A boozy chocolate filling 1: Buttercream

In my 100-days project of creating the best boozy CBP, the first phase is to figure out a good filling. I have narrowed it down to three possible types of filling: a chocolate buttercream, a chocolate mousse, or a chocolate ganache.

This week, we work on figuring out the best buttercream recipe. Buttercream is what appears in most recipes. It’s also the one that I remember my mother using in the CBP she makes.

A chocolate buttercream is the combination of three basic ingredients: icing sugar, butter, and cocoa powder.

Something interesting I noticed is while most modern CBP recipes make a buttercream that’s whipped – admittedly, it’s used as a filler between dense layers of cake or to decorate cupcakes – a lot of older CBP recipes “mix” the three; not whisk or whip them. This makes the filling denser, as it’s the whisking that adds air and makes the filling fluffy. For today’s experimenting, I went with mixing, not whipping: I wanted to go a little traditional, and I was making very small quantities to test. I swear this recipe is more a recipe for diabetes than anything else.

Anyway.

After much research (yay research!), I came up with three options I wanted to try. All three used the base three ingredients above, but in different ratios. In addition to those, I used room temperature milk and Bailey’s Irish cream liqueur as liquids for the buttercream. (Remember, boozy is one of my main criteria.)

Options	Icing Sugar	Butter	Cocoa powder	Liquid
1	5	5	1	1tsp liqueur
2	3	3	1	1/2 tsp liqueur 1/2 tsp milk
3	7	2	1	1 1/2 tsp liqueur 1 1/2 tsp milk

Someone should have told me this involves A LOT of math. Not that I don’t like math; I do. But doing tablespoons to cups to grams conversions while juggling ratios in my head was not something I was expecting to do on a Sunday morning.

As this is not a recipe blog, but a record of my work, I shall skip the method. Not that there’s much to it: measure, mix, taste. That’s about it.

Once the three batches were made, we did a taste test. I roped in J because he has been demanding CBP for years now. Also because he knows what it’s supposed to taste like. Also because I’m nothing if not thorough, and obviously I need another tester to validate my findings. Even if the second tester goes “Mmmm yummy!” at everything.

This was our score card. We marked each out of 5.

We have a clear winner here, in batch 3. Sweetness was the biggest problem here, where almost everything was too sweet. Batch 2 was not sweet enough. This is a problem to keep in mind. Personally, I found the whole thing to be too sweet in general. What was I expecting when the whole thing is basically powdered sugar, I don’t know.

To make sure I know how these work with Maliban Gold Marie biscuits dipped in warm milk, and to understand how they refrigerate, I then made three mini CBPs and put them in the fridge for about 6 hours. They aren’t pretty and neat. That wasn’t the point of today’s activity.

Then, again, we did a taste test.

Batch	Score (/5)	Notes
1	4	Too sweet. Not very boozy.
2	3	Very chocolate-y! Has a bitter aftertaste though. Too sweet. Can’t taste the booze at all.
3	4.5	Boozy! Good texture. Too sweet.

Everything was way too sweet. I know I’m repeating myself, but repetition for emphasis. It was so sweet that I decreed that we eat only one spoonful of each pudding. I really need to fix this.

All in all, batch 3 emerged a clear winner in both the taste tests. We didn’t even have to debate the outcome.

Notes for future:

• If I end up using buttercream, use a THIN layer of buttercream
• Try doing two layers of biscuits instead of one.
• FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE IT NOT SO SWEET. YEESH.
• There is no complexity in flavour in the base CBP. See if I can make it a little more layered.

Next week, we tackle chocolate mousse. Chocolate ganache comes after that. Truth be told, I have a feeling buttercream is going to lose against the other contenders in our final battle of the fillings.

Such a biased tester, I am. This is why I have to rope in J, even though he’s way too generous with his scores (so Australian!).

I shall now go eat freshly ground pepper. Or a fried red hot chilli. Yum.