Sawsen’s Easy Chocolate Buttercream Recipe – simple, silky, fluffy, delicious, just 4 ingredients!

Sawsen's easy chocolate buttercream recipe - fluffy, silky, pipeable, tastes like chocolate mousse! | ffeabysawsen

FLUFFY CHOCOLATE HEAVEN IN A BOWL! If you’ve only ever made chocolate buttercream by stirring cocoa powder into frosting (urrgh) this recipe will change your life!  No grainy lumpy powdery cocoa taste, this real chocolate buttercream is silky smooth, fluffy and ever so light – like the most delicious chocolate mousse 🙂 What’s more, it pipes like a dream making it perfect for use in all of my tutorials, and I’ve simplified the recipe to use only 4 basic ingredients in cup measurements as well as grams, just like my super popular vanilla simple buttercream recipe.  Hurrah!

I’ve used chocolate buttercream in a lot of my videos – to ice chocolate cakes or form the bark of tree trunk cakes & yule logs, for piping pine cones, cake branches & more; but I’ve never really shown the steps to make my chocolate buttercream from scratch.  If i’ve already made up a batch of my original SEBC I just stir in some melted chocolate into the finished product for ease, but if I want a full batch of chocolate buttercream I use a method like this one.  The differences in quantity and method really make for a lighter and more delicious result.

Enjoy!

Sawsen’s Easy Chocolate Buttercream Recipe:

Makes enough to generously ice, fill and decorate an 8″ cake or 30 cupcakes

  • 1 cup (250ml) of milk
  • 2 cups (400g) of granulated sugar (or use half this amount for a more chocolate mousse like taste, as I usually do)
  • 300g dark or semisweet chocolate (that’s 1 3/4 cups of chocolate chips)
  • 2 1/2 cups (5 sticks, or 625g) of butter at room temperature

Method:

  1. Ensure all your ingredients are at room temperature before starting.  20-25 degrees C is ideal.  The buttercream will stay curdled if the ingredients are too cold, or become soupy if they’re too warm, so don’t skip this step!
  2. Melt the chocolate carefully in a microwave, stirring every 20-30s to make sure it doesn’t start to burn.  Set aside to cool.
  3. Pour the sugar into the milk and stir to dissolve.  This will take 5 full minutes or so of stirring- just be patient and keep going.  I have calculated the amount of sugar in this recipe to make sure it can fully dissolve in this amount of milk at room temperature. Ensure the granules are dissolved before going to the next step.
  4. Pour the chocolate into the milk mixture, and whisk until combined.  Allow to cool if necessary, until the mixture is between 22-25 degrees C (70-75 degrees F).  I often find my mixture has reached this temperature by the time the chocolate has been whisked in.
  5. Beat the butter until softened using hand beaters or a stand mixer.  A stand mixer is easer and faster, so I have used that in here, but you can use hand beaters just like in my simple buttercream recipe video.
  6. Slowly drizzle the chocolate mixture into the butter with the mixer running.  You may wish to reduce speed to avoid splashing.
  7. Whip until the mixture goes from curdled, to creamier as shown.  Switch to the paddle beater at the appropriate point (watch the video to see how your buttercream should look), and beat until voluminous, silky and very light.  In total this took me around 7 minutes on high.  Stop to scrape the bowl as needed.
  8. To test the buttercream is ready, look at it and taste it.  It should be pale, silky, and taste light and fluffy like chocolate mousse.  If it is matt, slightly darker or tastes like butter you need to whip more.
  9. Use as required to pipe flowers or decorate your cake.  Or just eat with a spoon!

Notes:

  • This buttercream keeps for up to a week refrigerated, or a day at room temperature (no more than 25 degrees C).  If you live in a hot country you may need to work under AC, and refrigerate it until 30 minutes before you’re ready to serve.
  • If you want to use caster sugar, superfine sugar, powdered sugar etc please substitute by weight as the cup measurement is only accurate for granulated sugar.
  • you can reduce the sugar more if you wish, with no changes to the buttercream texture.  As mentioned before, I often use half the quantity of sugar (this also makes it easier to dissolve).

If you’re a professional baker, a serious foodie, a chef or someone who has already worked extensively with traditional Swiss Meringue Buttercream, you can use the same method here but with the quantities given in my original recipe (link below). The slightly different ingredient quantities and addition of protein powder makes it a truer Swiss meringue buttercream, but in chocolate flavour.  That being said, I actually prefer the taste of the simpler recipe given here – to which you may add 30g of protein powder for the best of both worlds 🙂

Sawsen’s Egg Free Swiss buttercream (SEBC) recipe – vanilla, chocolate, caffe latte, maple syrup, strawberry milk, cream cheese flavours & more!

Sawsen’s Egg Free Swiss buttercream recipe pt 2 – NO protein powder versions

That’s all you need to make a delicious, light, creamy, silky, fluffy, mousse-like chocolate buttercream that’s perfect for use with my tutorials.  I hope you found this recipe useful, & stay tuned for more videos and tutorials coming soon!

 

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