Homemade cake frosting is easy to make with butter or cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar and vanilla. Real butter is essential for buttercream frosting. Milk or cream can be added to thin the texture. Check regularly and add a pinch of baking soda to keep it soft.
Homemade cake frosting can be the finishing touch to many different types of cakes and cupcakes, and the best part is that it’s pretty easy to make. There are many types of frosting for homemade cakes, and the two most common options are buttercream and cream cheese frostings, with various flavors added depending on your preference. When making your cake frosting, be sure to follow the recipe measurements carefully. Also, the most important thing to remember when making buttercream frosting is to use real butter, not low-fat butter or vegetable oil-based creams, which won’t lead to the same smooth, flavorful final product. In some cases, stick margarine can be substituted for stick butter, but as a general rule, real butter should be used.
In general, there are few ingredients included in homemade cake frosting. The basis of most frostings is butter or cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar. It’s always a good idea to sift the confectioner’s sugar first, to make sure there are no lumps and that the icing is smooth. Vanilla is added to most frostings to give them a stronger flavor, though a basic buttercream frosting can simply be butter and powdered sugar mixed together. Cocoa can be added to give it a chocolate flavor, or other ingredients can be added to match the flavor of the cake, such as fruit flavors or baking spices.
The butter or cream cheese should be softened — not melted — before you create it along with the sugar. If the texture of your homemade cake frosting isn’t smooth or thin enough to spread, adding a little milk or cream may help. The icing should be mixed until it reaches a spreadable consistency, but continuing to mix can cause it to thicken, so it’s important to be judicious. While whipped cream is an excellent addition to homemade cake frosting, it’s difficult to make an entire whipped cream frosting at home, because it tends to be too thin, but there are recipes for making it.
Once you’ve made the icing, it can usually be kept in the fridge for a few weeks, but it’s important to check it regularly to make sure it’s still good before using it again. Some bakers find that adding a little baking soda — no more than a pinch — to homemade cake frosting can help keep it soft and keep it from cracking. If it starts to harden, it’s probably a good idea to start over rather than trying to salvage it, because it’ll probably taste from the fridge anyway.
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