4 Easy Cupcake Icing Recipes
Everyone's favourite part of a cupcake is the icing, but it doesn't have to be difficult or stressful to get great results with your own, home made icing!
These easy cupcake icing recipes range from the traditional buttercream to some more modern favourites, all with under a handful of ingredients and super-simple preparation.
Be the star of your next get-together when you bring in beautiful, home made cupacakes with seriously delicious icing. They never need to know how easy it was!
What's Your Favourite Part of a Cupcake?
Perfect Buttercream Icing
- 240g unsalted butter (softened)
- 120g icing sugar
- 2 tbsp milk
- Chop softened butter and place in the bowl of an electric stand mixer, or a large bowl for use with a hand mixer. Add icing sugar. Mix until well-combined.
- Add small amounts of milk as you continue mixing until icing becomes soft and fluffy. You may need some or all of the milk for this, stop when you reach stiff peak consistency.
- Your icing is ready to pipe or spread straight away.
Makes enough for about 12 cupcakes.
Buttercream Icing Tips
- You can make vegan "buttercream" icing with any solidified vegetable spread and any kind of milk substitute you like. A canola oil spread (or any lightly-flavoured spread) and almond milk is excellent!
- Buttercream looks and tastes best when it's piped fairly sparingly onto a cupcake. Try low swirls, or if you're not confident with a piping bag, try making a dome of icing with a butter knife straight onto the cupcake.
- You can colour your buttercream icing with any food colouring or add liquid flavours to make it a little more interesting.
- You can replace some of the sugar in your buttercream with cocoa powder to make chocolate buttercream. Try changing out about 20g of the sugar for cocoa and adjust from there to taste.
Easy Whipped White Chocolate Frosting
"Whipped white chocolate frosting" might sound difficult, but all you need to make it is an electric mixer, a microwave, and a tiny bit of patience. Watch the video to see how easy it is!
Piping Bags Make Icing Easy!
2-minute Chocolate Ganache Cupcake Icing
- 200g heavy/double cream
- 200g good-quality dark, milk, or white chocolate
- Put chocolate and cream in a microwave safe bowl.
- Heat in 30-second bursts, stirring well after each, until smooth. This should take about 1 minute 30 seconds, but every microwave is different.
- Pour ganache onto cupcakes for a smooth, glossy surface. If left to set, ganache will achieve a texture solid enough to support most small cupcake decorations.
Makes enough for 12 cupcakes.
Pourable Chocolate Ganache Icing Tips
- You can flavour your ganache with liquid flavouring essences - dark chocolate and mint is yummy!
- Ganache-topped cupcakes look especially classy with chopped nuts or crushed candy sprinkled over the top of them. Use your imagination!
- You can make any quantity of ganache you like - the ratio is always half cream, half chocolate.
- If you want a thinner ganache to use as a glaze, swap out cream for milk.
Cream Cheese Icing Recipe
Cream cheese frosting is delicious with Red Velvet or mud cake cupcakes. It's a smooth, delicious icing and you can afford to put a lot more of it on your cupcakes than other icing, because it's not as sickly-sweet as other recipes.
© 2013 Cecil Wilde