my base recipe I decided to match it to the ermine at around 15%.
Onto the starch. Crème pat is almost always made with cornflour, and there’s a reason for this, it sets firmer and the “floury” texture cooks out faster so you’re rarely left with that weird dusty after-taste that you can get when you use plain flour. However, when we’re adding a tonne of butter to make mousseline, cornflour isn’t the best option. I went down a very science-y rabbit hole about why this is but all you really need to know is that flour gels do a better job of emulsifying with butter than cornflour gels and are more structurally sound, making for a nice stable buttercream. So it makes sense to switch out the cornflour in our crème pat for plain flour and with this switch we can also slightly increase the percentage of starch.
After making these adjustments I was left with something I would describe as a kind of mousseline ermine hybrid. It has the nice custardy flavour and soft yellow colour of classic mousseline but the balanced sweetness and stability of ermine.
My final percentages ended up looking something like this:
Butter: 36%
Milk: 36%
Yolk: 10%
Flour: 4%
Sugar: 14%
The Method
The base of the mousseline is made in the same way as any other crème pat - boil the milk, whisk together the yolks, sugar and flour, pour some of the hot milk into the yolk mixture, return to the pan and cook until thick, for an in depth chat about all things crème pat, see this post.
As with ermine, I had much better results adding cold crème pat into already whipped butter. The use of flour rather than cornflour also helps here as it gives us a slightly softer crème pat which distributes more easily into the soft butter. When I tried this technique with crème pat made with cornflour, I found that it isn’t break down evenly and I was left with lots of little lumps of bouncy crème pat suspended in whipped butter which obviously isn’t what I was going for.
Even with the adjustments to improve stability, if mousseline sits out at room temperature for too long, it will get moussey and start to collapse, if this happens, chill it and re-whip before using.
The Recipe
Ingredients - makes 800g, enough for a small 6” cake
300g whole milk
100g caster sugar
35g plain flour
pinch of salt
80g egg yolk
30g cold butter, cubed
270g soft butter
Method
Place the milk in a medium pan bring to the boil.
Whisk together the flour, sugar and salt then add the yolks and whisk right away until smooth.
Pour half of the freshly boiled milk over the egg yolk mixture while whisking, followed by the second half. Sieve back into the pan and place on a medium heat.
Bring the mixture to the boil, whisking continuously, once thickened and boiling cook out for 3-4 more minutes.
Remove from the heat and mix in the 30g of cold butter.
Transfer to a tupperwear container, cover the surface with clingfilm to prevent a skin forming and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
Whip the soft butter until it’s as pale and fluffy as it can possibly get.
Add the cold crème pat and whisk until smooth, this should only take a few minutes, it might look slightly split at first but will get smoother after a bit of whisking.
Use straight away. This buttercream will keep in the fridge for 7 days or can be frozen. Re-whip before using.
Russian Buttercream
I’m going to keep the Russian buttercream chats fairly short and snappy as this isn’t a buttercream that I use often but I wanted to include it in this post so that we have a really nice, comprehensive collection of all of the milk-based buttercreams. It’s a very simple, two ingredient buttercream consisting of just whipped butter and condensed milk.
When To Use It
Russian buttercream is perfect for when you need buttercream fast and want something smoother, silkier and less sweet than American. It has a strong condensed milk flavour which I don’t mind but it’s not my favourite for adding additional flavours to, I’d rather start with a clean slate like Italian or Swiss buttercream.
Russian buttercream can also be made with dulce de leche instead of condensed milk, this makes for a very delicious and easy caramel buttercream with minimal faff.
The Ratios
Russian buttercream is usually made with:
Butter: 50%
Condensed milk: 50%
If we break down the ingredients in our condensed milk to compare it to our other milk-based buttercreams we can see that there’s significantly more sugar and less milk meaning it’s somewhere in between a classic American buttercream and our other milk-based buttercreams:
Butter: 50%
Sugar: 28%
Milk (from condensed milk): 22%
You can play around with these ratios a little bit, more condensed milk will give you a softer buttercream that’s less structurally sound but doesn’t feel quite as fatty on your pallet.
Since dulce de leche contains less water, you can get away with using a lower percentage of butter without compromising on texture. When making Russian buttercream with dulce de leche I usually reduce the butter to around 40% and use 60% dulce de leche as well as a really good pinch of salt, this gives us a nice flavoursome caramel buttercream with zero faff. Just make sure you’re using the stuff in a tin or jar rather than the squeezy stuff which has been watered down.
The Method
Exactly the same as the other milk-based buttercreams, the butter is whipped and the condensed milk is added in and whipped until smooth.
The Recipe
I don’t think a recipe is really required for something that consists of a 50:50 ratio, so I’ll let you figure out plain Russian buttercream, instead I’m sharing a recipe for cinnamon and dule de leche buttercream which is both tastier and more interesting.
Ingredients - Makes 650g
260g soft butter
1 x 397g tin of Carnation caramel/ducle de leche
1 tsp cinnamon
0.25tsp fine salt
Method
Whip the soft butter until it’s as pale and fluffy as it can possibly get.
Add the dulce de leche, cinnamon and salt and whisk until smooth and creamy.
Use straight away. This buttercream will keep in the fridge for 7 days or can be frozen. Re-whip before using.
Thank you for joining me for the final part of this buttercream series! Please let me know if there’s any more cake fillings you’d like me to cover in depth, I always love to hear your ideas.
If you enjoyed this post or found it useful and want to support me please like, comment or share. It really helps my newsletter to grow so that I can continue to create and share free content. Thank you so much! 🩷
Love this post so much. Super informative. Thanks Sophie! 🍰
I agree I had no idea there were so many different ways to make buttercream. Great information and recipes to try out. Thank you so much!