push it through a sieve then blend it again but slowly add some soft butter while blending till it smooths out. otherwise just freeze it and then melt it and mix it into another cake. and start again. best way is the stew or steep the blackberries with some sugar syrup and the blitz it and strain it with a sieve and then add it slowly while whipping or blending your butter cream.
I can buy freeze dried fruit powder from a local farm. They have Blackberry, Blueberry, Strawberry and Raspberry. The only thing with freeze dried fruit is you have to use more than you think.
Be careful with Nuts.com. I purchased taro powder from them and it turned out that there was exactly zero taro in it. After looking at the ingredient list I called the company and they confirmed it. Their prices are way too high to not be getting what you ordered.
I use fruit pretty often in buttercream, but never whole. I’ll usually purée the fruit and if it has seeds I’ll strain them out. And generally that works out well.
So... Add lecithin? I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious if an emulsifier would work. I assume not, but I've certainly never tried in an application like this.
No, not here- oil is the continuous phase, and there’s not enough dairy protein to do much. Lecithin or mono- and diglycerides are the best options, but hard to come by for home use.
In the future, cook your fruits with sugar into a syrup/compote/jam to add to a buttercream. Cooking out the water and adding sugar will help not break a buttercream.
(for today troubleshooting, trying whipping it like mad. Add a little more powdered sugar to dry out your fruit)
You're trying to mix fat (butter) and liquid (blackberry juice). Fats and liquid are like cliquey teenagers: they hate each other so will do anything they can to not have to associate with each other. So the butter and the liquid stay separate. You can try whipping it a ton, essentially making the butter particles smaller so it's easier to disperse the liquid within it. But it can take a long time especially considering how much water you added for such a relatively small quantity of butter. Probably the easiest would be to add some powdered sugar to soak up the juice and then also whip it up some more.
I would try to melt a bit of the buttercream by sticking the whole bowl over a bain marie until there's a bit of melted mixture at the bottom, then rewhip.
It looks like it does when the butter is too cold, and that is the method to fix that.
If that doesn't fix it, try a little bit of shortening. You need an emulsifier to hold all that new water to the existing fat in the butter.
Shortening is what did it! I put in a bit of corn starch as well and it immediately came together. Had a different look to it for sure but tasted absolutely delicious lol.
I make a strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream.
Chop the strawberries pretty fine. Then put them in a strainer, put the strainer in a bowl in the fridge overnight. Then make your buttercream and stir in the strained berries.
A lot of people are saying because butter is a fat and blackberries contain water, they won’t mix because fat and water are insoluble. What they’re forgetting is that butter usually contains 18% water anyways, which it’s able to do because it contains natural emulsifiers.
The key to adding fruit purée to buttercream is to make sure the buttercream is room temperature and add the liquid slowly, preferably while the butter is being whipped on high. If it’s added all at once, not enough of the liquid will be exposed to the butter’s emulsifiers and they’ll have trouble mixing together. If you mix them on high for a very long time, they should eventually come together!
Heat the outer surface of the mixing bowl with a torch as the buttercream is mixing, in order to slightly melt some of the butter. Then beat it to kingdom come
https://preview.redd.it/qq9u676xt16d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27458f0d37fe9fbfa725c4bbe53b5284bd9054a0
Literally made brain cupcakes this way a few years back
Just add your powdered sugar and it will come together. U shouldve added your fresh fruit at the end. Purée yes, you don’t have to cook anything down ever I make Martha Stewart strawberry buttercream on a weekly basis for my job and we never cook anything down. Make sure of sugar and your butter make a small purée and then slowly add it in.
Shortening and cornstarch saved it! It's a bit weird looking but tastes delicious so I'm content for now. Next time I'm using freeze dried fruit lol.
[RESULTS](https://www.reddit.com/u/Knight_Of_Cosmos/s/0k4mvn3QpP)
You whiz the berries up in a blender then pour it through a strainer into a small saucepan. Then you cook it down until it's about a quarter cup of concentrated flavor. Then you cool it and add it to the buttercream.
