Definitely the question that I'm asked the most often is how I make the
frosting for my cakes and the answer is my 4 Minute
Buttercream and I have a recipe for it on www.britishgirlbakes.com and a very detailed
tutorial but I thought it would be useful to put
together a video answering all of those questions,
which hopefully you'll find helpful!
Do I need a mixer to make buttercream?
I suppose you could make buttercream without a mixer. You'd have to have a lot
of arm strength and also a lot of patience!
If you have a handheld mixer you could use that instead of a stand mixer, it's
just a bit more of a labour-intensive process. Even though it's only supposed
to take four minutes to do the mixing, holding the mixer with your hand and
moving it through the thick butter and sugar for that length of time
is actually really exhausting. So, possible with a handheld mixer
(wouldn't recommend it!) and maybe possible without a mixer at all.
Can I use salted butter?
Yes, absolutely! I use salted and unsalted
butter interchangeably but if you do it with salted butter just
don't add the salt that's in the recipe.
Can I use margarine or vegetable shortening instead of butter?
Yes, you can from a consistency point of view.
It will taste different. The taste that butter gives the buttercream is really
unique and the flavour of margarine and shortening
is a little bit different so if you've ever tasted buttercream made
with actual butter I'm sure you will be able to taste the difference when it's
made with something else.
Why is my butter more yellow than yours?
Every butter seems to have a different
colour. I don't have a particular brand that I use -
I'm living in North America at the moment and the butter that I buy in the
supermarket is quite a light colour compared to butters that I've used in
England and I'm sure it varies from country to
country and brand to brand. If you mix the butter on its own in the
mixing bowl for a few minutes before you start the process of making the
buttercream it should lighten the butter a little
bit and then you'll end up with more of a white colour.
What sugar do you use?
Definitely use powdered sugar not normal baking sugar
(caster sugar, granulated sugar, or white sugar).
It does need to be powdered sugar and it should say somewhere on the packaging
that it's 10x powdered sugar, which just means that
it's been sifted 10 times so it's a really really fine powdered sugar
and if you use one that isn't as fine you'll notice the difference in the
texture of your buttercream.
How can I make buttercream less sweet?
A lot of people ask if you can just reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe
to make the buttercream less sweet and although that's possible
to a certain extent and I'll explain it in a second,
unfortunately this type of buttercream is just a very sweet buttercream so if
you don't like sweet buttercreams I would recommend trying something else.
You could try a meringue based buttercream
or a ganache but this buttercream does rely on the sugar.
The reason is for stability, it's what keeps buttercream firm and that gives it
its shape when you're frosting or when you're piping.
So you could reduce the amount of sugar a little bit and then with it also
reduce the amount of milk or cream and that way it will still have a
similar consistency but if you take too much of it away
it'll become very liquid and it will just slide off your cake and your piping
won't hold its form.
Can I use a whisk attachment to make it?
No, a whisk attachment won't work for this buttercream, it does have to be a
paddle attachment or a beater and the reason is because you don't want
to incorporate a lot of air into the buttercream because then it will get air
bubbles and the paddle attachment mixes it
really well without doing that. A whisk - the entire purpose of it is
to incorporate air so don't use one of those.
Your recipe says 4 minutes but I usually mix it for at least 10 minutes - can I do that?
It isn't necessary for this recipe. If you want to beat it for longer
there shouldn't be a problem with it as long as you keep the mixer on its lowest
setting and as long as you're using a paddle
attachment and not a whisk attachment but it's not necessary. If you beat it
for just a minute after each addition of the sugar that will be enough time to
incorporate the sugar and the butter together
and then once you add the liquid at the end it will be the perfect consistency.
You really don't need to beat it for longer.
Why are there little white lumps in my buttercream?
If after you've mixed your buttercream you notice little white
lumps in the buttercream, very small like little specks,
so when you frost your cake maybe you'll see little white dots in it,
the reason for that is that the butter hasn't been completely left to come to
room temperature so the butter is a little bit too cold and then when you
add the sugar to the butter it forms these little hard granules. It's
an absolute pain, there's no way to get rid of them
other than removing them one by one and you'll have hundreds in a batch of
buttercream so it's really really important to let
the butter come to room temperature before you start the process of making
the buttercream.
