How to Make the Best Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Hey , I'm John Cannell .

And today on Preppy Kitchen , I'm showing you how to make perfect chocolate buttercream frosting .

So let's get started .

All right , 113 times three is 339 .

Yes , that's easy to get started .

You'll need 1.5 cups or 339 g of unsalted room temperature butter .

And I'm gonna talk to you about this for half a second when we say room temperature , what we mean is I can use my finger .

I'm putting my finger in , it goes in with ease , so soft , so buttery , it's not melting away and I'm not straining myself to press down .

It just gives today , I'm using a stand mixer to make this .

It makes everything really easy .

I can walk away .

Don't have to pay attention , but you can use an electric hand mixer as well .

Do not try this by hand .

That's not gonna be fun .

I'm using a paddle attachment .

You could use a whisk , but I'm gonna tell you the paddle attachment can give you better results .

Is that true paddle or whisk ?

This is the question and a lot of people ask me , this paddle is the best practice in some ways .

I'm gonna use a whisk today and I'll tell you why I want my butter to be fluffy .

Amazing , doubled in volume .

And it'll just take a long time with a paddle to do that .

This creates another problem though .

But we'll fix it .

So stay tuned .

We're gonna mix this up on medium to get it nice and creamed .

And then after about a minute or two , I'm gonna move it on to high and mix it up for at least five minutes .

So it's like very fluffy , very creamy , doubled in volume .

I'm really whipping some air into it .

And if you've ever made like a chocolate silk pie , which you should , it's a similar thing .

You're just beating that butter until it is fluffier than a cloud .

Oh my gosh .

Look how beautiful that looks already .

You know , we're off to a good start .

However , if I look into my magical bowl , I can see a lot of yellow bits .

Look at this nonsense .

This is important .

Can you see that difference in color from the original butter that's on the edge of the bowl to this light and fluffy , amazing cloud means we need to scrape the bowl down and give all the butter an equal chance to fluff up to its full potential .

Isn't that so nice ?

A lot of time when you have a mediocre , like kind of dense butter cream , it's like , oh this is so sweet , so dense .

Is this grainy ?

What happened ?

This butter wasn't mixed up enough .

So this is one of the very most important things you can do .

OK .

We have about two more minutes of mixing that scrape down was important though .

Mm Take in the sights .

It's beautiful .

I'll be like grinning ear to ear this entire video .

Um This is amazing and by the way , this is the same step you would do for vanilla butter cream .

And I have to tell you when people ask , oh my gosh , why is my vanilla butter cream ?

So yellow .

Look at the color change we had from the beginning of this to the end .

Totally different color .

It's really lightened up because we whipped so much air into it .

That's great .

Ok .

Now it's time for some of the magical ingredients including cocoa powder .

By the way , my book is available for preorder .

Now there's a link in the description box below and there are tons of amazing recipes .

I'm so excited to share with you including some amazing chocolate ones .

Now we're gonna add the cocoa powder .

I need half a cup or 50 g of it , but not all cocoa powder is created equal in a number of ways .

Um This is a nice natural cocoa powder has not been Dutch processed this just for again color .

Look at this .

This is Dutch processed Cocoa powder .

It'll give you an ultra dark chocolatey like baked good .

We're making butter cream though .

So you can use either or it's really our personal preference .

Dutch processed cocoa powder makes us less acidic .

It changes the color and that does some amazing things .

When you bake things up , it gives you like fudgy , amazing brownies .

For example , I want 50 g of cocoa powder , cocoa powder while a powder still has fat in it .

So it tends to clump up actually , just for fun , I'm gonna add some of the Dutch process too .

It really you can use either or here .

And I think the Dutch process will give me a deeper nicer color in a lot of other kinds of chocolate butter cream .

Like if I'm making an Italian chocolate butter cream or a Swiss chocolate butter cream , I'll use actual chocolate and melt it and whip it in .

This is an instance where cocoa powder really does the trick well .

