Vanilla Frosting Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between vanilla frosting and buttercream? ›

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.

By mixing in some vinegar, it will give another layer of flavor and also help hold the icing together better. (In general, you'll need a quarter of a teaspoon of vinegar for every three egg whites you use.)

Frosting is the thickest of these confections and is ideal for spreading or piping on cakes, cupcakes and cookies. Icing is a little thinner than frosting and is often poured or piped over coffee cakes, pound cakes, doughnuts and cookies—and it usually hardens when it dries.

Most commercial bakeries are using a buttercream made with shortening rather than butter, because it is more stable, especially if it gets warm.

Best frosting for: beginner cake bakers

If you're a cake baker just looking for the basics, American-style buttercream is a good place to start. No need to worry about syrup temperature or whipping meringue: just cream together butter (or shortening) and sugar, and you're basically set.

Buttercreams, my cream cheese frosting, and swiss meringue buttercream are all great choices for a beginner cake decorator. These are sturdy, smooth, not too thick or thin, and pipe well.

Whip the frosting with half a block of cream cheese and an extra cup of powdered sugar and a few drops of the appropriate flavoring extract. If you're using chocolate, add cocoa powder. If you want a richer buttery flavor add a few tablespoons of butter as well.

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.

Frostings are generally thicker, fluffier, and used for coating not just the outside but also between layers of baked goods. Some frostings use a meringue base, while others simply rely on butter and sugar. Icings on the other hand are typically thinner and harden to a firm consistency, like royal icings, for example.

When considering the many different types of frostings there are for cakes, cupcakes, and other baked goods, you can think about them in six broad categories: buttercream frosting, cooked frosting, whipped cream frosting, royal icing, ganaches, and glazes.

Why does bakery frosting taste different? ›

It tastes real because it uses ingredients that we like. Grocery store buttercream isnt for flavor, it's so that it stays shelf stable. They use vegetable shortening, which has almost no taste and leaves a waxy aftertaste. Butter and eggs go bad after a while, not refrigerated especially, so they leave them out.

Buttercream is the most popular type of frosting largely because of its few ingredients and easy application. Classic buttercream requires beating butter into icing sugar until you reach a frosting consistency.

The Swiss buttercream (made with egg whites) stood longer than its egg yolk-based French counterpart, but it too drooped and melted. Finishing a sun-soaked time in the outdoors, the coconut oil, the butter-based American buttercream, the whipped cream, and the Italian meringue frostings are held up (more or less).

Buttercream is usually easier to use for cake decorating. Cream cheese makes a delicious frosting but it is difficult to get it thick enough to hold its shape for things like roses or other complicated flowers.

In short, buttercream is a type of frosting used to take treats like cake and cookies to the next level. This being said, not all frostings are buttercream, and can be made with a variety of cream bases like cream cheese and whipped cream.

Pros – It is soft, smooth and not too sweet. SM buttercream is arguably the best frosting in terms of cake decorating because it is the easiest way to get those smooth clean lines.