Best Butter Cream Icing Recipe

I am looking for the best butter cream icing recipe to use for an outdoor wedding in September. I am concerned about the frosting melting. I am a huge fan of "real" ingredients, and would prefer to use straight butter for this friends wedding cake.


She wants a four tiered cake with buttercream frosting and fresh flowers. What would you suggest as far as the icing? Another problem I am running into is that I find the frosting to be grossly sweet and would love a buttercream recipe that wasn't the 3:1 ratio (sugar to fat) that I am currently using.

It has been years and years since I made a wedding cake!

Thanks for this site, and your help.

Hi thanks for a great question, and comments on my website. I would recommend you use the Italian meringue buttercream recipe. I call it Wedding Cake Frosting. It is not too sweet and it hold up well. I use it often.

The trick is to keep your cake as cold as possible until the actual setting up of the cake. I talk about the dry ice method of delivery at this post on protecting an outdoor wedding cake from the heat.

This post is another good one about stabilizing the buttercream with a little extra powdered sugar and cream of tartar.

These tips below are from a cake decorator who lives in the South and deals with heat and humidity all the time.

"I live in the Deep South and have tried three different methods of making humidity resistant buttercream frosting:

1: use more powdered sugar to make a thicker frosting.

2: use all vegetable shortening and no butter (add 1 teaspoon butter flavor for each 1/2 cup shortening). This one would not apply to you as you want to use all butter.?

3: add cornstarch (2 tablespoons for each 1 cup of frosting).

The results are different for each method. Try mixing and matching until you get the best results for your climate. There is a recipe for High Humidity Icing on the Wilton website

Hope this helps."

Nancy McKenna,
Elegant Wedding Cakes

The full post for wilting buttercream is here

I hope that helps with your best butter cream icing recipe search.

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