Have you ever had to make a cake and then wonder which buttercream frosting would work best? Wondering if you should make or buy your own frosting? Well, I have it all here for you. 30 plus homemade buttercream frosting recipes in one place. These are all my recipes and you will be surprised at how simple and easy they are to make, some take as little as five minutes to make.
Did you know that I have shared more than 30 homemade buttercream recipes with you already? And I not done yet.
The more you have the more confusing it can get. right? While I do have them all listed out in a category I often have people ask me which frosting they should try. Or where can they find that buttercream recipe? So I thought why not make a round-up post so you can see them all here.
How many different types of buttercream frosting are there?
The number of frosting recipes can be overwhelming and sometimes confusing. In general, we can categories these as
- Butter-based buttercream - simple all-purpose buttercreams like my velvet American buttercream, Vanilla buttercream (eggless)
- Decorators buttercream - often with all or some vegetable shortening to prevent the frosting from melting easily like my Bakery style frostings - Vanilla and Chocolate frosting
- Cream Cheese based - made with cream cheese often with or without butter like my classic cream cheese is made with butter which adds more stability and my no-butter cream cheese frosting when you want a more luxurious dessert type frosting.
- Meringue buttercream - made with the addition of whipped egg whites. Less sweet than the classic butter-based buttercream like my Swiss Meringue or Italian Meringue
- Egg-based buttercream - like the French Buttercream and German buttercream made with egg yolks then whipped to make a light and fluffy frosting with the addition of butter.
- Whipped Cream Frosting - the lightest of them all is, of course, simple whipped cream. I shared 5 different methods to make whipped cream at home. As well as a whipped cream buttercream frosting.
30 plus buttercream frosting recipes (pin)
Best Buttercream Frosting Recipe
A good vanilla buttercream frosting recipe is a must-have on hand. Today, I share with you how I make the best frosting recipe everybody keeps raving about. Using my method you will never want to look for another recipe ever again.
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Chocolate Buttercream Frosting Recipe - Just 5 minutes
This is the best chocolate buttercream frosting recipe you will ever make. It's light, airy with real melted chocolate, not just cocoa powder. I have been using this for all my cakes and cupcakes only to receive rave reviews from my customers.
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Bakery Style Vanilla Frosting Recipe
If you looking for the best vanilla frosting, then this bakery-style vanilla frosting is a must-try. It takes only 5 minutes to whip and has the longest shelf life ever!! It's an absolute kids' favorite frosting over any cupcakes, cakes or cookies. This vanilla buttercream works great in hot, humid weather and can sit out for hours without any refrigeration required.
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Bakery Style Chocolate Frosting Recipe
If you are looking for the best chocolate frosting, then this bakery-style chocolate frosting is it. It takes only 5 minutes to whip and has the longest shelf life ever!! Tried and tested, it's a kids' favorite over any cupcake, cakes or cookies. This chocolate buttercream also works great in hot, humid weather, and can sit out for hours without any refrigeration required.
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Velvet American Buttercream Frosting Recipe
My American buttercream is the most requested recipe from customers as well as visitors here on the blog and for good reason. It has a glossy sheen due to the unique method I use in making it. This simple, easy and effortless recipe makes a delicious velvety smooth textured buttercream that's not grainy, easy to make in minutes, and melts in the mouth. Perhaps the best American Buttercream Frosting you will ever make.
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Swiss Meringue Buttercream SMBC
Silky smooth, rich and creamy with a velvet-like texture is what this Swiss meringue buttercream (SMBC) is all about. Learn to make the best Swiss buttercream with my no-fail recipe. In this recipe post and video tutorial, I tell you everything you need to know about SMBC recipe, including a step-by-step tutorial, how to flavor it, store it, and troubleshoot any possible problems ahead of time.
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Swiss Meringue Buttercream with Meringue Powder
The buttercream I used on these cupcakes is a meringue buttercream made with meringue powder. And it's light, fluffy and deliciously creamy. It's a simple, easy and effortless recipe using powdered egg whites instead of raw egg whites. Also, this meringue buttercream does not need any candy thermometer. Hence, it is a Swiss meringue buttercream with meringue powder.
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Italian Meringue Buttercream Recipe
Buttery, silky smooth, light and fluffy as a cloud is what this Italian meringue buttercream recipe is all about. Less sweet and more buttery than standard buttercream. This step by step tutorial with my no-fail IMBC recipes is all you are going to need to make perfect IMBC every single time. With tips, tricks, troubleshooting and frequently asked questions answered below.
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Italian Meringue Buttercream with Meringue Powder
The buttercream I used on these cupcakes is a meringue butter cream made with meringue powder. And it's light, fluffy and deliciously creamy. It's a simple, easy and effortless recipe using powdered egg whites instead of raw egg whites. Because there are some customers, especially pregnant women, who like meringue buttercream, and yet don't want to take the risk of eating raw eggs. This meringue buttercream uses a candy thermometer which means it's an Italian Meringue Buttercream with Meringue Powder.