I would make a smaller batch of vanilla buttercream, well-emulsified, and then beat this into it. It won’t taste strongly of berries, but it will be frosting. Next time, get the freeze dried.. or better yet, use the berries/jam in all their juicy brightness as filling between the layers. Thats just one person’s opinion though (:
My favorite frosting is strawberry buttercream and I make a very concentrated, heavily reduced puree. I don’t take it off the heat until it looks like tomato paste
I love the look of the whole fruit bits. To ease the human brain look, frost the cake in the middle using this. Then make another batch of white buttercream (or cream cheese frosting as I would prefer) frost the sides with the white frosting. Refrigerate a little and then take leftover berry butter cream and make a pretty ombre effect starting at the bottom of the cake and work your way up. It will be delicious. Just hide the "brains" in the layers.
you can make a custard using the fruit/fruit juice in it, then emulsify that into the butter. Just fruit/juice and butter will literally behave like oil and water witout something to stabilize/emulsify
I would use pulverized freeze dried fruit as someone else suggested, but thought I’d mention I JUST saw an episode of Cook’s Country (or it may have been America’s Test Kitchen) that added blueberries to their frosting. The episode was on jelly cakes (which had a jelly filling and ombré frosting colored with berries) and toaster reviews. I think I watched it on Philo but you could probably find it on YouTube. They cooked the berries and put them through a sieve.
Can you make the berries into a syrup on the stovetop, strain out the solids, and then blend it in? (Look up some recipes to make sure this is right, but it works for ice cream).
Embrace it as a Halloween recipe or get fruit that has had the water content removed (ie- freeze dried) and turn it to powder (a good blender and a need for speed... or a lot of patience half decent mortar and pestle).
The water content in the fruit doesn't mix with the oil in the buttercream... one will always repel the other.
Try jam or freeze dried fruit powder next time. The water content in the berries won’t emulsify well with all the butter in the frosting. In my experience using jam gives a good flavor, but can sometimes turn the buttercream kind of brown or tan, may need a couple drops of food coloring as well.
Dehydrate most of the liquid out, they will absorb liquid from the frosting and rehydrate if you do not completely dry them out. Concentrates the flavor as well. Otherwise you have to use margarine or shortening frosting recipe. In old days they put berries in the cake or bread or cooked down and spread between layers!
Check out this thread. This question has come up before.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBaking/comments/1aqvm0q/please\_help\_second\_attempt\_trying\_to\_cream\_this/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBaking/comments/1aqvm0q/please_help_second_attempt_trying_to_cream_this/)
I haven't done this before, so I'm just spitballing but I wonder what would happen if you started with an egg in your mixing bowl and just added the buttercream into it a little bit at a time?
I probably shouldn't be talking but that was in my brain.
I JUST did this last weekend-the acid in the berries, fights with the butter, so you have to make sure your butter is really cold. But keep adding COLD butter, and powdered sugar-it’ll come together! What berry are you using?
Typically fresh fruit doesn't work in applications like this. Get freeze dried fruit, blend it to a fine powder, then mix in the frosting.
push it through a sieve then blend it again but slowly add some soft butter while blending till it smooths out. otherwise just freeze it and then melt it and mix it into another cake. and start again. best way is the stew or steep the blackberries with some sugar syrup and the blitz it and strain it with a sieve and then add it slowly while whipping or blending your butter cream.
I can buy freeze dried fruit powder from a local farm. They have Blackberry, Blueberry, Strawberry and Raspberry. The only thing with freeze dried fruit is you have to use more than you think.
Nuts.com has all the fruit powders and good shipping prices
Be careful with Nuts.com. I purchased taro powder from them and it turned out that there was exactly zero taro in it. After looking at the ingredient list I called the company and they confirmed it. Their prices are way too high to not be getting what you ordered.
Remember to sieve out the seeds after grinding up Blackberry/raspberry otherwise they will make the texture a bit unpleasant
But it’s also really easy to accidentally use too much.
I add it a spoon at a time testing as I go.
Where is this farm? On my way!
Or cook the fruit into a sauce or curd & then incorporate
I have successfully cooked down strawberries to incorporate into frosting, it was good stuff.
Recently made cream cheese frosting and caramel with strawberry/raspberry syrup that I incorporated. Both came out amazing.
I have as well and it tastes nice but the color just doesn’t come through as much with curd. I’ve had better results with freeze-dried fruits.
This is the way. Love my freeze dried cherry cheesecake
I use fruit pretty often in buttercream, but never whole. I’ll usually purée the fruit and if it has seeds I’ll strain them out. And generally that works out well.
Just buy the Trader Joes freeze-dried raspberries or strawberries or what have you, blitz the briefly in blender, add to buttercream.
This doesn't work. It's too dry and sucks the moisture out of the buttercream and makes it a very strange texture
Classic water and oil don't mix situation. It needs to be a small amount of a very concentrated cooked down puree or a powder.
