Recipe: Vanilla Buttercream Icing

This is a nice easy buttercream that can be used for under icing if you are using royal icing, or as a stand alone icing too. This is enough to ice the size of cake the vanilla buttermilk cake recipe is for — but generally, you always want twice as much icing sugar as butter and it works.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

Ingredients

  • 500 gramme soft unsalted butter
  • 1 kilogram icing sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
  • 4 tablespoons milk

Instructions

  • Beat the butter until white & fluffy
  • Slowly beat in the icing sugar, half a cup at a time
  • Add the vanilla and milk and beat in — make sure it’s really fluffy*

* One way to test is if when you take a small amount and roll it between your fingers, it should smear and NOT be possible to form into a ball. If you can form it into a ball, beat for longer!

This was the largest ever batch of buttercream icing I ever made — 2kg of butter and 4kg of icing sugar. It was such a big pile it had to be transported in bin bags!

Bin bag filled with vanilla buttercream icing