Why does my buttercream taste grainy?
The buttercream definitely shouldn't
taste grainy. You shouldn't notice any texture, it should be very silky, very
smooth and the reason for that is that the
butter and the sugar should completely incorporate to make a smooth buttercream.
If you do notice a gritty or a grainy texture, that's from the sugar,
not from the butter and it's either because you haven't sifted the sugar
(sometimes sugar comes pre-sifted so i actually don't sift the brand that I buy)
but if you find that there are clumps in
it, you really do need to sift it. The other reason is unfortunately just
the type of sugar that you're using. It might not be the 10x
(the 10 times sifted) icing sugar or powdered sugar
so if you try making another batch and you sift the sugar
and it still tastes gritty or grainy it's just the brand of the sugar that
you're using, so I've had a lot of people ask me about
this and I've suggested they try a different brand and they do and then
they have fantastic results. So i know it's not the solution you want
to hear but try a different brand of sugar and hopefully everything will work
perfectly.
Why is my buttercream yellow instead of white?
Butter is a yellow product naturally. It does lighten when you mix it and some
brands are lighter than others but when you finish making the
buttercream, if your buttercream still has too much of a yellowish tinge for
what you're looking for, it sounds a little bit strange but use a
teeny tiny bit of violet food colour. You can just dip a toothpick into the
bottle of colour and then put a really tiny bit to start with.
Stir it all together and the violet takes away the yellow
tinge and it will make your buttercream look really bright white.
Why are there tiny air bubbles in my buttercream?
If you have air bubbles in your buttercream it's because you've
incorporated too much air into it, which usually happens when you beat the
buttercream at too high of a speed. It really needs to be on the lowest speed
of your mixer and if it isn't because of that then it
could be because you were using a whisk instead of a paddle or a beater attachment.
How can I get rid of the air bubbles?
If you do have air bubbles in your buttercream you can try and fix it.
Put the buttercream in a big bowl and take a spatula and really slap it around
in the bowl so really aggressively stir it.
Knock the buttercream against the sides of the bowl and that will knock the air
out of the buttercream and the more you stir it, the smoother
you'll notice it getting.
How do I know how much milk or cream to add?
I'd suggest adding the milk or cream to the buttercream at the end of the recipe,
just a tablespoon at a time so you can observe how the consistency of the
buttercream is changing as you add the liquid
because once you make the buttercream too liquid it's very difficult to get it
to go back to the right consistency. You'd have to add even more sugar and
then it would become really sweet.
How can I tell if my buttercream is too sweet?
There are a few ways to test the
consistency that I like to use. The first is just pull your spatula
through the bowl of buttercream and observe the trail that the spatula
leaves behind. It should be a completely smooth pathway
behind the spatula so both the buttercream trail itself
should be smooth but also the edges of it should be really smooth.
When the buttercream is too stiff you'll notice there are lots of little holes
behind the pathway that your spatula's left and
that's where the buttercream has broken away from itself and it's because it's
so stiff that the spatula's tearing it as
you pull it and also the edges of the pathway of the buttercream, you'll see
that they're really shaggy, rugged peaks where the
buttercream has again almost split apart and that's because
it's really too stiff so you have to add a lot more milk or cream but just a
tablespoon at a time so you can see how it does with each
tablespoon. The second way Ilike to test it is to scoop up a little bit of butter-
cream on my spatula and then just gently tap the spatula on the side of the bowl.
Just tap it once or twice and see if the buttercream falls off.
This will vary from person to person depending on how firmly they tap
the spatula on the bowl but for me it usually comes off by the second tap and
that shows me that it's the right consistency.
If the buttercream is still clinging onto your spatula it's far too stiff
and if when you lift the spatula up from the bowl the buttercream slides straight
off the spatula then it's definitely too runny.
What's the right consistency for frosting cakes?