So if you wanted to add chocolate in , you definitely can , you could melt up half a cup of chocolate , add that in , add up even three quarters of a cup of chocolate and add that in .

That's gonna be fine .

They're both gonna taste very similar .

So I wouldn't , I wouldn't stress about it .

And honestly , like if you're spending the money , I would save that delicious chocolate for a chocolate mousse or some amazing cookies and just use the cocoa powder for this .

Look at this .

Nothing but rocks in here if you didn't sift this out .

Ah , you would have like a giant mouth full of Coco nubs cocoa powder .

I'm also adding in three quarters of a teaspoon of salt .

We will be adding sugar to this .

It is a frosting but the salt really balances things out and it is to taste .

So you can add in half a teaspoon now and the other quarter of a teaspoon later .

I like a little hit of salt that really gives me some contrast and balances everything out .

It's time to mix things in a Well , you will always notice a streak of butter in your chocolate frosting .

So you really want to get the cocoa powder mixed in totally .

Well , I'm gonna scrape this bowl down and be really thorough on that .

Don't make a mess .

Please don't make a that work on the low too for a while .

I don't want any cocoa explosion .

Also going to wash my hands .

By the way , if you have any chocolate butter cream questions , let me know in the comments .

I'll be answering as many as I can and all questions are important because I want to do the best job possible .

Oh boy .

Look at this stripy nonsense .

I'm gonna increase speed just for a little bit .

The Coca powder worked in .

There's not going to be an explosion .

We have two different views of the world .

For me .

It's chocolate and amazing for you .

You see butter nonsense .

So what we have to do now is scrape the bowl down , be really thorough .

Even like this little bit of butter here .

It's just something that's like a pet peeve for a lot of people .

They don't want to see streaks in their chocolate .

If you're having a chocolate indulgence chocolate , it is no streaks of plain butter .

OK .

Let's just keep mixing this .

It needs to be nice and homogeneous .

I'm also adding in an optional 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla and you go , it gives you a nice little flourish .

This is all mixed in .

It's chocolate throughout and it's time for your powdered sugar .

Powdered sugar is like salt .

You're adding it to taste a lot of times you see a recipe and you're like , ah , ah , ah , that's too much powdered sugar unless you'll be ok , especially for an American butter cream like this .

If you like things extra sweet , add more , it's fine .

Adding more sugar is gonna give you a stiffer butter cream .

So we're gonna use about six cups of powdered sugar and see where we end up if you're using a fine piping tip , sift the powdered sugar out .

I actually sifted this before I put it in my canister .

Something that sparks joy for me and saves me time on camera from sifting and making a mess because it's never easy .

Um , I'm gonna add the first cup in right now .

Mm .

Made a mess .

Add the first cup in right now .

We're going to mix this on low just to get it combined and then we'll be adding in the sugar slowly as we go .

If I'm ever making a really complicated design like butter cream roses , there is a lot of powdered sugar in that part of the frosting .

So if I'm making this for a cake and you want to have chocolate roses or some kind of complex chocolate star situation , make your butter cream to taste maybe on the less sweet side , reserve some and then add more powdered sugar to that to get a stiffer , more paste like butter cream go low .

You can give it one quick spurt just to knock it off of the whisk just to get it out of the whisk .

So several things are happening right now that I don't like , but we're gonna fix everything to make it perfect one .

This looks like a catastrophe in here .

There's little boulders of chocolate at the bottom , there's powdered sugar on top and it's like a lot of various things that aren't properly mixed .

So just get everything out of this whisk .

We're going to scrape the bowl down and give it a little bit of a mix .

This is getting a little thick .

So we want it to be a silky amazing butter cream .

That's why we mixed the butter for so long .

But to fix that , we're gonna add some cream or milk .

And finally earlier , I said there was a downside to using a whisk .

The plus side was , oh my gosh .

That butter fluffed up .

Amazingly .

The downside is that I whipped too many large air bubbles into my frosting .

