Strawberry Buttercream Frosting
Strawberry season is in full swing and today I'm sharing a fantastic Strawberry Buttercream Frosting recipe! It is easy to make, pipes beautifully, and is bursting with fresh strawberry flavor!
This versatile strawberry frosting recipe can be used as a filling or frosting, and tastes AMAZING with all sorts of cake and cupcake flavors.
It not only makes a wonderful strawberry frosting, but is delicious as a strawberry filling when sandwiched between cake layers. The real strawberries in the recipe give it great flavor.
**If you will be doing a lot of piping you will need to double the recipe
Table of Contents
How to Make Strawberry Buttercream
This strawberry buttercream recipe is so delicious, you'll want to make it again and again for all of your favorite strawberry cake recipes!
The best part (aside from being such a good, pipeable frosting) is that it is such an easy recipe to whip up.
This is a basic American Buttercream recipe, which means it is a combination of these simple ingredients: softened butter, confectioners sugar, a pinch of salt, flavoring, and in this case, strawberries which lends a delicious natural strawberry flavor.
**You can find the full, printable recipe for Strawberry Buttercream below, but here is a quick rundown of the steps:
- Soften the butter at room temperature, and puree the strawberries in the food processor. Using a paddle attachment, cream the softened unsalted butter in the bowl of a stand mixer until smooth. (If you don't have a stand mixer, a handheld mixer works well also!) Gradually add the powdered sugar and strawberry puree beating at medium speed until blended.
- Continue mixing at medium speed another 3 to 4 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl. **If you'd like the frosting to be a bit more pink, just add a few drops of pink food coloring or coloring gel.
- Next, turn the mixer to low speed (#2 on a KitchenAid) and continue mixing another 1 to 2 minutes to eliminate air pockets. The strawberry frosting will become very smooth.
- The consistency is simple to change- If the buttercream is too thin add more powdered sugar, if too thick add more puree or a bit of milk.
- Any extra strawberry puree can be spread between the cake layers.
- This buttercream should be refrigerated in an airtight container until it's time to frost the cake! Due to the perishable nature of strawberries, I like to refrigerate cakes that have been frosted with this buttercream until within a couple of hours of the event.
Decorating the Cake
In the photo above, I filled a disposable piping bag with strawberry buttercream, and piped on top of our freshly crumb coated cake using a star tip 21.
I covered the top of the cake with piped spirals of buttercream. Then, I continued my buttercream piping around the sides with simple piped shells in a braided buttercream pattern.
This strawberry buttercream is perfect for all sorts of piping techniques, textured buttercream techniques, or a smooth finish.
Pureed Strawberries vs. Strawberry Extract
**If you will be doing a lot of piping you will need to double the recipe
No More Grainy buttercream
Many people are surprised to learn that the type of powdered sugar used in an American Buttercream recipe like this one, can greatly the smoothness of your buttercream. Some brands/types of confectioners sugar just don't work well with frosting.
Over the years, we've run into a couple of brands of powdered sugar that gave us a beautiful looking buttercream which turned out to have a gritty, grainy consistency- ugh!
If a package doesn’t say pure cane sugar, it contains beet sugar which is more likely to give you a grainy outcome.
However, we’ve noticed that even some brands that say “Pure Cane Sugar” will give a grainy consistency. One example is Dixie Crystals (although it used to work great for us several years ago.) Something has changed.
I’ve read that sometimes brands will use an anti-caking agent that causes grittiness, but it’s hard to say what the true reason is. Your best bet is to do a little experimenting to find the brand that gives you the best results.
We’ve had great results with Domino’s confectioner’s sugar.
What Cakes Pair Well with Strawberry Buttercream?
This easy Strawberry Buttercream Frosting tastes great with so many cake flavors! Here are just a few of our favorites!
Strawberry Doctored Cake Mix Recipe
We have more Strawberry Fillings to Share!
Enjoy the Recipe!
Thanks so much for stopping by! If you give this Strawberry Buttercream recipe a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below.
Strawberry Buttercream Frosting
We love this delicious Strawberry Buttercream recipe!
Ingredients
- 2 sticks (1 cup) (226g) unsalted butter, slightly softened
- 6 cups (690g) powdered sugar
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt (optional) this will cut the sweetness (popcorn salt will dissolve more quickly)
- ¼ cup plus 1 Tablespoon pureed strawberries, add more to reach your desired spreading consistency- This is approximately 3-5 strawberries depending on size.
- 1 teaspoon (4g) strawberry extract (optional) use if the buttercream needs more strawberry flavor
Instructions
Cream the softened butter until smooth.
Gradually add the powdered sugar and pureed strawberries beating at medium speed until blended.
Continue mixing on medium speed another 3 to 4 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally
Slow down the mixer to very slow (#2 on a KitchenAid) and mixing another 1 to 2 minutes. This will eliminate air pockets. The buttercream will become very smooth.
If the buttercream is too thin add more powdered sugar, if too thick add more puree or a bit of milk.
Any extra strawberry puree can be spread between the cake layers
Makes 4 to 4 ½ cups
I want to use this frosting on some strawberry cupcakes that i will be making for a bake sale this sunday. If i keep them in the fridge and pull them out right before i drop them off for the sale, will the frosting be okay to sit out for four hours?
Hi Tracy, I think your plan should work fine, I am thinking it is an inside bake sale.
Bebe it is not. It will be outside
Hi Tracy, Even though it is outside the frosting should not spoil during that time frame because of all the powdered sugar in the recipe. If you are using a 2D piping tip the edges of your frosting swirl may not remain as sharp. I would think they won't have baked goods sitting in the hot sun so all should be fine.
Emergency
Can this cover a three layer 9inch cake
Hi Em, This recipes makes 4 1/2 cups frosting. I would increase the recipe by 1/2 so you will have plenty to crumb coat, fill, frost and do some decorative piping on your cake. This will give you a little over 6 cups frosting.
The frosting looks delicious. Can you use freeze dried strawberries in this recipe? If so, how much and when to add?
thanks you.
Jackie
Hi Jackie, It seems that you should be able to, but we have never used freeze dried strawberries so I can't give you a definite answer.
this looks amazing! I have a request to make the strawberry frosting in different colors for a princess theme bday to show the dress ruffles in blue, yellow etc. DO you think adding color would make a difference in the taste, texture?
Hi Praj, Adding coloring get won't effect the taste. The texture would only be affected if you added so much color that it softened the buttercream, then you would add more powdered sugar to firm it up again. We use AmeriColor gel coloring and a little goes a long way. The problem you will have is trying to color the pink strawberry buttercream. Blue added to pink buttercream will give you purple and yellow added to pink will give you an orange color. You may need to make some white buttercream just to color the ruffles of the princess dress. However, if the entire cake is the princess dress, that is a problem.
Thanks Bebe! This is so helpful!
Can you use frozen strawberries in syrup for this icing?