Guide to Making Buttercream Icing or Frosting
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Use this guide for making buttercream icing to majorly upgrade the frosting for your next cake or cupcake baking project. Homemade buttercream frosting is just miles better than what you can get in the store, although it's understandable that after putting the work into your cake or cupcakes, making frosting from scratch may not be the first thing on your mind. But let's give homemade frosting a shot!
Look to use about half butter and half vegetable shortening, which will give you a really delicious, but stable, frosting to use. The shortening keeps the frosting from falling apart, both in general and if you're serving your dessert outdoors on a hot day. More butter versus shortening will add flavor to the frosting, but may clash with other flavors if you are making a citrus-y cake or cupcake. It also makes the frosting more likely to melt. Consider different flavors with extracts like vanilla or almond extract, just be aware that if you're trying to get a pure white frosting or a particular color to your frosting, the extract may move the color away from that. |
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If you need to change the consistency of your icing, you can adjust the butter/shortening ratio and you can adjust the amount of your main liquid ingredient, probably milk. For example, if you're doing really involved decorating with frosting that needs to stay together and upright, you might want to decrease the amount of milk you're using in the recipe. We're talking about a matter of one or two teaspoons per cup of icing. If you've gone too far and need to re-stiffen the frosting, you can add additional confectioners sugar.
As far as how much frosting you need to make for a given project, a typical buttercream icing recipe will make two cups of frosting, which will give you enough for about twenty four cupcakes (assuming you do spatula icing). You will need two batches worth (four cups icing) if you are doing swirl frosting for those twenty four cupcakes.
As always when baking, you want to be working with ingredients that are all at room temperature, especially your butter. Your finger should be able to create an indentation in the butter without completely sliding down.
The tools you need for buttercream frosting are relatively straightforward: a spatula, an assortment of measuring cups/spoons, a large bowl for mixing, and a stand or electric mixer. You're going to use the stand or electric mixer to beat together your butter and shortening. You want it to end up fluffy. You can add any flavoring at this point too.
Now put in your confectioners' sugar, cup by cup. Be careful to use a low setting as you mix in the sugar, or at least start on a low setting and work your way up from there. You'll need to periodically use your spatula to get the sugar off the sides of the bowl as you mix.
Now add in your liquid ingredients and keep going until everything is mixed and fluffy again.
You can refrigerate your frosting for a few days if you aren't ready to use it right away. When you're ready to use it, take it out of the fridge and let it warm to room temp again, then whip it long enough to get back its fluffiness.
As far as how much frosting you need to make for a given project, a typical buttercream icing recipe will make two cups of frosting, which will give you enough for about twenty four cupcakes (assuming you do spatula icing). You will need two batches worth (four cups icing) if you are doing swirl frosting for those twenty four cupcakes.
As always when baking, you want to be working with ingredients that are all at room temperature, especially your butter. Your finger should be able to create an indentation in the butter without completely sliding down.
The tools you need for buttercream frosting are relatively straightforward: a spatula, an assortment of measuring cups/spoons, a large bowl for mixing, and a stand or electric mixer. You're going to use the stand or electric mixer to beat together your butter and shortening. You want it to end up fluffy. You can add any flavoring at this point too.
Now put in your confectioners' sugar, cup by cup. Be careful to use a low setting as you mix in the sugar, or at least start on a low setting and work your way up from there. You'll need to periodically use your spatula to get the sugar off the sides of the bowl as you mix.
Now add in your liquid ingredients and keep going until everything is mixed and fluffy again.
You can refrigerate your frosting for a few days if you aren't ready to use it right away. When you're ready to use it, take it out of the fridge and let it warm to room temp again, then whip it long enough to get back its fluffiness.