How To Naturally Flavor Buttercream Frosting (Homemade Or Store-Bought)

A buttercream's three core ingredients — butter, confectioner's sugar, and milk — make the perfect texture for pipable cake frosting. However, introducing ingredients to alter the taste can be tricky when it's more than just a splash of vanilla. After attempting to mix in a new element, your frosting may become lumpy, grainy, or runny. So, Mashed spoke to pasty chef Leanne Tran on how to flavor buttercream naturally. Tran leads a six-person, all-female pastry chef team that manages daily pastry for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Le Crocodile, dinner at Bar Blondeau, and property events at Wythe Hotel. The chef encourages using freeze-dried fruits, herbs, zests, and extracts when naturally flavoring homemade and store-bought buttercream frostings.

Tran wants bakers to create more interesting and complex flavors: "Flavor possibilities are endless and I encourage experimenting, including with herbs and unconventional flavors." Maybe you want to add fresh rosemary, mint, cinnamon, or nutmeg to a classic buttercream frosting recipe. However, Tran cautions, "The only thing I would avoid is adding more sugary ingredients or anything that will cause an unpleasant texture." Buttercream frosting already has so much confectioner's sugar in it that additional sweet ingredients can be overpowering. Avoid adding too many liquids to buttercream because it's hard to reverse this, but you also don't want grainy or chunky ingredients that will alter the frosting's texture for the worse. It's best to use flavoring ingredients that make a big impact in small quantities.

Naturally flavored buttercream is not as hard to accomplish as you may think, especially when it comes to fruits. Freeze-dried fruit, when crushed or blended into a powder, doesn't alter the texture of buttercream and packs in more flavor than any fresh fruit could. For a strawberry buttercream, Leanne Tran explains, "Lightly crusted freeze-dried strawberries will hydrate and will add a tartness which will create a well-balanced, full-flavored buttercream." Tran adds, "Avoid fresh fruit[s] because they will start to macerate and leak as it sits." Fresh fruits and jams introduce too much liquid to the buttercream, whereas a freeze-dried fruit powder will suck up liquids and if anything, require an extra splash of milk.

Natural flavorings are also great for upgrading store-bought frosting: "Natural ingredients with strong flavor [add] depth and a freshness that doesn't exist in store-bought frosting." Other natural flavoring ingredients that Tran suggests include vanilla (in bean, pod, paste, extract, or powder form), citrus zest, rose water, and cardamon. These are either liquids used in small traces that don't influence the texture or have a fine texture that blends right into frosting. 

Imagine how delicious adding lemon zest to a store-bought vanilla frosting would be, or how adding crushed cardamom could make a homemade chocolate buttercream frosting recipe taste more complex. Natural ingredients make frosting multi-dimensional and can upgrade the overall flavor profile of your cake or cupcakes.