pro buttercream recipe

Lately I’ve become a bit of a baking fiend! I do my bake sales every now and again, and I’ve recently subscribed to Baked and Delicious magazine. That was mainly for the free gifts, and gifts for subscribing – you get silicon bakeware every time which is really good :D

Anyway, lately I’ve found a new recipe for buttercream. My usual recipe is the very simple “half fat to dry” method, as in whatever the amount of icing sugar I use half that weight of butter, and then add in flavouring ingredients. That’s seemed to serve me well, however sometimes I feel like the taste is too fatty – plus the consistency isn’t always the same (but that’s probably a result of the flavouring ingredients changing the consistency a bit depending on if it’s dry or wet). It seems to need things adding to it to make it right for piping (which I looooove to do!).

So I thought I’d look up some new recipes, see if I could get a hold of a more ‘professional’ buttercream recipe, as all professional cakes and buns are coated in buttercream no matter what they are. I tried the following one last night to test it, and it worked – it just needs a little tweaking, and I’ve added the tweaked notes to the recipe hehe. I hope to decorate a cake for my dad on Saturday, Carrot of course, and I’m going to do it with green piped grass and lil carrots sticking out of it. Maybe I’ll even do a bunny :D

Obviously this recipe can be reduced if you don’t want to do a big amount, but if you’re reducing it, watch out for the water – that doesn’t seem to reduce in proportion, you’ll probably need a lot less in it as that is the thing that makes it runny.

Ingredients:

• Icing sugar: 2lb / 907 g sifted
• Butter: 8oz / 225g
• Whole milk, or cream: 1 tablespoon
• Water: approximately 120ml / 4 fl oz
• Salt: 1/4 tsp (can be missed out if you don’t want to add salt, this is just in the original recipe and it apparently takes away fatty taste which is why I wanted the recipe)
• Clear Vanilla 1/4 tsp
• Almond Flavour 1/8 tsp

If you’d like it another flavour, miss out the almond and exchange for the flavourings you’d like such as cocoa powder, coffee, lemon juice or practically anything else. If using a dry flavour, add it to the sugar before you begin.

Method:

1. Melt the butter (for ease of mixing).
2. Add vanilla to the butter and mix in. Add any other liquid flavour at this stage.
3. Add the sugar (mixed with salt, and dry flavours if you are using them) to the butter and cream together. This will produce a stiff mixture.
4. Add tablespoon of milk/cream and mix in.
5. Add the water a tablespoon at a time, mixing each one thoroughly. Stop when you have the consistency you want. Remember the butter will still be warm, and the mixture will set a little with cooling.
6. Mix the whole mixture for about 10mins, and then put in the fridge to cool.
7. Check it in about an hour, and use!