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Classic French Buttercream NO-Fail Recipe
This French buttercream is silky smooth and buttery with the taste of vanilla pastry cream. And this no-fail recipe is all you are ever going to need to make a perfect French buttercream every single time. It's made with egg yolks, butter, and sugar. And then whipped until you have a rich custard-based thick buttercream that can be a filling in cakes, piped over cupcakes, and even decorated with fondant.
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German Buttercream Recipe No-Fail Recipe
This German buttercream is silky smooth and buttery with the taste of vanilla pastry cream. My no-fail recipe with step-by-step picture tutorial is all you are ever going to need to make this perfect custard buttercream every single time. Frost it on cakes, pipe it over cupcakes, or fill it in macarons and other desserts. And with tips, tricks, and troubleshooting this buttercream is one of the easiest to make.
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The Best Stiff Buttercream frosting for cake decorating Pipping Buttercream Flowers
If you plan to pipe buttercream flowers the first thing you need is a stiff buttercream frosting recipe for piping flowers. One that will pipe perfect buttercream flowers for you and will taste as delicious as it looks. This simple, easy and effortless recipe will give you a stiff buttercream frosting for cake decorating you will ever need.
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Homemade Whipped Cream 4 Methods
You can make homemade whipped cream with just 3 ingredients in just 5 minutes? Today, I will show you 4 different methods to make your own light and fluffy whipped cream to top on anything from pancakes and waffles, to dessert cakes, cheesecakes, and drinks.
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How to Stabilize Whipped Cream 5 Methods
We all need our whipped cream dessert to look just as beautiful tomorrow as it does today. But keeping whipped cream fresh longer can be tricky. These five simple and easy methods to stabilize whipped cream will make sure your cakes, cupcakes, and desserts look fresh longer. You can try any of these five methods that work best for your current project
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Cream Cheese Frosting
This simple and easy cream cheese frosting has a light and fluffy texture that pipes beautiful swirls on your cupcakes, carrot cake, or red velvet cake. Use it under fondant for tiered cakes. The best thing is it takes just 5 minutes to prepare.
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No Butter Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
This no butter cream cheese frosting is light, fluffy and melts in the mouth just like whipped cream. A simple, easy and effortless recipe that gets done in less than 10 minutes. Perfect for cupcakes or your favorite carrot cake recipe.
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The Best Strawberry Buttercream Frosting
This strawberry buttercream frosting is the ultimate dessert accompaniment. Rich, creamy and made with fresh strawberries this is perfect with any dessert from frosting delicious cupcakes, layered cakes, between macarons or just with more fresh seasonal strawberries in a bowl. Make more in summer when strawberries are in season or use frozen any time of the year. No matter what time of the year this frosting is bound to satisfy your strawberry craving.
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Pink Champagne Buttercream
Every special occasion deserves a special frosting, that's what this pink champagne buttercream frosting is all about. Made with champagne reduction, light, and creamy. A perfect over cakes, cupcakes, macarons, or desserts
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Caramel Buttercream Frosting
A good caramel buttercream is smooth, rich, and glossy. It's made with homemade caramel sauce that takes just five minutes to make. Drizzle some caramel sauce and a few grains of salt for that salted caramel buttercream everyone craves.
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The Ultimate Coffee Buttercream Frosting
The aroma and flavor of coffee in desserts are addictive. This is the ultimate coffee buttercream frosting with a light and fluffy whipped cream-like consistency. And, the best part is, it needs 4 ingredients and 5 minutes to prepare.
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Eggnog Buttercream Frosting
Add the flavor of the Christmas eggnog into your frosting. Made with homemade eggnog, this eggnog buttercream is simple, easy, and delicious. With a touch of spices like nutmeg and cinnamon infused with a little booze, this custardy drink is the perfect festive treat. It takes five minutes to make and can be used to frost it over cakes, cupcakes, or between macaron shells.
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Butterscotch Buttercream Frosting - 2 Methods
I call butterscotch buttercream frosting the twin sister of caramel buttercream. While quite similar, butterscotch has a uniquely delicate and sweet flavor from brown sugar. Also, it's much softer than caramel and goes well with some unique cake flavors such as banana, pumpkin, apple, and even vanilla or chocolate.
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Dark Nutella Buttercream Frosting
If you love Nutella, this Nutella buttercream frosting will probably be your favorite. An absolute heaven over cakes, cupcakes and between macaron shells. Rich, creamy and decadent this frosting takes no more than five minutes to mix and is the perfect consistency to pipe pretty swirls on cupcakes or pipe boarders or designs around cakes such as this one.
