This American buttercream recipe will quickly become your go to! It’s delicious, it’s so versatile, SO easy to make and great for decorating cakes.

This is my go to recipe for cakes and cupcakes because it’s easy to adjust the consistency to what you need, and it’s always delicious. Also, who doesn’t love a good buttercream?

American Buttercream Ingredients

One of the best parts about this American buttercream recipe is that it only takes a few ingredients.

Unsalted butter
Powdered sugar
Heavy cream
Extracts for flavoring
Salt

How to make American buttercream

It’s always good to make more than enough buttercream instead of realizing you need to make more half way through decorating your cake. This recipe makes enough to cover a good size cake and add some extra decor on the outside. You can easily double the recipe to be safe and freeze the extra buttercream for next time.

Make sure your butter is at room temperature, and then beat the butter until smooth and pale. You’ll want to beat it for several minutes to ensure a nice smooth buttercream in the end.

Next, add half of your powdered sugar to the butter and mix until smooth. You’ll want to use your guard for the standing mixer if you have one, or you’ll be breathing in powdered sugar haha.

Once it’s smooth, add your extracts, about 4-5 tablespoons of heavy cream and salt and mix until smooth.

You’ll then add the rest of your powdered sugar and mix until smooth.

Getting the right consistency

At this point you may or may not have the consistency you’re looking for – but it’s okay because it’s very easy to adjust one way or the other.

If your buttercream is too stiff, add more heave cream, one tablespoon at a time.

If your buttercream is too soft and creamy, add a little more powdered sugar.

Be sure to mix well after adding any additional cream or sugar to truly see the end consistency.

Flavors

It’s so easy to adjust the flavor of American buttercream – just change the extract!

My number 1 go to is vanilla, it’s classic and works with most cakes. But if you are looking to add other flavors, go for it!

Coloring your buttercream

There are endless color options when it comes to buttercream.

I prefer to use gel food coloring – the buttercream will take the color much easier than if you use water based food coloring.

Make sure you go slowly adding color so you don’t add too much. You can always add more, but you can’t take away.

If your wanting a very subtle color, don’t even add a full drop of food coloring (that could be too much). Instead, use a toothpick and dip that in a drop of food coloring and just scrape whats on your toothpick into your buttercream to mix it in.

Check out my Painted Buttercream post to see some color examples I’ve used and to get more tips if you’re looking to mix small amounts of colors! Here are some pictures of different colors I’ve used for buttercream in the past.