So you want to make a nice cake, but you’re not sure how to make icing? Or maybe you’re overwhelmed with all the thousands of elaborate recipes online and you don’t know where to start? This recipe will show you step-by-step how to make a basic buttercream icing, which can be used to cover the top and sides or top and fill a 7 inch sponge cake or at least 12 cupcakes. See my Basic Sponge Cake recipe to start you off!
Once you know this recipe, it’s very adaptable. You can add more or less sugar to adjust the sweetness and stiffness and add more liquid to make it softer. Use it as-is or add flavourings and colours. You can simply spread it over your cakes or get fancy and use a piping bag to create lovely patterns.
You can mix up this icing with a wooden spoon, with electric beaters or in a mixer, whichever you prefer. Once made, it keeps well in a cool place for up to a week or it can be frozen to use at a later date.
Ingredients
- 100g/4oz/1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
- 225g/8oz/2 cups icing sugar, sifted
- 1 tbsp milk or water (reduce if using liquid food colouring)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
Method
- Beat the butter with half of the icing sugar until soft and fluffy and lighter in colour.
- Add the rest of the sugar along with any flavouring and colouring you like and beat again until well combined.
- Add milk or water to soften the buttercream to a spreading consistency.
Flavouring Buttercream Icing
Chocolate: Sift 2-3 tbsps cocoa into the icing sugar before mixing. Add more if you like the chocolate flavour to be stronger (If adding more to adjust the flavour at the end, blend the cocoa with a little hot water first).
Coffee: Replace the vanilla extract with 2 tsps instant coffee blended with 1 tsp water (cold is fine).
Orange or lemon: Leave out the vanilla extract and milk and add 30ml freshly squeezed orange/lemon juice and the grated zest of half an orange/lemon.
Strawberry: Add ¼ cup strawberry jam plus a couple of drops of red food colouring (this also works with other flavours of jam!).
Tips
- Wait until your cake is completely cold before icing it, or the icing will melt and slide off.
- If your icing is too soft, add more sifted icing sugar and beat again, if it is too stiff to spread easily, add more liquid.
- When spreading icing onto a cake, start with the icing in the middle and spread outwards, taking care not to lift the knife up, but moving outwards off the cake. This stops you pulling the icing up, breaking the surface of the cake and mixing crumbs into it.
- When icing the sides of a cake particularly, crumbs can get into the icing as you spread it. I like to ice just the top of a cake to make things simple, but if you want to do the sides, there is something you can do. To avoid crumbs in your icing, first put a ‘crumb coat’ on your cake. This means coating your cake in a very thin layer of the buttercream first and chilling it in the fridge for a few minutes before putting the final layer on.
- If you are making your cake during hot humid weather, the way to keep your icing from melting too quickly in the heat is to replace 1/4 to 1/2 of your butter with white vegetable fat (like Copha in Australia or Trex in the UK).
I hope you find that useful! See my post on Easy Cake Decorating Tips for ideas to help you make cakes you never thought you could!
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