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Best Kahlua Buttercream Frosting
This Kahlua buttercream frosting is the ultimate dessert accompaniment. Rich, creamy and perfect with any dessert from frosting delicious cupcakes, layered cakes, as well as between macaron shells. Make it with or without chocolate, add a dash of espresso. No matter what time of the year this frosting is always the ultimate treat.
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Whipped cream buttercream frosting
Brown Butter Cake
Give my classic vanilla cake an exotic nutty flavor with this naked brown butter cake. Light and fluffy, this is lightly frosted with a whipped cream buttercream between layers. Perfect for serving as a dessert and even for a special celebration.
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Chocolate Fudge Frosting
Moist Chocolate Fudge Cake Recipe
This moist chocolate fudge cake is rich and dense. Made with both chocolate and cocoa powder from scratch then frosted with a rich chocolate fudge frosting.
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Maple Buttercream Frosting
Pumpkin Spice Latte Cake with Maple Buttercream Frosting
The rich flavor of pumpkin spice latte beverage in a cake makes it a pumpkin spice-latte cake. Combined with a maple buttercream frosting this cake is a perfect fall dessert. Oil-based cake batter makes for a light and airy cake infused with pumpkin spice mix, coffee, and maple syrup.
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Chocolate Ganache - frost, drip, glaze or pipe
Chocolate ganache is a versatile frosting with just two ingredients you can make for any cake, cupcake, or dessert. Use it as a frosting, drip, glaze, or piping. Here's my recipe, tips, and troubleshooting for you.
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Cake Decorators Chocolate Ganache Recipe
The perfect chocolate ganache for decorating a cake is one that you can use to cover a cake with fondant and I call it the Cake Decorators Chocolate Ganache Recipe. One that adds stability to the sculpted cake when working on a novelty cake and stays firm when stacked into a tiered wedding cake. My chocolate ganache is like my rock for me as a cake decorator.
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White Chocolate Ganache
Chocolate ganache is the most versatile frosting you can make; but, white chocolate can be trickier than regular chocolate. So, today, I share with you everything you need to know about making white chocolate ganache including a step-by-step video tutorial.
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Cake Decorators White Chocolate Ganache Recipe
Making white chocolate ganache can be a bit tricker than regular chocolate ganache. Today, I'm going to share my step by step tutorial on how to make the perfect cake decorators' white chocolate ganache. No seized chocolate, no lumpy, grainy ganache just pure, creamy smooth goodness.
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Whipped Espresso Chocolate Ganache
Espresso Cake with Whipped Chocolate Ganache
This is the ultimate espresso cake. Moist, rich vanilla cake layers infused with espresso and frosted with a light and fluffy whipped espresso chocolate ganache. Perfect for weekend dessert, entertaining with friends or as a celebration cake. A surprisingly simple and easy recipe with everything you can make ahead of time so you don't have to rush.
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How to flavor Ganache aka Ganache Flavor variations
One of the fun things about ganache is that you can flavor ganache a million different ways. These simple, easy and effortless recipes to flavor ganache can make a huge difference to the final outcome of your cake. Here are a few ways on how to flavor ganache or rather a few ganache flavor variations that I love and are popular with my customers.
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One buttercream recipe - many different flavor variations
Why have just one buttercream flavor when you can try so many more. These simple, easy and effortless variations to create different buttercream flavors from one recipe will open new and wonderful possibilities for your cake projects. From strawberry to caramel, marzipan or Kahlua, you can use a basic American buttercream, meringue-based buttercream. Lemon Buttercream Mocha Buttercream Salted Caramel Buttercream Raspberry Buttercream Frosting Peanut Butter Frosting Pineapple Buttercream Frosting Maraschino Cherry Buttercream Frosting Bailey’s Buttercream Frosting Coconut Buttercream Frosting Marzipan Buttercream frosting Boston Cream Pie Frosting
Different Buttercream Flavors from One Buttercream Recipe
Why have just one buttercream flavor when you can try so many more. These simple, easy and effortless variations to create different buttercream flavors from one recipe will open new and wonderful possibilities for your future projects from strawberry to caramel, marzipan or kahula. You can use a basic American buttercream, meringue-based buttercream.
Frosting recipe for cookie decorating
Royal Icing Recipe - 5 Recipes
Royal icing recipe is a quick and easy icing that dries hard. It's very sweet because it's mostly powdered sugar and egg whites. It has endless uses in the cake and cookie decorating world. Once you learn the right method to make it and the right consistency that works for you, it can be a fun experience.
Check out this recipe
Royal Icing Recipe with Meringue Powder or Egg White Powder
Royal Icing Recipe is a quick and easy icing that dries hard. It's very sweet because it's mostly powder sugar and Egg whites. It has endless uses in the cake and cookie decorating world. Once you learn the right method to make it and the right consistency that works for you, it can be a fun experience.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between icing and frosting?
