I am going to make a chocolate buttercream to frost my son's birthday cake. Its based on a recipe on BBC Good Food here - I'm not planning on making the cake on the recipe though btw, I'm going to use a chocolate yogurt cake recipe.
Its my first time trying to pipe out some simple decorations on the caake using buttercream. I am so worried it will flop because I'm not great at piping - have tried before with icing but I suspect the icing itself was too soft that was why the shape did not stay. But this time I will give it a go again. I want a buttercream that's going to keep its shape after piping. I will also be practising my piping with the buttercream on a plate/paper before doing it on the actual cake.
A friend of mine said she adds some meringue powder to her buttercreams if they are too soft for piping. I cannot find any meringue powder where I live, have tried calling cake shops in my area, none of them stock meringue powder. It's a bit too late for Ebay now as I need it by Monday... One of the shops recommended I try using egg white powder instead as meringue powder is actually egg white powder.
What do you think? Egg white powder okay? Is there any guideline as to how much powder to add?? Also if I happen to take a long time doing the icing, should I be refrigerating the buttercream every so often... say, every 10 minutes or so, to keep its consistency?