This American Buttercream Frosting Recipe is fluffy, airy and light, sweet and whipped to serious perfection! You can use it on any cake, cookie or cupcake recipe because of its amazing versatility! You will never need another frosting recipe unless you want to try my Cream Cheese Frosting, Chocolate or Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream which is also fantastic! Use it on my Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes or Perfect Chocolate Cupcakes, Gingerbread Cupcakes, Lemon Cupcakes, Vanilla Cupcakes or even Red Velvet Cupcakes!
Perfectly Versatile and Creamy American Buttercream Frosting Recipe
Because I seriously have tons of cupcake recipes on this website, I knew it would be important to share some buttercream frosting recipes as well. This frosting is literally the very best you will find. You can use it literally for any and everything whether you want to frost sugar cookies or shortbread cookies or whether you want to ice a simple birthday chocolate cake or yellow cake recipe.
What is American Buttercream Frosting?
American Buttercream Frosting is the easiest to make out of all frosting recipes out there. If you are familiar with Swiss Meringue or Italian meringue frostings, you know that they require more steps and preparation.
However, with American buttercream frosting recipes, butter and sugar get creamed to perfection and are the base of something incredible.
Ingredients for American Buttercream Frosting Recipe
There are just a few ingredients in this recipe that turn it into something quite special. The ingredients for my buttercream are the following:
- Butter
- Salt
- Confectioner’s Sugar
- Heavy Cream
- Flavoring
Because the butter is so crucial to the taste and success of this buttercream recipe, make sure you use a really high quality option. In fact, a European butter in this buttercream recipe is downright heavenly. Some great options for higher fat butters that have less water content are this one from Land O Lakes, KerryGold which is so delicious and made from plant fed cows and also Plugra which is a European butter staple.
- Make sure you are using unsalted butter!
Salt is added to this buttercream because salt is always necessary whenever you are making sweet recipes. It helps to balance flavors and even heightens the sweetness of the dessert.
Confectioner’s sugar is a must in American style frostings. It is much finer than granulated sugar so it melts into the butter quite easily and whips into perfection. You won’t taste the granules because of the fineness.
Heavy whipping cream is my big secret when it comes to lightening the texture and flavor of the buttercream. Have you ever tasted whipped cream? Well you know how amazingly delicious it is! Just the hint of whipped cream added to this buttercream adds that texture and fluffiness making it irresistible. It also allows the final taste not to be soo sweet.
Finally this is where the fun comes in. For a basic recipe, I use pure vanilla extract. It goes with everything however, this recipe is very adaptable.
- Start with small amounts of extract and taste as you go!
You can replace the extract with anything you want from citrus extracts to zests and chocolate! You can make this frosting literally anything you want!
How to Make Buttercream Frosting Recipe
To begin, you will start with butter and salt. These are your first key ingredients.
Tip 1: The butter must be room temperature!
This will allow the butter to be whipped into a fluffy texture and will also allow the sugar to melt into it perfectly.
Tip 2: Don’t skimp on the mixing!
Allow the mixing process to continue on high for a few minutes! It gives more lift and helps the sugar to truly dissolve into the butter allowing it to become one. It also airs more air making everything much more fluffy!
After whipping cream is added, you can have fun and add in extracts or even food coloring if you wish.
Pair it with your fave cupcake recipes or cake recipes and see the difference.
Perfect American Buttercream Frosting Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature 1 cup
- Pinch salt
- 3 cups confectioner's sugar
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- Optional: Food coloring
Instructions
- In your stand mixer, add butter and salt at medium low speed.
- Next turn the mixer down to low and slowly add confectioner’s sugar in small portions until all is added then turn the speed to medium high to combine.
- Add heavy cream and vanilla extract and mix until nice and fluffy. Add in food coloring at this point if desired.
- Pipe buttercream on room temperature cupcakes and serve.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
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Your recipes have been the perfect base to my vision. I just recently started my home bakery and I want to give the feel of deserts our grandmas use to make! Thank you thank you thank you ❤️❤️❤️