Today is the day we celebrate the most glorious ingredient to any recipe - BUTTER! To celebrate, I am sharing my beloved buttercream recipe! 

With the holiday dinners coming up, meal planning and grocery list making is in full force for me. Like every year, as the baker of the family, I have been charged with making all of the desserts for our family gathering. 

Baking something delicious has always been a love language of mine. I love to make something that everyone loves. On the other hand, I’m crushed when something I make turns out poorly. This is the reason why I spent quite a bit of time working on my buttercream when I started my in-home bakery. 

I’ve tasted many buttercreams that were just… not “it”. I would find that some of the buttercreams I came across would leave a horrible aftertaste or slimy feeling in my mouth due to the margarine/ shortening content. I knew when I started my side gig that I would be using all butter for my buttercream recipe - go big or go home.

I needed to come up with a buttercream that was versatile and tasted incredible. This one that I came up with was a winner. I used it on so many of my baked goods - my cookie sandwiches, my cakes, cupcakes, practically everything! I always got compliments on my buttercream - some people would even accuse me of putting *illegal substances* in it because they couldn’t get enough. Kid you not, I cannot tell you how many times I would see people licking the wrappers or containers of my treats just to get every little bit of the precious buttercream. It was hilarious to see and I loved that people loved it so much.

So instead of it just sitting in the archives of my mind, I am sharing my holy grail buttercream recipe with you all. I hope everyone you serve this to loves it just as much.

Alicia’s Buttercream Recipe

- Five (yes, five) sticks of softened/room temperature *SALTED butter (this also measures 1 and 1/4 pound of butter) 

- One 32 ounce bag of powdered sugar

- 2 tsp vanilla extract

Put your butter in a bowl. With a mixer (stand mixers are much easier to use for this) beat the softened butter until you get a smooth consistency that is pale yellow in appearance. This takes about 3-5 minutes. You want your butter soft, but not too soft to where it is unusable. 

In 1/2 cup increments, slowly add your powdered sugar. This step can get very messy if you add too much while your mixer is on too high of a speed setting (low/med is best - after you finish adding, you can turn up the speed to incorporate.)

Turn off the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl every once in a while to make sure all of the butter is mixed in well.

After the butter and powdered sugar have been incorporated, slowly add in the 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract while the mixer is going. 

Mix until smooth and use your buttercream on whatever you please! 

* The salted butter is what makes this so good. Trust me on this one!

Bakers tip - This buttercream is not going to turn out a bright white. If that is what you are going for, you will want to add the tiniest amount of violet food coloring to counteract the yellow (think color theory). By tiny, I’m talking like 1/4 of a drop of violet. You can stick a toothpick in the bottle of food coloring and put it in your buttercream and mix- repeat until it whitens up. Be careful though, too much will turn it a purple-ish tint.

Let me know in the comments if you try this recipe!