Tag: buttercream

This Espresso Spice Buttercream is a delicious and creamy frosting that’s full of flavour! A classic American Buttercream that’s not overly sweet or overly buttery, but is instead complete with amazing fall spices and a hint of coffee! This frosting adds so much depth in flavour to your favourite cakes, especially when paired with my Pumpkin Cake, making a pairing that’s perfect for all of the pumpkin spice latte lovers! Keep reading to find out how you can make this super easy and yummy frosting!

The Story Behind the Frosting:

I came up with this idea for the frosting after making a pumpkin cake for Halloween. I was debating between doing a cream cheese frosting, or something with cinnamon, when I realized how cool (and tasty!) it would be if I could make the whole cake put together taste like a Pumpkin Spice Latte!

You know, like the fall staple drink? The Starbucks classic? Well, I may not actually be a huge fan of the drink, but I thought that it would be a really fun flavour to recreate in an even better form! And so I did, with this frosting!

The “Spice” Part:

Obviously I already had the pumpkin part (the pumpkin cake), but I needed the spice, so I added some amazing fall spices like nutmeg, allspice, and (like what any reasonable person would do) a pound of the best fall spice of all: cinnamon!

The “Latte” Part:

Next, I needed to find a way to get the ‘latte’ part of the frosting. Since I barely knew how to use my coffee machine, I didn’t want to brew coffee, plus I knew I didn’t want to add a ton of liquid to the frosting so that wouldn’t work. I know a lot of bakers use espresso powder, which is a stronger and more finely ground kind of instant coffee thing, but I don’t have that since it’s quite expensive. You can use it in this recipe though if you have it.

Instead of the espresso powder, I did have instant coffee! I didn’t want to add it straight into the frosting since that would make it grainy and have bites of strong coffee flavour, so I needed to dissolve it first. Since it’s a butter-based frosting, I don’t like using water as a way to thin it out. I’ve only tried using water once when I needed a frosting that could sit in a hot car for 6 hours, but it made the whole frosting separate and almost curdle which was not very good.

I prefer using cream, specifically heavy whipping cream (35%), but you could probably use any kind of dairy (milk, coffee cream etc.). You then heat the cream and the instant coffee and mix it together to make an espresso syrup-like liquid. I like to have a stronger coffee taste, so I use a larger amount of instant coffee than cream which results in a dark syrupy liquid. You can always tone down the strength of the coffee by using less coffee, adding more cream, or by omitting this step entirely to just have a spiced buttercream.

Tips for the Best American Buttercream:

As for the buttercream itself, my favourite kind of buttercream is American. It’s super quick and easy, literally anybody can make it if they have a mixer! Honestly though, at first I didn’t like American Buttercream because it was always sickeningly sweet. But, once I developed my own recipe of it (which I now always measure by eye and taste!), I came to love this kind of frosting!

Here are a few of my tips:

Butter & Shortening:

My first tip is to use a mixture of butter and shortening. I find that all-butter buttercream can taste too buttery, so use a bit of shortening in addition to the butter! I definitely wouldn’t suggest using an all-shortening frosting though, as then it tastes very strongly of shortening which is heavy and just kind of gross.

Cream the butter and shortening together for a long time! You need it to become paler in colour and very creamy before adding in the powdered sugar. And don’t forget to scrape down the bowl before adding in the sugar!! My mixer always ends up with some butter stuck to the bottom, which if not caught in this first step, will result in lumps in your frosting which is not appealing!

The Sweetness Factor: Powdered Sugar

When it comes to the powdered sugar, use less powdered sugar than you think. Then, taste it, and if it needs more, add more! Everyone has different tastes when it comes to buttercream, so taste test it regularly to know when to stop adding sugar and get your perfect sweetness.

If you want to cut back on the sweetness, you can add a tiny splash of lemon juice! I don’t use this trick normally since I know when I like to stop with the powdered sugar, but if you add too much, you can cut back a little with the lemon juice. Another trick for this is to add a tiny pinch of salt, but I’d only do this in the very beginning (or use salted butter) since I once did this at the end, and it did not mix evenly. Let me tell you, salty buttercream is not very tasty!!!

Once all of your powdered sugar is mixed in, add in your spices, espresso syrup and vanilla extract (who doesn’t love vanilla extract?!).

The final trick is that once your frosting is completely done, use a rubber spatula to mix it by hand. Your mixer will have incorporated a lot of air into the frosting, so it will have a lot of air bubbles, which can make smoothly spreading and piping very difficult. Mixing vigorously by hand can help get some of these pesky air bubbles out!

Pairing the Espresso Spice Buttercream:

Now that you’re all done your frosting, spread it onto your favourite cake! It goes best with my Pumpkin Cake (again, makes it taste like a literal Pumpkin Spice Latte!), but you could also put it on vanilla cake, or even chocolate cake (if you’re into the chocolate spice flavour).

Thanks for reading this recipe! If you give it a try, don’t forget to leave a comment below! Happy baking! Enjoy!