Icings are those simple glazes you make to pour over a pound cake, pastries. Sometimes made with just powdered sugar and milk and sometimes make with melted chocolate too. The icing is usually pouring consistency while frosting is thick, light and fluffy that can be spread over a cake or piped over cupcakes.
Can I turn a frosting into icing?
Absolutely, If the frosting is thick, add a few tablespoons of milk, cream or water. Then microwave for 10 seconds. The powdered sugar and butter will melt into a pouring consistency.
How long does it take to make homemade frosting?
Often people are surprised that homemade frosting can take as little as 5 minutes to make. Yes, that's all it needs. Which actually is less than the time you probably spend driving to the store to buy ready frosting.
How do you make homemade frosting?
The basic formula for a good homemade frosting is just two main ingredients. Butter and powdered sugar. We often add liquid such as water, milk or cream to bring it to consistency. The rest of the additions are optional such as vanilla for flavor.
As a rule of thump one part butter with two parts, powdered sugar will give you a good frosting already. Add a tablespoon of liquid to bring to consistency. That's it!
What is the best kind of frosting for cupcakes?
Cupcakes can be served with any frosting from simple vanilla to cream cheese or meringue. What is important to think through is - how am I going to store these cupcakes and how long are they going to be out?
For example, if your cupcakes are going to be sitting out for a long time then cream cheese frosting or perishable frosting is not the way to go. If your cupcakes are going to be out in hot humid conditions then you probably want to avoid meringue or butter-based frostings too.
Cupcakes Archives
Cupcake and Muffin Recipes Welcome to my cupcake and Muffin recipes collection. Here you will find my favorite cupcake recipes and muffin recipes that I have developed over the years. All my recipes are tried and tested more than once before I share them on the blog. Often these are recipes I use wh…
How do I decide which buttercream frosting to use?
There will always be many options to choose from but the only one that's usually just right for you. Here are a few questions to consider. Often you will have to take all four into consideration when making this decision.
- What cake flavor do I want?
- Where is the cake going to be displayed - inside vs outside? The inside allows you to use perishable fillings while outside depends on the weather.
- What is the weather at the time the cake is going to be displayed? Is it cold winter or hot humid summer. Hot summers need more caution with perishable frostings.
- How far does the cake have to travel? long travels in cold weather are not an issue if you pack things well. Hot summers can be a nightmare, so carry ice packs.
30 Plus Layer Cake Recipes
How do I adapt a cake recipe for the pan I have is often a dilemma. Which is the reason I had the calculated recipe PDFs already calculated for you? Now you don't need me to calculate them because this recipe card does that for you. Here are 30 plus layer cake recipes for cake decorating weather you use it with buttercream, ganache or fondant. No matter what pan you have or how many servings you need, just adjust the servings size and as well as the type of measurement you need for your cake pan.
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Pauletta
Hi Veena,
What do you do now that there is no trans fats in shortening? I tried the sweetex icing shortening without trans fats and is doesn't taste as good as the old one. I had to add a lot more flavoring. How can I get it to taste better? I really used to like my frosting and now, not so much.
Veena Azmanov
Hey Pauletta. I am an all-butter buttercream person. I never liked frosting with vegetable shortening.
There are very few of my frosting recipes (maybe 2 or 3 our of almost 50 variations) that actually call for vegetable shortening.
As for your question, the only thing possible is to add more flavor as you already do.
Or you can try half butter and half shortening.
Add some pudding mixes - these add a nice flavor and help stabilize the buttercreams.
Use whipping cream (if possible) for the liquid.
Thanks
Pauletta
Thank you for your reply. I may have to try the butter buttercream. Or maybe try mixing butter with the shortening I never thought about adding pudding. That might be good to try too. Thank you again. I can’t wait to try your buttercream icing.
Veena Azmanov
Thank you Pauletta
TRICIA HERGG
HI I LOVE YOUR RECEIPES & TIPS. I HAVE SO MUCH PAPER FROM ALL MY PRINTOUTS. DO YOU HAVE A BOOK WITH YOUR RECEIPES IN ??? IF SO HOW & WHERE CAN I GET IT
THANKS
TRISH
Veena Azmanov
Hey Tricia
Thank you, so happy you are enjoying my recipes and find my tips useful. I don't have an ebook. I use to have an online shop with recipes but now they have all been added to the free section.
You can bookmark these on your browser for future reference that way you will always have them.
Thanks
Helen
Who knew that there were so many different recipes for making frosting!? This is a great list and very helpful for finding the right kind for your needs.
Veena Azmanov
Thanks Helen, yes, so many!!