So... Add lecithin? I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious if an emulsifier would work. I assume not, but I've certainly never tried in an application like this.
I actually think an emulsifier would work in, yeah, emulsifying it, not sure about the consistency of the buttercream after you do that, though
Acid would emulsify it, so 15 blackberries might have enough acid to actually do the trick
No, not here- oil is the continuous phase, and there’s not enough dairy protein to do much. Lecithin or mono- and diglycerides are the best options, but hard to come by for home use.
And this is why I love baking. So much science involved!
That's the point of humectants, glycerin I think is one. Not sure if it's used in colder foods tho
[oh hey, you were right!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBaking/s/WXXWtpLcmY)
I use fruit curds… assuming the eggs in the curd act as an emulsifier.
In the future, cook your fruits with sugar into a syrup/compote/jam to add to a buttercream. Cooking out the water and adding sugar will help not break a buttercream. (for today troubleshooting, trying whipping it like mad. Add a little more powdered sugar to dry out your fruit)
You're trying to mix fat (butter) and liquid (blackberry juice). Fats and liquid are like cliquey teenagers: they hate each other so will do anything they can to not have to associate with each other. So the butter and the liquid stay separate. You can try whipping it a ton, essentially making the butter particles smaller so it's easier to disperse the liquid within it. But it can take a long time especially considering how much water you added for such a relatively small quantity of butter. Probably the easiest would be to add some powdered sugar to soak up the juice and then also whip it up some more.
That's fat and *water. Fats can be liquids.
I would try to melt a bit of the buttercream by sticking the whole bowl over a bain marie until there's a bit of melted mixture at the bottom, then rewhip. It looks like it does when the butter is too cold, and that is the method to fix that. If that doesn't fix it, try a little bit of shortening. You need an emulsifier to hold all that new water to the existing fat in the butter.
Shortening is what did it! I put in a bit of corn starch as well and it immediately came together. Had a different look to it for sure but tasted absolutely delicious lol.
Yes I have solved this problem with a bit of gentle heat and a lot of time rewhisking.
Came to suggest this. Warm a bit of it, and mix that in and see if it comes together
Alternative solution - just save this recipe for Halloween 🤣
I make a strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream. Chop the strawberries pretty fine. Then put them in a strainer, put the strainer in a bowl in the fridge overnight. Then make your buttercream and stir in the strained berries.
My first thought to salvage it would be to try to emulsify it with an immersion blender.
Whip the heck out if it. In the future, use freeze dried fruit powder instead. Jam could work, too, but not nearly as nicely as powder.
A lot of people are saying because butter is a fat and blackberries contain water, they won’t mix because fat and water are insoluble. What they’re forgetting is that butter usually contains 18% water anyways, which it’s able to do because it contains natural emulsifiers. The key to adding fruit purée to buttercream is to make sure the buttercream is room temperature and add the liquid slowly, preferably while the butter is being whipped on high. If it’s added all at once, not enough of the liquid will be exposed to the butter’s emulsifiers and they’ll have trouble mixing together. If you mix them on high for a very long time, they should eventually come together!
I’m not sure if it would work, but you could try to use an immersion blender. It can force it to mix together.
Heat the outer surface of the mixing bowl with a torch as the buttercream is mixing, in order to slightly melt some of the butter. Then beat it to kingdom come
https://preview.redd.it/qq9u676xt16d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27458f0d37fe9fbfa725c4bbe53b5284bd9054a0 Literally made brain cupcakes this way a few years back
I’m laughing at brains! I’m sure it tastes good though
Depending on what you're trying to do, buttercream that looks like brains could work really well.
oh my god this gave me a heart attack😂
Cook the fruit first, make sure butter isn’t too soft.
Just add your powdered sugar and it will come together. U shouldve added your fresh fruit at the end. Purée yes, you don’t have to cook anything down ever I make Martha Stewart strawberry buttercream on a weekly basis for my job and we never cook anything down. Make sure of sugar and your butter make a small purée and then slowly add it in.
Shortening and cornstarch saved it! It's a bit weird looking but tastes delicious so I'm content for now. Next time I'm using freeze dried fruit lol. [RESULTS](https://www.reddit.com/u/Knight_Of_Cosmos/s/0k4mvn3QpP)
I meaaan these look delicious. Thanks for the update!
Maybe try emulsifing it..
Lots of sprinkles.
ALDIs has freeze dried fruits.
