Help Predict if This Frosting Recipe Will Work

[Velda Mae]

I'm making a cake for my dad's birthday from a cookbook from a restaurant our family used to visit in the 70s. The problem is that I'm not confident that the recipes were well tested. I'm going to use a tried and true yellow cake recipe for the base but I'm worried about how the frosting will turn out. The ingredients are

12 oz butter
4 oz semisweet chocolate
1/2 c espresso

The instructions are to melt the butter with the chocolate, add the espresso and chill until the mixture is spreadable. I'm afraid the mixture will seize or be too stiff to spread. I'd love to know what other bakers think.

My dad remembers this frosting as being extremely dark and bitter. I have 64% and 70% semisweet chocolate in inventory. Without added sugar and with espresso in the frosting, will the 70% be too strong? Also, will using 70% make the frosting even harder to spread or will the butter help in that department?

There is so much history and memory tied into this cake that I want to tamper with the original recipe as little as possible while doing whatever I can to make sure the results are tasty.

In case you're curious, this is going to be a Sicilian cassata cake from the Ciro & Sal's cookbook. Ciro & Sal's is in Provincetown, MA. The filling will have ricotta with candied orange peel and chocolate shavings.

[chowser]

I think it will work and will be as your dad remembers, very intensely dark and bitter. I won't seize both because you've melted butter with it and because of the quantity of liquid. Using 70% instead of 64% won't affect the spreading consistency and it should be fine because of all that butter. I might be inclined to use a little milk chocolate but that's a personal thing (your recipe reminds me a little of RLB's milk chocolate frosting from the Cake Bible which uses twice as much milk chocolate as dark but I always reverse the ratio) and if you're aiming for dark and bitter, go with all bittersweet. I think intense bittersweet flavor will be good w/ orange.

[Caroline1]

Yup. What Chowser said. No reason I can see why it shouldn't work. Theoretically, it's similar to a ganache. You could probably melt the butter and coffee together to near boiling, then just pour it over the chopped chocolate and stir until smooth, then let cool until spreading consistency. I think the key in the recipe as you report it is NOT to chill until solid. JUST until spreading consistency. If you let it set/cool long enough, you could probably also make truffles with your recipe.

[chowser]

Good point about not letting it set too long. It's reversible but takes much more work than just keeping an eye on it.

[julesincoq]

I've done similar ones and you should have no problem. I put it in the fridge and just keep taking it out and stirring. The edges get chilly and the middle is still warm so to keep it all even and to check consistency I stir every 10 minutes or so. If it was me, I'd add a smidge of vanilla to take the edge off the coffee and chocolate a wee bit.

[Velda Mae]

Help! I set the timer and stirred every 10 minutes and the mixture went from liquid and glossy to curdled-looking and nothing I'd put near my cake. Can it be fixed? If so, how? By re-melting the mixture and starting over or is there something I should add? If I go for the re-melting option, what about stirring the mixture constantly over an ice bath rather than letting it set up in the fridge?

[chowser]

It sounds like you overheated the butter and the frosting "broke." I've never been able to fix it once I've done it but theoretically, you should be able to--I've wasted good ingredients on trying to fix it, though. You want to stop at liquid and glossy and stir pretty often, much more than every 10 minutes. I never leave the stove side.

[Velda Mae]

I did stop at liquid and glossy. In fact, there were pieces of butter in the liquid and I took the bowl off the heat and stirred until they melted. The mixture stayed liquid and glossy for about 45 minutes in the fridge and then curdled at the next stirring interval.

[chowser]

Oh, it curdled in the refrigerator? Sorry, I thought it did on the stove. In that case, it didn't break. You could take it out, let it come to room temperature and then try beating it with a mixer on low.

[souschef]

Did you use a water bath? Chocolate does not like direct heat.

[Velda Mae]

Yes and I made sure the water was merely simmering, not boiling, and that the bowl with the chocolate and butter was not touching the water.

Rewarming the mixture and repeating the chilling process didn't improve the outcome. I started over this morning with a traditional ganache recipe. The good news is (a) this cake supposedly improves with an overnight rest in the fridge and (b) I started a day ahead so I had time to make adjustments.

[bushwickgirl]

Ok, so you have plan B, always a good thing.

