German buttercream, often known as custard buttercream, is a particularly rich buttercream frosting. You can alter it by incorporating new tastes or booze. This is my go-to basic, tried-and-true recipe for frosting cupcakes and cakes. makes 24 cupcakes or a three to four tier cake’s worth of buttercream.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 25 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 24 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 1 cup white sugar
- ½ cup milk
- 1 ⅓ cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon rum (Optional)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Beat egg with a fork in a small, heavy saucepan. Mix in sugar and milk. Heat on medium-low heat, whisking constantly, until it just starts to boil. Continue beating rapidly until mixture thickens to a thin custard consistency. Remove from heat and cool completely, about 1 hour.
- Beat butter in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add cooled custard, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in rum and vanilla extract. Keep beating until buttercream is very light and fluffy.
- It is important that custard is completely cooled before using or it will melt the butter. The custard can be made ahead and chilled in the fridge until needed.
- This recipe contains quite a bit of butter, for ease of decorating with a pastry bag and to help the piped icing to hold its shape. If you don’t intend to create elaborate decorations and just want to simply ice your cake, you can decrease the butter to 1 cup.
- If you are using the buttercream to decorate a cake or cupcakes, make sure baked goods are cooled completely to prevent the buttercream from melting. For best results when using a pastry bag, chill the buttercream in bag in the fridge for 1 hour. Chilled buttercream creates better defined shapes when used for cake decorating.
Reviews
Loved this recipe! Creamy and just right touch of sweet.
4.5 stars I used margarine and maple flavoring in a half batch. Butter would be better, but with enough flavoring, it’s not a problem. You can taste the shortening regardless, but that comes with being a buttercream. I will be using this recipe again, I love that it doesn’t require icing sugar.
I really hate extremely sweet frosting … I was worried that it would be super sweet but it was PERFECT!! I had heavy cream on hand and used it instead of milk…. my cake was a huge hit! Everyone loved it… and I’m sure it was the buttercream!!! Yummy Thank you!!
Works very well for cupcakes – I keep them refrigerated and take out 1 hour prior to serving. For chocolate cupcakes I add 1 Tablespoon cocoa powder and substitute rum with Irish cream liquor.
This recipe is amazing! This is my first Buttercream. The addition of the rum is a wonderful twist for the flavor
Good flavor, fluffy and easy to work with. A good introduction to egg buttercream frosting: not as intimidating as Italian or Swiss buttercream but not as stable in hot, humid weather.
Tastes great! Everyone loves it when I make it, even those who don’t like icing will take a few bites.
Did not like it. Way too much butter. Not a very good flavor.
exquisite and silky. I used this recipe as the filling in my Nanaimo bar. Custard from scratch really elevates it, I’ll probably never go back to custard powder. I did omit the rum flavouring and used two egg yolks in places of the whole egg, for extra silkiness.
Thank you for sharing this recipe. I did not know there was another way to make buttercream icing. This is pretty good! I made it exactly as written and it turned out well. It was a little bit too buttery for my taste though. After making it I saw the note in the recipe that said you could cut the butter back to 1 cup. (I had used the full 1 1/3 cup stated in the ingredients.) So, I adjusted the mixture by adding a proportional amount of powdered sugar and vanilla to make up for the extra 1/3 cup of “extra” butter. That turned out very good! Next time I will make the recipe as written with just 1 cup of butter & update this review. Thanks again for sharing!
Instead of milk, add buttermilk
This is an incredibly delicious frosting. I hate the too-sweet frostings of powdered sugar and a little butter. This is just right. It is full of butter and I enjoyed that buttery flavor and texture. If it is hot, though, it will have a tendency to break down because of the butter base. I did put sweetened coconut on the top, so that added more sugar to the final cake. The texture was delightful. If you like a light, fluffy frosting that isn’t overly sweet, but full of buttery flavor, this is it.