- Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, I'm gonna show you how to make
perfect buttercream frosting with all my tips and tricks. So let's get started. First off, a quick note about the butter. I like this to be on the softer
side of room temperature. You can see I'm pressing
my finger into it. It yields fairly easily. You don't want melted butter, but if it's cold it's
not gonna be the same. So if it feels a bit firm to you, just pop it in the microwave, 50% power for 10 second bursts. That's one cup, 226 grams unsalted butter. I'm using unsalted butter today. You can use salted butter. I know it's kind of the thing that most of us have in our refrigerator. If you are, just don't add any more salt or you can add it to taste
if you have a salt tooth. Chances are you've made
buttercream frosting before and it could be sublime and amazing or a little bit disappointing. I want to give you all the tips and tricks to make it the right way. Starting with what should you use if you're using a stand mixer? A whisk or a paddle? Let me know the comments
if you know already, but the answer is a paddle. Why is that? Well, the reason is you do not want to pump your frosting full of air. It should be creamy, silky, and amazing. That means that you are
not gonna whisk in the air, you're gonna beat it with a paddle. So as a rule, go low and slow. You can definitely make
this with a hand mixer, just use a lower power. Creaming up my butter just
to give it a nice start. It's really room temperature so you can see already it's like, perfect. Buttercream frosting, also
known as American buttercream, is the simplest, easiest frosting to make. I'm gonna show you how
to make it silky smooth, perfectly sweet, flavored all sorts of different ways, and store it so you can keep
it for months at a time. Mix your butter on high
for about five minutes until light and very fluffy. My butter's all creamed up and now we're gonna
add the powdered sugar. It's about four cups or 16
ounces, which is one package. One of the things that
can really trip you up when you're making frosting are lumps. So if you're ever doing any detail work like piping buttercream roses, trying to get something nice and smooth, or just trying to have no
clumps of powdered sugar, which is not tasty, you wanna sift it out and get
rid of all those little rocks. Gonna add this directly into here and just sift it in a few batches. Sometimes you sift it
out and there's like, ah, no lumps, no reason to, but then sometimes you don't sift it out and your piping tip is clogged or your frosting is kinda
lumpy and un-delicious. So it's best practice to sift it out. Look at that. That was a new package and it
does have little rocks in it, which is not great. This frosting is the
easiest buttercream to make. There's also like French buttercream, Italian, and Swiss, which are favorites of mine as well. Whoa, what am I doing? Focus. I can't do two things at once, apparently. I'm gonna sift this
out in a couple batches and just mix it in as I go so it doesn't go all over the counter. Start on low. (mixer whirring) One of the things you need to remember is you just gotta be patient. So don't try and rush it. Don't be in a hurry. Go low and slow. It'll look like nothing's mixing in, like nothing's happening, but it'll happen and it'll
be so creamy as a result of giving it just a little
bit more time at a low speed. I give it a little mix. I'm gonna use my spatula and just kind of scrape the bowl down a bit. (mixer whirring) A lot of times when you're
baking from scratch, you might be running low on time but that's okay because
you can stage things out. This frosting can be
made months in advance so you can have it ready for later. All you wanna do is pop it
into an airtight container and make sure it is truly airtight. You can even put it in a piping bag and just seal it up, and then you can freeze it for like two months or it
could be in your fridge for like three to four weeks
and be totally delicious. All you wanna do is bring
it back to room temperature. So if it's in the fridge, let it sit on the countertop
for a few hours to warm up, then give it a mix. And if it was in the freezer, pop it into your fridge to
warm up slowly for a day or two and then place it on your counter. That's getting close to mixed in. It doesn't seem like it now, but it is. I'm gonna add the rest
of the powdered sugar in. Just give it a sift. I see it all over the place. Whoa, what? Powdered sugar happened here. Don't know what you're talking about. If you've ever had like a
regular American buttercream, which is what this recipes also known as, and it's like really, really sweet, or like kind of crunchy, someone added too much
powdered sugar to it. So there's a nice ratio of the butter, to the sugar, to the cream. You can make this a little bit looser and silkier by adding more
cream or milk into the recipe. This is slowly getting worked in. Right now I'm gonna add
about a tablespoon of cream while it's mixing on low, and then just walk away. Do something else. Don't focus us on this. It'll come together really quickly and you are gonna be seeing a creamy, amazing consistency. Sometimes when you're adding
your cream or milk in, your buttercream can start to look grainy, and that means it's broken. It's really easy to fix, though. You don't want broken buttercream because it just looks grainy and the mouth feel isn't this same. You can fix it by adding
in some more sugar and beating it up. So just mix, mix, mix, and add it in. And if it's really cold
and it's like not working, you can use a hair dryer on the edge of your bowl and just warm it up. That should fix everything. One of the questions I get
is about the consistency for buttercream. So if you've ever had
tons of little bubbles and it doesn't smooth out nicely, it's because a lot of air
got whipped into there and it is fixable. Just mix it on low with
a paddle or use a spatula and smooth it out in the bowl to kind of break up those bubbles
and compact it down again. You can also add in a
little bit more cream and keep mixing on low and it should fix basically everything. This is coming together, but if you tasted it now, you'd be like, "Oh, this is so sweet." It needs something and
that something is salt. Add in half a teaspoon
while mixing on low. This will give you a really nice contrast to all that sugar and
bring out more flavor. Salt always lets you taste things better. I'm also gonna add in
another tablespoon of cream (mixer whirring) as well as about a teaspoon
or so of vanilla extract. It's always a good idea
to scrape the bowl down at least once when you're making this, 'cause you'll see the bottom has a lot of compacted butter and
the top has all the sugar and the flavorings you've added, so you want this to be
nice and consistent. If you're wondering what you can do to make your buttercream taste delicious, one of the answers is use a nice butter. If your butter is like
towards the end of its life and getting a bit stale, you will definitely taste
it in your buttercream as one of the main flavors. So use a nice fresh butter. The better the quality,
the better it'll taste. (mixer whirring) Time for one last tablespoon of cream. (mixer whirring) Gonna let this mix up for awhile and you're gonna see a
beautiful consistency. One final tablespoon of cream and then I'm gonna show
you how to flavor it and how beautiful it can pipe. (mixer whirring) This buttercream is a blank canvas. You can add anything you
want to it from Oreos, to chocolate, to caramel, to raspberries. I'm adding some of my
favorites right here. You can screenshot this or
pause it and write it down. And if you have more, let me know in the comments below. I have to give you one
final tip on the consistency because even though we went
low and slow the whole time, there are little air bubbles throughout. If you wanna get the most
amazing, creamy consistency, you're gonna use your spatula
and just press it out. If you ever made macaron, it's very similar to macaronage. You're pressing out the air
bubbles by flattening this. This is an optional step. You don't have to do it. But if you're doing detail work or if you wanna get a mirror
smooth finish on your cake, it really, really helps. I've even made buttercream
just with a spatula before, where you make it into a paste, and that's totally doable, it just takes a lot of time. There, that's looking
so much better already. Into a piping bag with an 846. It's a nice closed star tip. Add some of our smooth,
amazing buttercream. I'm actually gonna freeze this batch to use later for some cupcakes, but I have to show you
how beautifully it pipes. So take a look. This is a scallop pattern. So you just pipe in little
waves and it's wonderful for the top of the cake or for the base. One more time. This is life changing and delicious. Mm, perfect, so good. I hope this video helps you make the perfect buttercream frosting. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments, and if you like this video, check out my buttercream playlist.
