Decorating cakes can be quite easy; there are many frosting recipes you can make on your cakes and one of such is vanilla buttercream frosting recipe. Today I will show you how to make easy and fluffy vanilla buttercream frosting or icing for cake decoration. You can use any flavor such as banana flavor for your buttercream icing but I love the flavor of vanilla.
Table of Contents
Buttercream Ingredients
- 200 grams of Salted Butter
- 1 teaspoon of Vanilla; you can use any flavor of choice. Since I am making a vanilla buttercream recipe, this is my flavor.
- Confectioners’ Sugar (icing sugar, powdered sugar)
- 30 ml of fresh milk
What is Buttercream icing or Buttercream frosting?
Buttercream frosting or buttercream icing is a type of cake decoration in which butter is beaten together with icing sugar and a little milk using an electric mixer to become fluffy; the buttercream thus formed is used to decorate on cakes (frostings or icing).
How to make buttercream frosting
In order to make buttercream frosting, you need to first make buttercream and then pour into a piping bag with a nozzle of choice for making cake frosting.
Making the buttercream
- Into a mixing bowl, add 200 grams of salted butter, and beat with an electric mixer until it becomes fluffy. This makes it easy for the buttercream to become fluffy. If you don’t mix until it is fluffy, you cannot make a fluffy buttercream frosting.
- Add the sugar powder (confectioner’s sugar, icing sugar) into the fluffy butter; if you are using unsalted butter, then you can add a pinch of salt but with salted butter, I am not adding salt again. After adding the sugar powder, beat until it combines again.
- Now add a teaspoon of vanilla flavor; this gives your buttercream frosting a vanilla flavor.
- Also, add 30ml of fresh milk and beat until all buttercream ingredients are combined and you have a fluffy, airy vanilla buttercream with a whitish color rather than the yellow color of butter.
- Your vanilla buttercream is ready for piping bags. Scoop into a piping bag with a nozzle of choice and start designing or decorating the cake frosting you like.
Making the best buttercream vanilla frosting
To make the best buttercream frosting for your cake, I love using the star-shaped nozzles for my piping bags.
- Scoop enough of the buttercream you just made into a piping bag.
- Twist the end of the piping bag and make your desired design
- When making buttercream frosting (buttercream icing), do no move the nozzle too far from the cake, to have the best buttercream frosting, the nozzle should be close to the cake to ensure the design and thread of the nozzle are not distorted.
This was how to make an easy buttercream frosting that is fluffy for your cakes, cupcakes, and pies.
Why use buttercream on cakes?
Making buttercream on cake gives it a beautiful appearance just like any other type of frosting or icing. It looks the same as heavy cream frosting.
Other buttercream recipes and variations
- You can make a chocolate buttercream recipe. In this type of buttercream, chocolate is often added to it.
- The white chocolate buttercream can also be made; you just need to add white chocolate to the recipe.
- Swiss meringue buttercream – made with egg whites such as the Italian meringue buttercream.
- Caramel buttercream using caramel sauce, this gives it a brownish color.
- Lemon buttercream frosting using lemon juice and lemon zest.
If you are making buttercream for a wedding cake, you can easily add food color to each of the buttercream frostings that will match the wedding color. So each color with its own buttercream and piping bag.
This was how I make a simple homemade buttercream frosting.