Basic Buttercream

If you’re just starting out on the whole frosting game, especially if you have a hankering for cupcakes with big swirly piped frosting, the first recipe you’ll want to get under your belt is this one.

Buttercream is just a 50-50 combination of butter and icing (powdered) sugar. It is the butter icing. I suggest if you see any other sort (which for instance has little butter, much icing sugar, and milk) which purports then to be piped, that you ignore it and use this recipe instead. This one tastes sooo much better – and is far less sweet. My recipe uses some vodka, you don’t have to use this if you don’t want to (for instance if your frosting is destined for the bellies of children!), but it really lifts the texture – the alcohol helps to take some of the icing sugar into solution meaning you get more of a smooth emulsion frosting (less grains of icing sugar in the mouthfeel). The alcohol enhances the taste too, but doesn’t taste like booze.

Apart from cupcakes, this buttercream makes a great filling for layered cakes because it is quite stable, making your layered cakes easy to slice without any oozing of the filling.

Basic Buttercream

Makes enough for 12 lavishly frosted cupcakes or 1 20cm cake with four layers

ingredients

225g unsalted butter, quite soft
225g icing sugar
45mL vodka (or other spirits, or coffee, optional)
flavouring of choice eg 1 tsp vanilla, grated rind of 1 lemon, few drops of almond essence, 2-3 tbsp of fruit jam or melted dark chocolate…

mixing

Beat the butter with an electric mixer until smooth, add the icing sugar, stirring to combine. Once combined, beat on high speed until very pale and fluffy. Add vodka (if using) and flavouring, beat well. If you want to colour the icing, do this last and be scant unless you are intending to have day-glo frosting.

For layered cakes, spread the frosting as desired.

For cupcakes, fill a large piping bag with your favourite nozzle (I like the Wilton 1B) and pipe swirls onto your cupcakes. For duotone cupcakes like the ones above, colour half the frosting and then slide it into one side of the piping bag. Slide the other colour into the other side, then pipe away!

flavours

Your imagination is the limit! Basic buttercream lends itself to everything. One of my most unusual combos is vodka and lingonberry jam… just delicious.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

Cassis/blackcurrant jam

Pistachio essence/ground pistachios

Baileys/white chocolate

Coffee/dark chocolate (a note on chocolate – if you are looking for an over the top chocolatey frosting make my heavenly chocolate frosting instead)

Vodka/vanilla/vanilla seeds

Marscapone (a few tbsp – it will make the buttercream a little grainy but completely delicious!)

Vanilla liqueur/strawberry jam

Powdered freeze dried fruit

Limoncello/lemon zest

Grand marnier/blood orange zest

 

Enjoy! xxx