How to Make 4 Ingredient American Buttercream Icing
Buttercream icing is one of the easiest icings to make for icing your cakes, it so simple to whip up, this version only has 4 ingridents and it only takes a few minutes to create a big batch of this delicious Buttercream icing.
Ingredients
- 200 g Butter Softened
- 500 g Icing sugar
- 1 tbsp Pure vanilla extract or any flavour you want
- 2-4 tbsp Water
Instructions
- Start by placing the softened butter in the bowl of your stand mixer. Set your mixer to a medium speed, and beat the butter and flavouring until they are combined and have a smooth and creamy texture. This process is crucial to achieving the right consistency for your buttercream, so make sure there are no lumps, this will probably only take about a minute tops.
- Sift your icing sugar into a separate bowl to remove any lumps and then gradually add the powdered sugar to the creamed butter, add about half of the icing sugar at a time. Make sure to mix thoroughly after each addition. As the sugar incorporates, the mixture will become thicker and stiffer and might start to resemble a dough.
- At this point, you now have a basic American buttercream and all that’s left to dois get it to the right consistency. To achieve the right consistency, you just need to add water, one teaspoon at a time, until you achieve the desired consistency. When you are trying to achieve the right consistency keep in mind that a slightly thinner buttercream is best for a crumb coat as this spreads better onto a cake better and stiffer buttercream works best for top coats of icing and piping decorations.
- All that’s left to do now is get your American buttercream to the right colour! To add some colour, you just want to add a few drops of the food colouring at a time, mix this in to your buttercream until it’s all evenly mixed in and then if you want it a bit darker just add another drop or two and mix in again until it’s all combined, stick with this process until you reach the colour you want. Remember with food colouring you don’t need a lot of this, a little goes a long way. Also remember darker colours like red, dark blues and back deepen incolour over time, so you might want to add the colour, mix in and then leave itfor an hour and come back to it to see how much deeper / darker it is.
- When you have made your American buttercream, you can either use it straightway or store it for later use. If you plan to use it right away, great you can use a spatula to spread this straight on to your cake or pop the icing in to your piping bags with your chosen nozzle or use a coupler if you want to swap nozzle’s and start icing. If storing, make sure you keep your buttercreamin an airtight container in the fridge, you can keep this for up to a week or in the freezer, again in an airtight container, but this can be stored for up to three months. Before using buttercream from your fridge or freezer you will need to allow it to come to room temperature and give it a quick whip up to restore its smoothness.