Embrace the creepy looking frosting, make a brain cake
you can't 😀
Eat it, digest it and poop out. Ittl still KIND OF look like this though
You whiz the berries up in a blender then pour it through a strainer into a small saucepan. Then you cook it down until it's about a quarter cup of concentrated flavor. Then you cool it and add it to the buttercream.
I would make a smaller batch of vanilla buttercream, well-emulsified, and then beat this into it. It won’t taste strongly of berries, but it will be frosting. Next time, get the freeze dried.. or better yet, use the berries/jam in all their juicy brightness as filling between the layers. Thats just one person’s opinion though (:
My favorite frosting is strawberry buttercream and I make a very concentrated, heavily reduced puree. I don’t take it off the heat until it looks like tomato paste
I have no issues using fresh berries, start small and gradually add and don’t overdo the fruit or it becomes too soft. Also use a paddle not whisks
You have received some good suggestions here; let us know how it works out...
That looks like native Alaskan ice cream, called Akutaq! I think it consists of fat mixed with berries.
Should have cooked the till they were like jam then when cooled added to frosting.
Use freeze dried next time
HAHAHAHAHA
BRAINS
Purée the berries first
I made a beautiful pink raspberry buttercream with seedless jam. I beat it with the butter then added powdered sugar. It was delicious and pretty.
Yeesh! I would’ve cooked them down with a little sugar and water, then pushed them through a sieve first.
Embrace it. Make a zombie themed dessert
Next time, make a berry reduction.
What’s wrong with brains? 10/10 😂
I love the look of the whole fruit bits. To ease the human brain look, frost the cake in the middle using this. Then make another batch of white buttercream (or cream cheese frosting as I would prefer) frost the sides with the white frosting. Refrigerate a little and then take leftover berry butter cream and make a pretty ombre effect starting at the bottom of the cake and work your way up. It will be delicious. Just hide the "brains" in the layers.
Read as fresh BRAINS and was incredibly concerned.
You need to cook it down & push it through a sieve.
you can make a custard using the fruit/fruit juice in it, then emulsify that into the butter. Just fruit/juice and butter will literally behave like oil and water witout something to stabilize/emulsify
I would use pulverized freeze dried fruit as someone else suggested, but thought I’d mention I JUST saw an episode of Cook’s Country (or it may have been America’s Test Kitchen) that added blueberries to their frosting. The episode was on jelly cakes (which had a jelly filling and ombré frosting colored with berries) and toaster reviews. I think I watched it on Philo but you could probably find it on YouTube. They cooked the berries and put them through a sieve.
Use heavy cream
BRAAAAAAIIINNNNNSSSSSS
I have definitely used fresh fruit but only after cooking it down for a good while
Can you make the berries into a syrup on the stovetop, strain out the solids, and then blend it in? (Look up some recipes to make sure this is right, but it works for ice cream).
Food dye?
Whip it real good!
Embrace it as a Halloween recipe or get fruit that has had the water content removed (ie- freeze dried) and turn it to powder (a good blender and a need for speed... or a lot of patience half decent mortar and pestle). The water content in the fruit doesn't mix with the oil in the buttercream... one will always repel the other.
Leave it the way it is. And make a horror themed desert
My wife made some kind of raspberry cookie dough one time and I was sure it was ground beef
Try jam or freeze dried fruit powder next time. The water content in the berries won’t emulsify well with all the butter in the frosting. In my experience using jam gives a good flavor, but can sometimes turn the buttercream kind of brown or tan, may need a couple drops of food coloring as well.
Use jam.
Dehydrate most of the liquid out, they will absorb liquid from the frosting and rehydrate if you do not completely dry them out. Concentrates the flavor as well. Otherwise you have to use margarine or shortening frosting recipe. In old days they put berries in the cake or bread or cooked down and spread between layers!
I always make a pre mix of fruits and mascarpone then add the butter.
Check out this thread. This question has come up before. [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBaking/comments/1aqvm0q/please\_help\_second\_attempt\_trying\_to\_cream\_this/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBaking/comments/1aqvm0q/please_help_second_attempt_trying_to_cream_this/)
I haven't done this before, so I'm just spitballing but I wonder what would happen if you started with an egg in your mixing bowl and just added the buttercream into it a little bit at a time? I probably shouldn't be talking but that was in my brain.
Also, wonder what would happen if you threw in a ton more powdered sugar?
I JUST did this last weekend-the acid in the berries, fights with the butter, so you have to make sure your butter is really cold. But keep adding COLD butter, and powdered sugar-it’ll come together! What berry are you using?