Butter Cream is the result of great serendipity or genius like the Bessemer process, ePTFE (Teflon) or the chocolate chip cookie. Somehow, someone said to themselves “Scrambled eggs: within you I see the potential for a cake topping”. Then, with grim determination, this scion of flavor learned to think like an egg protein and deigned to find a way to prevent protein cross-linkage. The breakthrough was slow heat and rotary forearm ferocity normally reserved for pubescent teenagers.  I’ve attempted to make butter cream twice before, in the first case I created sweet scrambled eggs, in the second I created a stunt double for the The Blob that resulted in me losing a saucier. This time, I took a moment to center myself, made a double boiler of metal bowl and 2 qt chef’s pan and set to overcome the legion failures I’d made in the Organic Chemistry lab. The temperature approached 160°F which is normally the magical temperature that cross-linking begins but a little known fact is that egg foams can smell fear.  Alternatively, the pheromones emitted during my roar of determination at 159°F disrupted the electron cloud of the involved sulfur and my butter cream was victorious.
I had to cut the butter cream with some confectioner’s sugar to edge out the saltiness of the sweet cream I was forced to use being otherwise out of unsalted butter but otherwise it served as a capable topping to the “fudge cake” that was neither fudgy nor cake-like but this failing was devoured by sheer metaphysical delight of having a cake topped largely with butter.