My Favorite Piping Buttercream

Let’s discuss buttercream, yes?

It is pretty much a food group in my life. So, so good. And, lucky for us, its pretty simple! The hardest part for me is understanding what consistency I want when I’m piping versus spreading it for frosting. Luckily, it is easy to correct your mistakes. This basic butter cream only has four ingredients: butter, powdered sugar, heavy cream, and vanilla.

Today I’m going to give you my recipe for my favorite piping buttercream. I use a whisk attachment on my stand mixer to get a lot of air into the finished product. This gives your buttercream legs to stand on and makes it stiffer, which gives a pretty, more professional look. When you are making a buttercream to pipe, you want to whip it until the texture is thick, and difficult to spread with a knife. One problem I had when I started making buttercreams for piping is that I would make them too thin, I think it is because I thought the texture should be that of the frosting that comes out of a can. You want it thicker than that!

Now, if you want to adapt this recipe so it is thinner and more spreadable (that’s kind of a gross word, sorry. ),  you should add more heavy cream. If you find you’ve made yourself a buttercream that is too thin, you add powdered sugar. Easy peasy!!

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Would you like to see a tutorial for piping buttercream?

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

3 cups powdered sugar (may need to adjust up depending on your desired consistency)

3 tablespoons heavy cream (may need to adjust up depending on your desired consistency)

Directions

Using the whisk attachment of your electric mixer, whip butter until very smooth, about 2-3 minutes. Add powdered sugar, heavy cream, and vanilla. Whip on high until you have reached your desired consistency, adding more powdered sugar or heavy cream as needed.

Pipe, spread, or eat with a spoon (this is a safe place, I won’t judge you!)