I've been thinking about this icing recipe since you posted it, and reading other posters comments; it seems to me it's missing something. I just can't see where melting chocolate and butter together, adding liquid (espresso) and chilling will result any kind of icing when cooled; I'm not surprised it broke. If you used just butter and chocolate, it would be a bit like a ganache but the proportions of butter to chocolate are way off, compared to a basic ganache formula. Reversing the ingredient amounts and using 6 oz of chocolate to 4 oz of butter makes much more sense to me. I can't put my finger on it; maybe the original recipe had egg yolks and sugar in it.

I just found a recipe with all your ingredients that contains egg yolks and sugar as well and is a buttercream, made with a espresso flavored sugar syrup.

Anyways, I'm sorry it didn't work out, a ganache is a very nice choice, are you adding a bit of espresso powder to it? I hope your dad enjoys the cake for his birthday.

[Velda Mae]

I thought about adding espresso powder and the ganache recipe I used suggested it, but I was too chicken after the first failed attempt and stuck to chocolate and cream. I used 5 oz of chocolate and 4 oz of cream to make the ganache a bit thicker and it set up nicely. I applied a crumb coat and then 2 coats of ganache to make a thick layer.

[bushwickgirl]

That's a good ratio of chocolate and cream. Using just 1-2 teaspoons or so of espresso powder won't hurt the consistency. Next time...

[souschef]

Wouldn't whipping it after chilling cause it to thicken to spreadable consistency? The 1/2 cup espresso does seem excessive, of course.

[bushwickgirl]

It might, if it was just butter and chocolate, but I think the butter to chocolate ratio is off, to say nothing of the extra added liquid. If you reversed the butter/chocolate ratio, 12 oz chocolate to 4 oz butter, even with the addition of the espresso, I think it result in a whippable and very spreadable icing. It's just too much butter as the recipe is written.

[Caroline1]

LOL! I am obviously a sloppy reader! After reading this discussion I went back to read the OP's original post and the ratio of butter to chocolate. I suspect I read "2 ounces of butter" the first time and not 12! 2 ounces of butter in 1/2 cup of expresso would approximate an equal amount of cream, as in a ganache.

Velda Mae, it's probably a bit late in the game since your dad's birthday has likely come and gone, but for future reference, the chocolate mixture in your recipe is (little doubt in my mind) supposed to be like a ganache, but without cream to retain the deep dark flavor of the chocolate instead of a milk chocolate flavor/color. I suspect a serious typo in your recipe. So... A traditional ganache is simply equal parts by WEIGHT (not volume!) of heavy (whipping) cream and chopped (dark, semi-sweet, white, doesn't matter much) chocolate in which the cream is heated to nearly boiling, then poured over the chocolate and stirred until the chocolate is melted and smooth. As it cools it thickens, first to cake-icing consistency, then to a more solid consistency that can be spooned out and rolled into a ball, then rolled in cocoa powder and served as truffles.

To replace the heavy cream with a coffee & butter mixture, 1/2 cup of coffee and 2 ounces of butter will have approximately the same fat content as 1/2 cup of heavy cream. You might even reduce the coffee to 3 1/2 ounces instead of four (1/2 cup) to be sure your finished "ganache" isn't runny. SOOOO... Using this corrected ratio of TWO ounces of butter instead of twelve, you SHOULD end up with a deep, dark, glossy rich "faux" chocolate ganache.

My deepest apologies for misreading the first time. Hey, I'm old! '-)

[chowser]

I didn't pay attention to how little chocolate is used, either. I don't think it could be 2 oz. butter because that would make so little frosting then. As "faux" ganache goes, I think real ganache is so easy and delicious that it's better, as the OP found, to go with that. I do love the RLB's milk chocolate buttercream that I mentioned above, as long as I go heavy on darker chocolate, very light on milk chocolate. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, butter, vanilla--so easy.

[Caroline1]

I'm feeling as if I may not have been all that clear in what I wrote or you may not have understood what I was trying to say. The 2 ounces of butter *PLUS* the half cup of coffee when mixed together should be approximately equal to the volume and fat content of a half cup of heavy cream, which in turn is approximately the right amoung of liquid for the given amount of chocolate and thereby the results should have the texture and quality of ganache without any casein, just butter fat.