Perfect Buttercream Frosting with crispybake’s kitchen

Hey, I’m Gaby and today on CrispyBake Kitchen, I’m going to show you how to make perfect buttercream frosting with all my tips and tricks. So let’s get started. First off, a quick note about the butter. I like this to be on the softer side of room temperature, so you can see I’m pressing my finger into it. It yields fairly easily. You don’t want melted butter, but if it’s cold, it’s not going to be the same. So if it feels a bit firm to you, just pop it in the microwave, 50% power for 10 second bursts.

I’m using unsalted butter today. You can use salted butter. I know kind of the thing in most of us have in a refrigerator. If you are, just don’t add any more salt or you can add it to taste if you have a salt tooth. Chances are you’ve made buttercream frosting before and it could be sublime and amazing or a little bit disappointing. And I want to give you all the tips and tricks to make it the right way.

Starting with what should you use if you’re using a stand mixer, a whisk or a paddle? The answer is a paddle. Why is that? Well, the reason is you do not want to pump your frosting full of air. It should be creamy, silky and amazing. And that means that you’re not going to whisk in the air. You’re going to beat it with a paddle. So as a rule, go low and slow. You can definitely make this with a hand mixer. Just use a lower power.

Ingredients

• ◯ 1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, softened
• ◯ 4 cups (60 ounces) powdered sugar, sifted
• ◯ 4 tablespoons cream or milk, divided
• ◯ 1/2 teaspoon salt
• ◯ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. 1. Creaming up my butter just to give it a nice start. It’s really room temperature so you can see it already. It’s like perfect. Buttercream frosting, also known as American buttercream, is the simplest, easiest frosting to make. I’m going to show you how to make it silky, smooth, perfectly sweet, flavor all sorts of different ways and store it so you can keep it four months at a time. Mix your butter on high for about five minutes until light and very fluffy.
   2. My butter’s all creamed up and now we’re going to add the powdered sugar. It’s about four cups or 60 ounces, which is one package. And one of the things that can really trip you up when you’re making frosting are lumps. So if you’re ever doing any detail work like piping buttercream roses, trying to get something nice and smooth or just trying to have like no clumps of powdered sugar, which is not tasty, you want to sift it out and get rid of all those little rocks.

I’m going to add this directly into here and just sift it in a few batches. Sometimes you sift it out and there’s like no lumps, no reason to, but then sometimes you don’t sift it out and your piping tip is clogged or your frosting is kind of lumpy and delicious. So is this the best practice to sift it out? Look at that. That was a new package and it does have little rocks in it, which is not great. I’m going to sift this out in a couple batches and just mix it in as I go so it doesn’t go all over the counter. Start on low and one of the things you need to remember is you just got to be patient. So don’t try and rush it. Don’t be in a hurry. Go low and slow. It’ll look like nothing’s mixing in, like nothing’s happening, but it’ll happen and it’ll be so creamy as a result of giving it just a little bit more time at a low speed.

1. 1. I give it a little mix. I’m going to use my spatula and just kind of scrape the bowl down a bit.
   2. Right now I’m going to add about a tablespoon of cream while it’s mixing on low and then just walk away. Do something else. Don’t focus on this. It’ll come together really quickly and you’re going to be seeing a creamy, amazing consistency.

Sometimes when you’re adding your cream or milk in, your buttercream can start to look grainy and that means it’s broken. It’s really easy to fix though. You don’t want broken buttercream because it just looks grainy and the mouth feel isn’t the same. You can fix it by adding in some more sugar and beating it up. So just mix, mix, mix and add it in and if it’s really cold and it’s like not working, you can like use a hair dryer on the edge of your bowl and just warm it up and that should fix everything.

One of the questions I get is about the consistency for buttercream. So if you’ve ever had tons of little bubbles and it doesn’t smooth out nicely, it’s because a lot of air got whipped into there and it is fixable. Just mix it on low with a paddle or use a spatula and smooth it out in the bowl to like kind of break up those bubbles and compact it down again. You can also add in a little bit more cream and keep mixing on low and it should fix basically everything.

1. This is coming together but if you tasted it now, you’d be like, oh this is so sweet. It needs something and that something is salt. Add in half a teaspoon while mixing on low and this would give you a really nice contrast to all that sugar and just bring out more flavor. Salt always lets you taste things better.
2. I’m also going to add in another tablespoon of cream as well as about a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract.
3. It’s always a good idea to scrape the bowl down at least once when you’re making this because you’ll see the bottom has a lot of compacted butter and the top has all the sugar and the flavorings you’ve added. So you want this to be nice and consistent.
4. Time for one last tablespoon of cream. I’m going to let this mix up for a while. You’re going to see a beautiful consistency.
5. One final tablespoon of cream and then I’m going to show you how to flavor it and how beautifully it can pipe.

Additional Tips & Flavors

If you’re wondering what you can do to make your buttercream taste delicious, one of the answers is use a nice butter. If your butter is like towards the end of its life and getting a bit stale, you will definitely taste it in your buttercream. It’s one of the main flavors so use a nice fresh butter. The better the quality, the better it’ll taste.

This buttercream is a blank canvas. You can add anything you want to it from Oreos to chocolate, including an easy two-ingredient chocolate ganache, to caramel, or raspberries. I’m adding some of my favorites right here. You can screenshot this or pause it and write it down. And if you have more, let me know in the comments below.

I have to give you one final tip on the consistency because even though we went low and slow the whole time, there are little air bubbles throughout. If you want to get the most amazing creamy consistency, you’re going to use your spatula and just press it out. If you ever made macaron, it’s very similar to macronage. You’re pressing out the air bubbles by flattening this. This is an optional step. You don’t have to do it, but if you’re doing detail work or if you want to get a mirror smooth finish on your cake, it really, really helps. I’ve even made buttercream just with a spatula before where you make it into a paste and that’s totally doable. It just takes a lot of time. There, that’s looking so much better already.

Into a piping bag with an 846. It’s a nice closed star tip. Add some of our smooth, amazing buttercream. I’m actually going to freeze this batch to use later for some easy fluffy fudgy chocolate cupcakes, but I have to show you how beautifully it pipes. So take a look. This is a scallop pattern, so you just pipe in little waves. It’s wonderful for the top of the cake or for the base. One more time. This is life-changing and delicious. Perfect. So good.

A lot of times when you’re baking from scratch, you might be running low on time, but that’s okay because you can stage things out. This frosting can be made months in advance, so you can have it ready for later. All you want to do is pop it into an airtight container and make sure it is truly airtight. You can even put it in a piping bag and just seal it up and then you can freeze it for like two months or it could be in your fridge for like three to four weeks and be totally delicious. All you want to do is bring it back to room temperature. So if it’s in the fridge, let it sit on the countertop for a few hours to warm up, then give it a mix. And if it was in the freezer, pop it into your fridge to warm up slowly for a day or two and then place on your counter.

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