When you frost a cake it's essential that your buttercream is the right
consistency otherwise you'll have a nightmare crumb
coating the cake and a nightmare trying to get the final coat of frosting smooth
so you can test the buttercream when it's in the bowl before you even start
frosting your cake using the methods that I mentioned: by
dragging your spatula through the bowl and also scooping up some buttercream
and tapping it on the side of the bowl and seeing when it falls off.
But you can also test it as you're frosting the cake so
the way to do that would be put the buttercream on your offset spatula and
start to spread it onto the cake and if the frosting is clinging onto the
offset spatula instead of gliding onto the cake
then you know your buttercream's too stiff and you need to add more liquid.
It should spread really easily like very soft butter
spreading onto a piece of bread and your spatula should glide around the cake
and then you should be able to swipe your offset spatula right off the cake
and it should leave the buttercream behind. It'll leave a little peak as you
as you swipe the spatula off but the buttercream will stay behind on the cake,
it won't pull off with your spatula. It's much more common that buttercream
is too stiff rather than too loose or too runny. If it is too loose when you
spread it onto the cake over the top surface of the cake instead
of sticking out over the sides of the cake
it will slide right down the sides of the cake rather than staying in that
smooth top layer at the top and in that case I would just recommend
turning that into your crumb coat, spread it very thinly all over the cake,
let it set, add a bit more sugar to your buttercream and beat it again
until it gets thicker and then use that for your final coat of frosting.
What's the right consistency for piping?
I usually use the same consistency of buttercream for frosting a cake or
piping. The exception is for Russian tips, where
it needs to be maybe a little bit stiffer
so to do that you can either add a little bit more icing sugar and then
stir it together again or the other thing you can do
is put the frosting in a piping bag put it in the freezer for one minute.
Set a timer for one minute so you don't forget and then when you take it out of
the freezer do a test flower and that should be the right consistency
and I have a lot of details on how to pipe with Russian tips in my tutorial on
Russian tips with a few other tips and tricks of how to use those.
My buttercream is too runny. Can I chill it in the fridge or freezer to thicken it?
The only time when I would recommend correcting the consistency of
buttercream because it's too loose or too runny by
putting it in the fridge is if you're really confident that that
problem has been caused by heat. So if you know that the consistency of
the buttercream was correct (it had the right balance of sugar and
butter and milk or cream and the consistency was fine) but then
maybe you piped with it and you put it in a piping bag
and you took a really long time piping your cake and your hands are really warm
or it's a really hot day and you noticed that the buttercream started to get
runnier, in that situation you could put it in the freezer
for... if it's in a piping bag I wouldn't do it for more than one minute
if it's in the bowl you could maybe try two minutes. Stir it around
and then try and use it again and see if the consistency is better.
But if the consistency is too loose because there's too much liquid in the
buttercream, because you added too much milk or cream
or maybe you added a liquid flavor ingredient like strawberry puree
or lemon curd and you added too much and the buttercream became too runny,
in that situation I wouldn't recommend putting it in the fridge or freezer
because the temperature of the buttercream is
not going to fix the consistency.
Can I use this buttercream in a hot country?
Yes, you can! I started baking and decorating cakes in Costa Rica, which has
pretty extreme summers especially at the beach
and I used this buttercream and I never had any problems. There are a few
precautions you could take and there is a substitution you can make.
The precautions are: if you're going to serve a cake outside
on a hot day, keep the cake in the fridge until you serve it
or until you have to display it outside so that it stays cold for as long as
possible. Also keep it in the fridge until you
transport it because a cold cake is going to
resist the vibrations and the movements of travel a lot better than a cake at
room temperature. Then if you have had the cake in the
fridge until you take it outside, even if it sits outside for an hour or two
before you eat it, hopefully that will be enough time for
it to go from being cold just to room temperature rather than completely
melting in the heat. If you put any cake with any frosting in
full sunlight on a hot day with no breeze it's
probably not going to last very long and this buttercream isn't an exception
but you can make the buttercream even more stable than it already is
by switching out the butter for shortening, a vegetable shortening, so
Crisco, Trex, there are lots of different brands.
