I need to make a pink buttercream for a little girl’s birthday. I am considering using the Mousseline with the fruit variation, possibly raspberry puree. Had anyone done this? Will straight up pureed frozen raspberries work? Do I need to thicken them with something? And how does it taste? I’m debating between doing this, and just tinting the icing pink.
i have used frozen strawberries, with no added sugar, and they taste great! however, the color is kinda odd, like fleshtone instead of pink, so i still add a couple of drops of pink food coloring.
If you follow Rose’s directions for raspberry puree, you will get an intense, perfectly balanced (not too tart or sweet) puree to add to your mousseline. A drop or two of red food color will help keep the mousseline color from fading after the first day.
I think plain pureed raspberries would be too tart without a little sweetening, and you definitely want to strain out the seeds for kids, many don’t like them.
I am considering making the mousseline with tart cherries to get pink, but I may not get to the project for a few days.
I agree with Julie that plain raspberry puree would probably be too tart, I use a sweetened raspberry puree for my raspberry mousseline. But I would suggest that if you simply want a pink icing, using food coloring is the best idea, unless you know she’ll like the flavor of raspberry. Or maybe you could make a batch of the buttercream, then take a small amount and mix in some raspberry puree so you can taste to determine if the birthday girl would like it. I prefer the fruit mousselines as fillings, because I think the plain old vanilla mousseline is SO GOOD!
“food coloring pink” is near impossible to achieve w/o food coloring!
but if you are trained on interpreting cake as “cake (an aliment)” and not as a sugar canvas or immitation of something that isn’t cake, I would use Cordon Rose Strawberry Conserve made with frozen fruit and reduced in the pan for double the amount of minutes; this extra cooking makes frozen strawberries the pinkest can be. Commercial strawberry jam is never made to this shade. You can run the conserve in the food processor and then strain it for the most fruid version and seedless.
Raspberries aren’t pink are more of a blood dark red color.
I’ve made both the strawberry and raspberry mousselines, using Rose’s recipe for the lightly sweetened fruit purees. They both give a wonderful pink color to the buttercream but the strawberry is a more true pink than the raspberry which has a bit of a purplish tint.
Thanks for all of your replies. I now realize I was confused by the recipe in the book. Usually, when they mention additions and things they give the page numbers in the book, if the recipe is there. But for this one, it mentioned fruit purees, but didn’t give the page numbers. So I assumed she meant straight up purees. After reading this thread, I went back and found the recipes you all mentioned. Thanks.
Hector - was just reading your post about using strawberry conserve for the mousseline. Is there a particular reason you use conserve instead of puree for the mousseline, and do you find it gets a bit too sweet? And, when making the fruit mousselines do you add alcohol?
I want to do Rose mousseline butter cream recipe for decorating cupcakes for a girl birthday in pink colour, I want to know can I pipe swirls on the cupcake with this buttercream,as here weather is also hot.so do they stay at room temperature?I dont want to do wilton butter cream recipe using shortening as dont like the taste.so please advice me what will be best for cupcakes?
Your best bet is the mousseline buttercream. It is the most stable of all of Rose’s buttercreams. It makes beautiful swirls for cupcakes. It can stay at room temperature for 3 days. Although if it is quite hot, I would recommend keeping the decorated cupcakes refridgerated in a sealed container and take them out an hour or two before you plan to serve them since the mousseline will get quite firm in the fridge. So you could decorate them the night before and be ahead of the game. You won’t have any problems coloring the mousseline either since it is a very light off white color.
You could also try the neoclassic buttercream but the only problem is that since it is made with egg yolks instead of egg whites, it is a yellow color and might interfere with your color. Also it is not as stable as mousseline in hot weather.
Another thought, you could use stabilized whipped cream tinted pink. It is stablized with gelatin and it holds up quite well too.
Zille - not sure where you are from but here in Singapore it does get VERY hot. I have used mousseline and it’s fine standing for a couple of hours indoors in the shade (obviously away from direct sunlight) - the mousseline will get very soft of course, but if you are doing swirls on cupcakes it’s not like the swirls will melt down. They will hold their shape. Keep refrigerated until it’s time to transport and display.
Thank you for your lovely suggestion,I made the mousseline buttercream,it turn out good,only i feel when i add sugar syrup to egg whites,it becomes hard,anyway the result are good, the taste is good but the flavor is so much buttery, I also added white chocolate to it,so lease tell me what can i add at that stage to avoid this strong butter flavor,can add strawberry puree or whipcream to it .
My second question is i have to decorate the cupcake tomorrow so can i re frigate it for the meantime ,do I beat or whip it again at the time of decoration.
Thank in advance for your advice.
You can add the strawberry puree anytime to the completed buttercream. If you refrigerate it, just be sure it is COMPLETELY at room temp (cut it into cubes if you need to) and then rebeat for the best texture before frosting. You can add the strawberries after rebeating and before piping.
Zille - please refer to the Cake Bible for the amount of puree to be added - do not exceed the recommended amount of 3/4 cup to one batch of mousseline or it will be too soft to hold its shape. That is why using Rose’s recipe for concentrated strawberry or raspberry puree (instead of just pureeing the berries without concentrating them) is good, because you add much more flavour for the amount of liquid. The next time you make this buttercream and have a chance to hunt down freeze-dried fruit (available online), it is worth grinding it to a powder and adding it to the buttercream, for an excellent burst of colour and flavour without more liquid (which affects its stability). I have tried this with raspberries, strawberries, and blackcurrants with fabulous results.
A bit puzzled about your comment about the sugar syrup becoming hard when added to the whites, though, unless the syrup is being spun to the sides of the bowl and hardening there. You do have to be careful when pouring the syrup, to not hit the beaters which will flick the syrup away instead of beating it into the whites. I wonder if this could have resulted in a smaller amount of syrup being beaten into your italian meringue and thus accounting for the overly buttery taste you are reporting. Are you using unsalted butter?
