Recipe: Classic Buttercream Frosting

Buttercream...doesn't hearing that word just make you want to close your eyes and lick your lips? So decadent. So indulgent. And here's how...

There are several different kinds of buttercream frosting, both in technique (cooked vs. uncooked) and in ingredients (plain vanilla, chocolate, infused tea, and beyond). We'll be talking about a few others over the next several weeks, but we thought we'd start you off with the most basic!

This buttercream is not as stable as others, meaning that getting it to come together can sometimes be tricky and it is more prone to melting and cracking once applied as frosting. Making sure all your ingredients are at room temperature is one trick to getting the buttercream to stabilize.

Confectioner's sugar gives this icing a smoother mouthfeel. You can substitute other solid fats in place of butter, but it will be less creamy and taste more bland.

A word to the wise: this buttercream includes uncooked egg yolks. If you're cooking for folks that might be sensitive to this (or if you yourself prefer not to eat raw eggs), skip this one, but hang around for later recipes on cooked buttercreams.

Classic Buttercream Frosting
Makes enough to frost a 9" cake or approximately 24 cupcakes

1 cup confectioner's sugar (or granulated sugar, or a combination of the two)
6 egg yolks, room temperature
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1 Tablespoon pieces, room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon flavorings, like vanilla, almond extract, or liqueurs

Beat the sugar and eggs on medium-high speed until they turn a lemon-yellow color and you get a very thick ribbon. Add the butter one tablespoon at a time, beating well between each addition. When all the butter has been incorporated, add the flavorings.

Buttercream is easier to work with when it's room temperature. If you're making it ahead of time, store it in the fridge and allow time for it to come up to room temperature before proceeding with frosting. If the buttercream is very stiff, even at room temperature, try beating in a few tablespoons of whole milk or heavy cream.

• For some excellent buttercream recipes and variations - not to mention a ton of delicious recipes to use them on - check out Sara Kate's cookbook, The Greyston Bakery Cookbook, available for $17.16 on Amazon!

Related: How to Frost a Layer Cake

(Image and cupcake recipe!: Flickr member QuintanaRoo licensed under Creative Commons)

Comments (5)

nom nom nom

Huh. We always just mixed butter and confectioner's sugar with possibly a little milk (almost always a batch of chocolate frosting so with cocoa too) and called it buttercream. So what is the kind of frosting I make called?

Tiamat - I *think* that's technically called "decorator's icing."

These names and terms get thrown around willy-nilly, though, so I certainly won't blink an eye if you choose to call your delicious sugar concoction "buttercream"!

last week, in honour of my daughter's birthday, I needed buttercream for her red velvet cakes and cupcakes, and so researched buttercream... the interesting thing is that there doesn't seem to be any consensus on what exactly buttercream means.

Here's the best explanation of "buttercream" and recipe collection (although by no means exhaustive ) I've found so far:

http://www.pastrysampler.com/Questions_and_Answers/buttercream.htm

My understanding of what is meant by buttercream is of a hot sugar syrup combined with beaten egg yolks and butter; it's what my grandmothers decorated cakes with.

The buttercream recipe I wound up using was from the Cupcake Café:

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/cupcake-cafe-vanilla-buttercream (need to use it right away; if you refrigerate it for later, it will crack when you try to rebeat it)

my first attempt of making this recipe was not good. the texture was rough just like making a royal icing that i taste a granulated sugar where in fact i used a confectioner sugar..why that was happen? is it the way of mixing? or how the ingredients been worked out?