If you make strawberry buttercream frosting, you already know its troubles. It weeps and sags and ends up looking a little too homemade.
Ever since I made these delicious strawberry cupcakes years ago, I’ve been working on a recipe to solve this dilemma. A few times I hit it right on the mark and then didn’t have it written down in a place I could find it.
My challenge has been to get a buttercream that will hold, be spreadable, not drippy and that’s not easy.
The challenge with strawberry frosting is getting enough strawberry flavor into it without turning it into soup. I’ve succeeded with adding in cream cheese (which you can always do), but I wanted a true buttercream with lots of flavor.
The solution came quite by accident. I picked a ton of strawberries at a friend’s farm and came home thinking I must have been crazy, because I picked like I would never see strawberries again. The table overflowed with lush, ripe, juicy berries and I immediately began to make lots strawberry simple syrup and strawberry sauce.
The Solution for Strawberry Buttercream Frosting
I used the strawberry sauce for the frosting, because it was so thick, squeezing it through a sieve and ending up with a very thick gel. Another way to achieve this would be to make the strawberry simple syrup and reduce it down by half. You could even use a store bought strawberry simple syrup and reduce it down. The key is to get it as thick as possible.
This might seem like a lot of work, but you can make this in bigger batches, freeze.
You may have to play around to get the consistency you want. Strawberry buttercream frosting is quite tricky. Make sure the sauce is very thick. If your frosting still seems too runny, you can add a tablespoon of very cold heavy cream or tablespoon of cream cheese to thicken more.
This strawberry birthday cake uses the strawberry sauce also.
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More Strawberry Recipes from Spinach Tiger
- 1½ cups unsalted butter, softened
- 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 7 cups confectioner's sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- Strawberry Sauce
- 2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries
- ½ cup water
- ¼ cup sugar
- Make Strawberry Sauce and reduce down
- Mix ingredients. Reduce to a very thick sauce. Cool.
- Make Frosting
- Whip butter until very fluffy. Add salt.
- Add cream cheese. Mix again.
- Add in ½ cup strawberry sauce. Mix well.
- Add in confectioner's sugar a cup at a time.
- If you find your frosting still too thin, slowly add in more whipped butter. It's the butter that brings the body to the frosting. Adding more sugar will not give more body.
You can add a tablespoon of very cold heavy cream or tablespoon of cream cheese to thicken more.
You can also use strawberry simple syrup and reduce it down to a thick gel.
I’ve read about gelatin working with whipped cream icing — would that work with this?? I’d love to make this — I’ll have to wait until the kids and grandkids come around. Thank you for sharing and helping out with weeping icings.
Angela this looks, and no doubt tastes, divine! I have missed some of your posts this summer due to lots of work and lots of fun travel, but am trying to make contact with my besties in the blog-o-sphere! Hope you are well. Yum!