Buttercream icing for simple cake decorating

Easy buttercream icing for beginners

Buttercream is the most popular frosting for decorating cakes. It’s both a tasty and versatile icing and also very easy to make if you follow the instructions correctly. This is a complete buttercream tutorial. You’ll learn how to make buttercream icing for simple cake decorating, and also about easy buttercream icing designs for beginners.

We’ll begin by learning how to prepare the essential ingredients – the butter and the icing sugar. I’ve also included useful information on how the basic buttercream can be modified to make other variations, how to make a more stable buttercream in the hot summer months, and how to store the icing. Read on for more information on how to make perfect buttercream icing for simple cake decorating.

In the video, you’ll find simple piping designs that even beginners can make with buttercream icing. Once you get a hold on the easy buttercream icing designs for beginners – stars, shells, zigzag borders, rosette borders and simple swirls –  you could move on to more advanced cake decorating with confidence.

And if you want to check out another tasty and popular cake frosting in addition to the easy buttercream icing for beginners, it would be worth learning how to make chocolate ganache as well.

Ingredients

150 g salted butter

300 g icing sugar

½ tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp milk or more

Procedure

1. Make sure the butter is not too hard or too soft when you start beating it. It shouldn’t be almost starting to melt. You should be able to press a finger into it, but it should be firm enough to leave an indent. Beat the butter with a whisk by hand for around 8 to 10 minutes or with an electric beater on medium high for around 5 minutes till it is pale yellow in colour. If you’re using unsalted butter, add around ½ a tsp of salt to it. The salt is important for it tones down the sweetness of the icing and creates the right balance in its taste.
2. Sift the icing sugar to break down any soft lumps and remove any gritty granules. This step is especially important if you’re going to pipe the icing through nozzles or piping tips which could get clogged by any granular stuff in the icing sugar.
3. Add the icing sugar to the whipped butter in three or four portions. Mix it in first with a spatula to prevent the icing sugar from flying all over your kitchen, and then with the electric beater on medium speed. Scrape the sides of the bowl now and then to make sure that all the butter and sugar are well mixed.
4. After adding in all the icing sugar, reduce the speed to low so that you don’t create too many air bubbles in the buttercream.
5. Next, add the vanilla extract and whip the icing for a few seconds.
6. Finally, mix in a little milk, a teaspoon at a time, till you get a medium stiff buttercream. In the hot season, you could skip the milk. In the summer time, you could replace 1/3 to ½ of the butter with margarine or vanaspati and increase the content of icing sugar from 300g to 400g to get a more stable buttercream.
7. Then switch to a spatula and mix the buttercream with it to release any trapped air bubbles. Your buttercream frosting will now be soft and fluffy and ready to use for icing cakes, covering them, filling it in between layers or piping simple decorations.
8. If you want to make chocolate buttercream, whip in around 1 ½ tbsp of cocoa powder, melted chocolate or chocolate ganache. But if you want to make it more chocolatey, add more of these. You could also make fruit-flavoured buttercream by mixing in pureed fruits of your choice, like strawberries, blueberries or raspberries.

Enjoy!