Chocolate Buttercream Recipe
This classic Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipe is the only chocolate buttercream recipe that you will ever need. It tastes amazing, pipes beautifully, and has been our go-to chocolate buttercream for years!
You are going to LOVE how easy this chocolate frosting is to make. Throw that canned chocolate frosting in the trash, it won't taste good to you anymore!
Table of Contents
How to Make Chocolate Buttercream
This chocolate buttercream recipe comes together in no time! You can find the full, printable frosting recipe below. This is an American Buttercream, meaning that it consists primarily of butter, powdered sugar, flavorings, milk, and in this case, cocoa powder as well.
It makes a great chocolate filling, frosting, and pipes great too!
- Add softened butter to the mixing bowl and mix on low to medium speed until smooth. Add vanilla extract and blend into the softened butter. Add confectioners sugar, salt, and unsweetened cocoa powder.
- Add most of the milk. Begin mixing at low speed so you won't have a cloud of powdered sugar in your kitchen.
- Continue to mix adding remaining milk until desired consistency is reached.
- It may take 5 to 6 minutes to reach the smoothness and consistency you like. It will take longer if using a hand mixer. As you mix, the frosting will become very smooth. You can add additional milk (1 Tablespoon at a time) if the frosting is too thick or additional powdered sugar if too soft.
What Cakes Taste Great with Chocolate Frosting?
This Classic Chocolate Buttercream is silky smooth, has a fantastic chocolate flavor, and it is the perfect complement to SO many flavors of cakes and cupcakes!
We love it as a filling or frosting for so many of our cake recipes! Some of our favorites are Marble Cake, Yellow Cake, and scratch Chocolate Cake, but there are so many more great options!
Pipeable Chocolate Buttercream
This Chocolate Frosting recipe should give you a nice medium consistency. This makes it perfect for piping.
Whether you're making buttercream ruffles, buttercream roses, or piping pretty scrolls or borders, this frosting couldn't be simpler to work with.
You'll have a bit of wiggle room when it comes to the amount of sugar and liquid. For a thicker frosting, mix in more confectioners sugar.
For a softer frosting, add a bit more milk. I also prefer to use whole milk rather than skim or 1% as it gives a richer flavor and a lighter crust when it sets.
If you'd like to learn more about simple buttercream piping techniques, check out some of our free tutorials: Piping Basics: Petal and Ruffle Tips, Piping Basics: Round Tips, Piping Basics: Star Tips.
Other Chocolate Frostings to Try...
We have a couple of other delicious chocolate frostings in our recipes section!
Our Fluffy Chocolate Buttercream recipe is similar to this classic chocolate buttercream, as it is a crusting recipe which is great for piping. The difference is that it contains shortening, which makes it more heat resistant.
It's always nice to have a heat friendly option for those hot summer days. Just remember that no frosting is 100 percent heat-proof. Shortening based frostings will hang in there for a bit longer though! You can find the recipe here: Fluffy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.
Next, if you are looking for something even more rich, you will also love our Chocolate Ganache Frosting in the Recipes section! If you've never tried ganache, it is a decadent mixture of chocolate and cream. Hop on over for the details!
More Recipes for the Chocolate Lovers!
If you love chocolate cakes and frostings, don't miss our full roundup of favorite chocolate cake and frosting recipes!!
These are SO delicious and we have a great variety in this roundup of chocolate fillings and frostings, scratch chocolate cakes, doctored chocolate cake mix recipes, and favorite chocolate cake and frosting pairings!
Best Chocolate Cakes and Frostings
Enjoy the Recipe
Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
The most delicious and simple Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipe! This chocolate frosting pipes great also.
Ingredients
- 3 sticks (339g) unsalted butter, softened (do not soften butter in the microwave)
- 7 cups (805g) confectioners sugar (Adjust slightly up or down to your liking) *See Notes
- 1 cup (82g) unsweeteded cocoa. Measure, then sift.
- ¾ cup (180g) milk -Add slowly, stop when desired consistency is reached. (Add a bit more if needed).
- 2 teaspoons (12) vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon (6g) salt
Instructions
- Add butter and mix on low to medium speed until smooth. Add vanilla and blend into the butter. Add powdered sugar, salt, and cocoa powder.
- Add most of the milk. Begin mixing at low speed so you won't have a cloud of powdered sugar in your kitchen.
- Continue to mix adding remaining milk as needed. It may take 5 to 6 minutes to reach the smoothness and consistency you like. It will take longer if using a hand mixer. As you mix the frosting will become very smooth. You can add additional milk (1 Tablespoon at a time) if the frosting is too thick or additional powdered sugar if too soft.
This is our favorite chocolate frosting! Recipe can easily be doubled or halved.
This recipe makes approximately 6-6.5 cups frosting.
Notes
Our favorite brands of confectioners sugar are Dominos and US Sugar (Costco). I'm sure that there are other good ones as well- but we never have issues with grainy buttercream when using these brands.
Hi Sal, This recipe make approximately 4 cups frosting, I think you would need a bit more for a 3 layer, 9 inch cake. Depending on how much decorative piping you will be doing, you should make 1 1/2 times the recipe or double the recipe.
Thank you for your reply. This helps a lot! ?
Hi, my daughter and I are trying this tonight. For the cream, is it unsweetened cocoa like the cake? Or sweetened? Never made chocolate frosting before. Thanks in advance. Can't wait to try all these yummies!
Hi Sherry, The cocoa in the frosting recipe is unsweetened. I use Ghirardelli but you can use whatever brand is your favorite. Since this is your first time making chocolate buttercream, if you find it too stiff, add additional milk, 1 teaspoon at a time or if too soft a add a bit more powdered sugar. The recipe makes 4 cups, and is enough to frost an 8 inch cake, but if you like a thick filling and frosting you will want to make 1 1/2 times or double the recipe to have enough for decorative piping.
Thank you for replying, extra advice, and your site. My daughter has been wanting to learn making a cake from scratch?
I have never successfully made frosting— until coming across your instructions!
If I am making this tonight to frost a cake tomorrow, should I store in the fridge or at room temp?
Thank you so much for this amazing recipe.
Hi Christina, Yes, you can store the frosting at room temperature overnight and frost the cake tomorrow. We are so happy you like the recipe.
The icing looks great, but I was wondering if there was any way to change the coloring. As silly as it sounds I'm looking to make an icing that tastes good but can also be turned into camo colors. It's for a friend's son's birthday and the theme is camo colors and such. If you could help I would thankful, if not I understand and still thank you for the amazing icing recipe.
Hi Ranger, I'm sorry but you won't be able to adjust the chocolate buttercream to create camo colors. You will need to begin with a vanilla buttercream. Here is a link to a 1 minute video Melissa made showing how to smooth camo colored cupcakes, you might find it helpful.
https://www.mycakeschool.com/cupcakes-minute-tutorial/
Hope all goes well.
I just made this chocolate buttercream, and it's delicious!
I'm so glad, Cindy! Your cake looks perfect!
Hello, so I have made this icing twice now, once for the german chocolate cake & once for the yellow cake, although the icing tasted good and got many compliments, the icing is coming out extremely stiff, am I using too much powdered sugar? Also, I always measure, then sift before adding, this is one of the only buttercream icing I've had this issue with. Just to note, although I've had this issue, both cakes were a huge hit, so thank you!