Everyone has a particular sweet treat that makes them slightly weak at the knees. Ours? Buttercream frosting.
Though delicious as it may be, applying a smooth layer of buttercream to a cake can be a tricky skill to master.
We asked the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cher Loh about how we perfect the art of frosting and he broke it down into three easy steps...
Crumb coat your sponge
‘You always want to crumb coat your cake. By crumb coating, I mean applying a very, very thin layer of buttercream all over the top and side of your sponge. This makes all of the cake’s crumbs stick to it.’
Chill the cake
‘What I do next is chill the cake really well. Doing this means that no bits of sponge or crumbs will poke through your next layer of buttercream.’
Apply a second later
‘Apply your next layer of clean buttercream. To do this, I use a palette knife for both the crumb coating and second layer. To perfect your icing even more, it might be worth getting a cake scraper.’
Buttercream icing recipe
To cover the top of a 20.5cm (8in) cake, you will need:
- 75g (3oz) unsalted butter
- 175g (6oz) icing sugar, sifted
- a few drops of vanilla extract
- 1-2 tbsp milk.
1. Put the butter in a mixing bowl, then beat until light and fluffy.
2. Gradually stir in the remaining ingredients and beat until smooth.
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An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
