- Hey bakers today I'm gonna show you how to make a classic vanilla frosting. This is the simplest frosting to make, but it is so versatile and delicious. I've actually used this to
make my painted rose cake, if you've seen that, my
strawberry rose cake, and my shag cake. All these different looks from one buttercream and
it is just so simple. Let's get started. First off, we're gonna be
creaming one cup, or 226 grams, of unsalted, room temperature butter. When you touch the butter,
you're gonna press down and it will yield to
the touch when pressed. Into the stand mixer without the paper and you're gonna use a
paddle attachment for this. You don't wanna use a whisk because it'll just whip
so much air into there. The buttercream will be
like a little bit too frothy and not really easy to
pipe and decorate with. (whirring) And then let her run for a few minutes. Just walk away go check out
preppykitchen on Instagram, whatever, you know. (upbeat music) so many delicious things
on @preppykitchen. Check it out. (whirring) Hey, I'm back. Alright, so you can scrape the bowl down and then just whip it
up a little bit more. (whirring) Okay, that's nice. If you are wondering why people always say to use unsalted, is there butter on my nose? If you're wondering why people always say to use unsalted butter, it's because different brands of butter have different amounts of salt. So, can you use salted butter? Okay, sure go ahead and do that. Just probably cut the
salt out of the recipe. Just FYI. Okay speaking of salt, put
your healthy pinch there. Also let's talk about the sugar situation. So, I've got my scale,
and it's zeroed out, my sifter and I want to press zero. And I want one pound of
sugar for this recipe. So, that is about a pound. I'm gonna save a couple
tablespoons but, that's it. If you're wondering why the sifter, do I need to do it? Well technically no, you can make a delicious buttercream, doesn't have to be sifted, but occasionally you will find
lumps especially if like me, you have an open bag of sugar here, but sometimes some brands
have lumps anyways, they're gonna get stuck in the finer parts of these piping tips. It makes the buttercream totally unusable for any sort of decorating except for like the inside of the cake, the crumb coat, or maybe the smooth coat. So just go ahead and sift it out. If you wanna use less
sugar in this recipe, that's totally fine. It's almost to taste. I thought that a one to one ratio, like one cup one pound works pretty well. You can add more sugar and your buttercream will be stiffer and you can add less sugar cream and it will be more buttery. Okay, snowing over here. I'm going to be mixing this up on low. Gotta get a tea towel and cover this up. It's gonna get messy. Little babushka for my mixer, and mix it up on low for a
few seconds, maybe 30 seconds, gradually increased the speed. (whirring) Okay, so, (coughs) sugar in my mouth. This is pretty like crumbly right now. You'll find that happens a lot of the time when you're making a smaller
batch of buttercream. Things aren't coming together
as quickly as you'd like, just add some liquid in. So here's a tablespoon of vanilla extract and that will really
help get things started. (whirring) Okay, this is on its
way to looking amazing. Nice and creamy, but I wanna talk to you about
the vanilla really quickly. It's important to use a
high quality nice vanilla when you're making a vanilla buttercream if you want it to be the best it can be. Nielsen Massey, it's like a nicer brand. Rodelle is a nicer brand. There are lots of other ones too. You can go organic if you want too, or you can also use vanilla bean paste. I shouldn't have opened that and turned it upside down. Vanilla bean paste. Anyways, vanilla bean extract is like, the vanilla beans are soaked
and, this is in bourbon. You're tasting a lot of
like bourbon and alcohol. That's just the way it works. Vanilla bean paste doesn't have alcohol and here it has all those
vanilla beans are still in there. So it's more of like a sugary paste. And the nice thing is
that when you mix it in, you see all the flecks of vanilla. It kind of elevates the dish. Back to this I'm going to be adding in the rest of the sugar now. So as promised i reserved
about a couple tablespoons. That brings me to a full
pound and then sift it out. If you try and do this in one go, it'll be really really messy. I promise. I don't know if you can see, but there's like a lot
of lumps in here mm hmm. That's because that bag was open. So scrape the bowl down. We're gonna go back to
mixing, we're almost done. American buttercream is
very very quick to make. (whirring) We're gonna add in a tablespoon
of heavy cream at a time, so, just add your tablespoon in, let it mix, see what
the consistency is like. You might wanna add more or less depending on what you're
doing with the buttercream. (whirring) (soft beats) Look at that, tastes good. (laughs) (whirring) I will let this whip for a minute. Just take it on to medium
and walk away, come back. (whirring) Okay, I'm back. So I don't know if you can tell but this buttercream is pretty white now, the more you whip it, you're incorporating air
into that buttercream and it lightens the color up because the butter you're
using is probably yellow. If you're making American buttercream and you want it to be
as white as possible, choose the lightest color butter possible, which often means like a cheaper butter, nice vanilla but a cheap butter. Because the more expensive butters just tend to have more
of that yellow color, cows have been grazing, eating the grass, living their happy lives,
you don't want that butter. That's good for savory dishes and things that don't have
to be really pale in color. But if color is of the
utmost concern to you, and you're very upset by this
off white situation happening. Go ahead and make a batch of Italian or Swiss meringue buttercream. You can click up here for
my Italian buttercream. It is really really
nice, structurally sound, and pipes beautifully and you can click up here for
my Swiss meringue buttercream. It is so silky, perfect for decorating,
and it is not too sweet. Much less sweet than American buttercream
generally speaking, Okay, this is done but
let's give it a taste test and see if we need to
add more salt or not. That's nice, a little salt will balance it out, pours a tablespoon of salt
into his hand.(laughs) I don't need all that salt,
no, just a little bit. So here, a little sprinkle,
a little blessing of salt. see where that goes. (whirring) I'm actually gonna add another
teaspoon of vanilla in. (whirring) Fresh spoon for tasting and
let's see what it's like. Hmm, much better. Transferring my
buttercream to a piping bag fitted with my favorite
869 tip, large open star, so versatile, highly recommend
it, my favorite literally. I whipped up a batch of my
favorite vanilla cupcakes. So nice and moist. Look at that, so fluffy. You can click up here for
that recipe if you'd like. And I baked them in just
regular white papers, but, for you I will be plopping them into some decorative cupcake papers. And let's just pipe and turn right-io, that's nice. Let's be real here. I let my buttercream sit
out for just a few minutes but when I piped it, it
looked like this, horrible. Here's what I didn't like, the tip, it looks a little bit imperfect so, it tastes fine, but if that ever happens to you, if you're like me, and you
want things to look just right, what you're gonna do is put the butter cream back in the bowl, mix it on low, the lowest setting and then add in like a
little bit of cream at a time until it becomes glossy and smoother. Take two. (fast pace whirring) So now, once again, pop that in there. Get to pipin', pipe and swirl, turn. There we go. So much better. Do you see how much
better this is than this? It's better, just trust me okay. (soft beats) Gorgeous. (soft beats) If you wanted to make
these vanilla cupcakes, click over here for that
vanilla cupcake recipe. So delicious. And if you want my perfect, perfect vanilla cake recipe, click up over here it is
gonna be the vanilla cake to make all of your dreams come true. All right, thanks so much for watching. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. And don't forget to hit that
like button and subscribe.
