How to make delicious, smooth peppermint buttercream. Perfect for adding a festive twist to your cupcakes, layer cakes or macarons.
Welcome to day 2 of Festive Buttercream Week, the week (that I made up) to celebrate all things smooth, delicious and perfect for piping onto cupcakes.
Today’s buttercream flavour is peppermint, which is served here on my yummy chocolate cupcakes. Not only is it delicious, but it’s also the perfect buttercream choice if you’re planning on getting a Christmas kiss under the mistletoe 😘.
I was in a bit of a dilemma what colour to make this buttercream and in the end I decided to go for minty green. However, if you prefer you could keep it natural (a similar colour to my vanilla buttercream) or paint red stripes on the inside of your piping bag to give a red and white candy cane effect.
I’ve topped mine with some crushed candy canes. One little word of warning, if you’re going to do this you want to add the candy canes just before serving. I found that the colour started to bleed into the green, making them look a bit messy when I left them overnight.
FREE GRAMS TO CUPS CONVERSION CHARTS
Subscribe to the Charlotte's Lively Kitchen mailing list to get your FREE printable grams to cups and cups to grams conversion charts for twelve popular baking ingredients
Peppermint Buttercream
INGREDIENTS
- 250 g unsalted butter - soft at room temperature
- 500 g icing sugar
- ½ tsp peppermint extract
- Approx. 1 tbsp milk - I use skimmed but any is fine
- A little green food colouring - optional
INSTRUCTIONS
- Cut the butter (250g) into cubes (about 1″) and beat in an electic mixer on a low speed until soft.
- Add the icing sugar (500g) and beat until fully combined – I prefer to add the sugar a couple of spoonfuls at a time as this minimises the amount of sugar that flies out all over the kitchen! You’ll find that at first it’ll start to look lumpy but keep persevering and it’ll smooth out.
- Add the peppermint extract (½ tsp) and mix until fully combined.
- Is you buttercream soft enough to pipe? If not add ½ tsp milk and mix until fully combined. Check the consistency and repeat until it is just perfect.
- Add a little green food colouring (if you’d like to) and mix everything together until it’s fully combined. Remember you can always add more but you can’t take it away so add a little at a time.
- Once you’ve got the icing to the right consistency – have fun piping, spreading, or just licking if off the spoon!
NOTES
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Any nutritional information provided is the estimated nutritional information per serving. Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you would like to learn more about how this is calculated.
This is the estimated nutritional information per serving. Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you want to learn more about how this is calculated.
Free From/Suitable For…
The ingredients I used to make this recipe are all free from the following allergens. However, please check any labels carefully for allergens you need to avoid as brands can vary and product recipes can change over time.
- Suitable for Vegetarians
- Gluten-Free
- Egg-Free
- Tree Nut-Free
- Peanut-Free
- Sesame-Free
- Soya-Free
- Sulphur Dioxide & Sulphite-Free
- Lupin-Free
livbedumb says
I was scared to add peppermint extract in vanilla buttercream but this guided me to do it properly!
Kat (The Baking Explorer) says
Your piping is stunning as always, and the peppermint buttercream sounds delish!
Charlotte Oates says
Thanks Kat. I can only do two styles, I really must increase my repertoire 🙂