I can personally taste the flavour (I'll talk about that in a second)
so what you could do is you could switch half of the butter out for the
vegetable shortening and leave the other half and that way the buttercream will
stand up a little bit better to the heat. I did find in Costa Rica - this is a
really strange thing I stumbled across but
if I had to make a cake or cupcakes to sit outside in the heat for a long
period of time and I switched out half of the butter
for shortening, if you add a teaspoon of artificial vanilla essence
for every batch of buttercream, still keeping the original measurements
of the real vanilla extract in the recipe,
for some reason the artificial vanilla essence takes away the shortening flavour.
It's a very strange thing, I don't know the science behind it, it's just
something I found that worked. To make chocolate buttercream you can
How do I make chocolate buttercream?
To make chocolate buttercream you can
either add cocoa powder mixed with a bit of liquid or you can add melted
semi-sweet chocolate or you can add both. I have my favourite
recipe for that on www.britishgirlbakes.com and there's a video tutorial as well if
you're looking for my recipe.
How do you get such bright colours on your buttercream cakes?
I use gel colours. I don't have just one brand that I use, I've tried Wilton,
Americolor and Chefmaster and I really like all of them
and the advantage of gel colours over liquid colours is that they're really
concentrated so you don't have to use a lot to get
really bright colours. Apply them just a few drops at a time because they do work
really quickly but you do have to use quite a lot of
them to get very dark colours like a dark purple or red or black
so just keep adding them bit by bit and then when you think you've got a colour
similar to the shade that you want, maybe a little bit lighter, cover the bowl with
cling film/saran wrap/a lid and leave it for 30 minutes and then
check it again because with time and exposure to air the colour starts to
darken so your color will probably get a few
shades darker in that time. So if you're trying to get an exact
colour match I would definitely go a little bit lighter
than you want the end result to be.
How do you get your buttercream so hard on cakes?
My 4 Minute Buttercream is what's called a crusting buttercream which
means because of the amount of sugar in it,
when it's exposed to air it will eventually crust which means it just
forms a harder surface. I exaggerate this by putting cakes in
the fridge so that the buttercream sets really hard
and that lets me do all sorts of decorating techniques like decorating
with acetate transfers, stenciling, carving buttercream and all
of those techniques really rely on having a very firm buttercream but you
can just leave the buttercream at room temperature.
It will still form a crust on the outside but it won't get as hard as it
does when it's in the fridge. If you do put your cake in the fridge
and it gets that very hard frosting, when you take it out of the fridge and
you leave it to come to room temperature before you serve it,
the buttercream will soften again.
How long can I leave my buttercream at room temperature?
Because of the amount of sugar in the
buttercream you can leave it at room temperature longer than you might leave
a cup of milk at room temperature. At room temperature sealed properly,
which means covering it tightly with cling film or saran wrap
or a lid, buttercream is fine for two to three days.
it does need to be covered because if it's exposed to the air it will crust on
the outside and then when you stir the buttercream
you'll get little chunks of crusted buttercream within it.
Can I leave buttercream in the fridge?
You can put buttercream in the fridge. The same as for room temperature, it's
really important to seal it properly and then you can
leave it in the fridge for a week or up to two weeks.
Can I freeze buttercream?
You can freeze buttercream! I like to do it in a ziploc bag because it's easier
to fit in the freezer than a big tupperware or bowl but you can do it
however you like as long as it's a sealed container.
When you are ready to use it, take it out two or three hours beforehand
so that it has time to thaw and come to room temperature and then put it in a
bowl and stir it and if it still has lumps of hard buttercream in it, wait for
about another hour just to make sure that it's all at room temperature
and then you'll notice that the buttercream looks quite air bubbly
so stir it a few times before you use it to knock those out and then it will be
perfectly smooth and it will behave the same way as if you'd never frozen it
or put it in the fridge in the first place. I hope I've answered
all of your questions about my 4 Minute Buttercream.
You can find the recipe and video tutorial on how to make it
and check the consistency and add other flavours
on www.britishgirlbakes.com Thank you so much for watching!