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My 4-minute buttercream is the easiest and quickest frosting to make
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It's delicious. And you can add any flavour to it with a few simple tweaks
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Butter cream is made with butter and powdered sugar or icing sugar, and the consistency you'll need is different depending on what flavour ingredients you're adding
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More on that in a minute. But what's always essential is that the butter is nice and soft at room temperature
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If it's cold, you can warm it up in the microwave for 10 seconds. Mix the butter and sugar together and the quantities for my recipe are in the video description and on British Girl Bakes.com
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Your frosting will be thick and stiff. You can see how rough the texture is here, which shows how stiff it is
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and this is when you'd normally add milk or cream to thin it out. But if you're going to add a wet ingredient
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which has a runnier or more liquid consistency, this stiff consistency is perfect, so don't add that milk or cream yet
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You can flavor an entire batch of butter cream or divide it into bowls and add different flavor
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ingredients to each bowl. Let's start with any flavor ingredient that's more liquid than butter cream
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For all of these, starting with a stiff consistency of butter cream allows you to add a lot
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of that flavor ingredient without making the frosting too runny, so you can add spoonfuls of
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dulcete aloece or caramel, for example. Make sure it at room temperature not hot otherwise it will melt the butter in the butter cream Adding runny caramel will thin out the butter cream in the same way that milk or cream would resulting in a silky smooth consistency that spreads and smooths onto a cake
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beautifully. Even liquid coffee can be added in large amounts without making buttercream too runny
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if you start with stiff buttercream and use coffee as the thinner. You can either add strongly
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brewed coffee or mix instant coffee granules with just a few drops of hot water to make a very
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thick liquid and that will give the buttercream an even stronger flavor. Peanut butter
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lemon curd, orange juice and cream cheese is another easy flavor add in if you start with a stiff
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buttercream base. Let the cream cheese come to room temperature before adding it to the buttercream
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because if it's cold, straight out of the fridge, it can make the buttercream lumpy. Chocolate
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buttercream is my favourite and it's easy to make if you follow a few tips. To melt chocolate
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put it in the microwave for 30 seconds at 80% power, and this way you'll melt it without
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overheating it. If you stir it for maybe 30 seconds and the chocolate chips still aren't
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melting, put the bowl back in the microwave for another 30 seconds at 80% power. 80% power is important
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because if the chocolate gets too hot it will seize and get grainy and lumpy. Wait for the melted
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chocolate to cool before adding it to your butter cream, otherwise it will melt the butter
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in the buttercream. Just like with other liquid ingredients, start with a stiff consistency of
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buttercream by skipping the milk or cream in the recipe and add the melted chocolate to thin it out until it a silky smooth consistency that easy to stir and easy to spread and smooth onto a cake You can add as much chocolate as you like and you notice
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the buttercream gets darker with more chocolate. To incorporate berries into buttercream
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I find the best way is to cook them first. Raw berries can split the buttercream, but by simmering
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them with a tiny bit of sugar, just a teaspoon per cup of fresh or frozen berries, you'll make a
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concentrated puree that's full of flavor and that mixes perfectly with buttercream
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Unless you want large chunks of fruit in your frosting, blend the cooked berries in a food processor or a blender to make a smooth puree
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Add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice to keep the tartness of the fruit, even after adding a bit of sugar while cooking it
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Let the berries cool completely before adding it to your buttercream. I wish you could taste this through the screen
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It's incredible. It spreads and smooths beautifully onto a cake and the flexibility
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berries will make your mouth water. This pipes perfectly too, so it's great for borders
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Now for dry flavor ingredients, the process is a little bit different. When you make your butter
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cream, follow the whole recipe, including adding the milk or cream at the end of the recipe so that
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the buttercream is the right consistency for frosting a cake. Dry ingredients don't affect the
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consistency of the butter cream, so get the consistency right first and then add the flavor ingredients
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and you see why in a minute Oreos are a popular dry ingredients to make cookies and cream frosting by smashing the Oreos or blending them in a food processor or blender and then stirring them into buttercream The tiny flex of black cookies in the
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white frosting are what makes the flavor recognizable and that's why you add these cookie crumbs right
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at the end because if you overmix it the frosting will turn gray. You can add freeze-dried fruit
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to buttercream instead of cooking and blending berries like I showed you earlier and sprinkles are fun to
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add in two. Not really a flavor ingredient, but they look so colourful and pretty I wanted to mention
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them anyway. Other than wet and dry ingredients, the final type of flavor ingredient is to add a
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flavour extract. Buttercream recipes will list vanilla extract as an ingredient, but other delicious
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flavours are almond and mint, and there are lots of other flavour options available in
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supermarkets or grocery stores, and at baking shops, and online. They're very concentrated
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so you only need a tiny amount. Depending on the flavor, it's usually less than a teaspoon for an entire batch of buttercream. That's such a small amount of liquid
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It won't affect the consistency of the buttercream, so when you're making your butter cream
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you can just add it at the end to mix it in. I hope this tutorial has been useful
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Check out my online course on the basics of buttercream for everything you need to know about
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buttercream, including how to tint it any colour, how to store it, and how to use it for lots
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of different cake decorating techniques. The link for my online cake school is in the top of the screen
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and in the video description. Thanks for watching! Subscribe to my channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week
