Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (2024)

FAQs

Is chocolate or cocoa powder better for buttercream? ›

But the taste was so good, because we chose to make this frosting with the Extra Brute cocoa powder. And the most surprising thing was the mouthfeel. The buttercream made with the cocoa powder looked a little grainy, but actually had a smoother and softer mouthfeel than the one made with melted chocolate.

The best way to distinguish frosting from buttercream is through the ingredients. While both contain powdered sugar, fat, flavouring and sometimes milk or water, frosting does not contain any butter whatsoever. Instead, frosting is usually made with shortening or cream cheese.

To make the chocolate buttercream icing, melt the butter and pour it into a bowl. Sift in the cocoa powder and stir in the icing sugar a little at a time to make a glossy and spreadable chocolate buttercream. If the icing is too thick, gradually add the milk until it reaches your desired consistency.

Also more simply known as Swiss Buttercream, this buttercream is popular amongst the professionals. It is more difficult and time-consuming to create than American Buttercream, but it's silky smooth and light texture makes it worth the extra effort.

Italian Meringue Buttercream

This is considered one of the very difficult methods for making buttercream because the sugar syrup must be cooked to a specific temperature and then, while piping hot, poured into the whipped egg whites.

The most stable of the buttercreams, Italian buttercream is made from a meringue made bystreaming hot sugar syrup into egg whites as they're being whisked.

Since Swiss buttercream is so soft, it's better used for frosting cakes rather than piping or decorating. Make sure mixture is cool before adding butter, otherwise your butter will melt.

If you want an extra silky buttercream swap the milk for double cream, or a mix of both. Make sure your cake is cold before adding buttercream icing. Any residual heat will melt the butter in your icing and make it difficult to work with or even melt completely and slip off your cake.

For those who struggle to get butter to optimum baking consistency, Mary recommends using baking spread instead. When making a Victoria sponge, she simply beats together her baking spread (straight from the fridge), sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder in a large bowl with an electric mixer.

How to jazz up chocolate icing? ›

In general, buttercream frosting will last around a week refrigerated. A buttercream frosted cake will last 2-3 days at room temperature.

Yes, this is absolutely correct. The longer you beat, the more air you incorporate in your buttercream, thus, it will have lots of holes or air-pockets, it will also make the colour lighter. If you will use your buttercream primarily for filling or maybe as simple swirls, then this is ok.

Not only does cold, hard butter prove much tougher to work with, but it also could be the reason your buttercream frosting doesn't come together — no matter how long you keep mixing. Cold ingredients can also leave buttercream with a curdled or chunky consistency.

Classically there are four main types of buttercream: Italian, German, French & Swiss.

By the way, this is why high-fat, low-moisture desserts like cookies often call for cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate: cocoa delivers a bigger and more balanced chocolate bite without messing up the cookie's fat content.

If you are making a chocolate frosting, adding more cocoa powder is a great option for thickening it. The technique is basically the same as if you were thickening with powdered sugar, but you want to use a smaller quantity of cocoa powder than icing sugar. Try adding just 1 to 2 teaspoon at a time.

To use it as a cocoa powder substitute, you need to use two teaspoons of hot chocolate mix for every teaspoon of cocoa powder in the recipe. It won't be as rich, but it will work. We recommend that you only use this method in an emergency baking situation.

Dutch-Processed Cocoa Powder

It makes amazingly rich, dark, and tender cakes, fudgy, moist brownies and cookies, and incredibly luscious frosting.