So once this is all done , it'll look a little bit bubbly , which is not great for decorating , but we fix that with a special step at the very end which you kind of have to do either way .

So even if you use a paddle , I would still use that last step .

Like what is this ?

It looks like a tree , a chocolate tree but anyone with some Virgo tendencies would see this and be like ergo feelings .

You wanna give us a little taste ?

Hm .

That's just about there .

That's five cups .

I'm gonna add a 5.5 cup pop that in this is a great amount of buttercream to make a three layer six inch cake or a two layer eight inch cake .

You'll have plenty of butter cream left over to do a little dollops or some extra things on the side .

You can also frost 24 cupcakes really nicely and not be stingy with the frosting .

If you're doing 48 cupcakes or a three layer nine inch cake , just double the recipe or make two batches mix on low .

And now we're gonna start adding our cream in tablespoons .

You want this to have like a silky , wonderful , like just beautiful consistency .

This frosting is so easy , but you're gonna get like the perfect swoops , the perfectly smooth sides .

It'll be amazing .

I'm going to eyeball it .

I cannot find my tablespoon anywhere .

So start off with like 1 to 2 tablespoons drizzling it in slowly .

When you add a cream , it loosens it up .

It gives you a silky texture .

But if you add too much , your butter cream can break .

There's just too much liquid in there , which is not great at all .

It's really bad .

So add it in slowly and just add as much as you need .

This had an immediate effect .

It went from looking a little bit grainy to lightening and it's looking so much silkier and smooth .

Now you can add just like another one or two tablespoons in .

Mm .

Ah , it looks really beautiful in the bo come take a look .

So you see that beautiful pole that whisk is making happen .

Um , that is gorgeous .

Look at this .

That's what you want to see in the bowl .

One final scrape down .

Ok .

Moving on high and that's how you clean the whisk off .

If you ever wonder , do you have to move it on high ?

Lift it up a little bit but not too high and use your hand to catch any drops .

This butter cream is not done .

You could definitely eat it , but we're gonna make it look the best .

We're doing that with our spatula and the whole thing .

Oh my God , the spatula there go .

I'm gonna give this a scrape down .

Remember I said we whipped a lot of air into here .

This is what I don't like .

So you can see if I was smoothing my cake .

I don't like those big air bubbles that are there , right ?

So we're gonna use a similar technique to when we make macaron , which is called Macron where we work the air bubbles out with a spatula .

So just use the spatula to press the butter cream down and we're going to work some air bubbles out .

And let me tell you if you were using a paddle attachment , you would still have bubbles just less of them .

And I just don't think it would be as fluffy and amazing .

You can definitely make this butter cream ahead of time .

A lot of cakes have been made by John Connell with butter cream that was made a few days earlier just because it's hard to have all the time to bake a cake to make the butter cream and to decorate it .

So this is one of those blogger tricks .

I feel like nobody tells you just because that's how you get those beautiful swoops and cakes that look really nice .

And I think it's an extra step that a lot of people are afraid to tell you about like , oh , I don't want to make you do more work .

But if you do this , you get really nice results anyways .

If you're making this ahead of time just pop a little lid on this store it in the fridge and then let it come back to room temperature slowly and just like every other butter cream , you're gonna have to give it a and then once it's room temperature , give it a whip to help restore the consistency with the paddle attachment .

And this step is always gonna come in handy .

Look at the difference .

Now , this is a silky smooth , no big bubbles .

It looks like chocolate mousse and it's gonna be perfect to pipe with .

In fact , I'm gonna show you how it looks right now .

Now I'm using my favorite tips to pipe some easy beautiful cupcakes with this luscious frosting .

If you're using a 46 tip , start in the middle and then work your way out to the very edge of the cupcake , turn it around and create a little cone of beauty .

So amazing .

Oh , I love it .

If you like this recipe , check out my easy cake playlist .

I hope you get a chance to make this recipe and I'll see you in the next video .