A Caramel Frosting Recipe That Holds Its Shape!
Today I’m sharing one of my favorite frosting recipes! This caramel frosting is made with a homemade caramel sauce whipped into butter and sugar to create the best caramel buttercream you’ve ever had. Unlike many recipes, mine produces a frosting that is thick, pipeable, and holds its shape! This recipe is a bit different than the frosting on my caramel cake (in both ingredients and preparation), so it’s totally new to the blog. It is quite a sweet frosting! While it works nicely on vanilla or yellow cake, I personally prefer to pair it with something less sweet, like chocolate cake or dark chocolate cupcakes and highly recommend topping everything off with a sprinkle of fine sea salt! While this isn’t the quickest frosting to make, it is most certainly worth the time and effort because the results are simply fantastic. I am including some troubleshooting and tips since this frosting does start on the stove, so definitely check those out if you’re new to making caramel.
What You Need
A few key ingredients make this the best caramel frosting recipe: SAM’S TIP: A candy thermometer isn’t required for this recipe but it helps and I recommend one, especially if you’re dealing with a humid climate or haven’t made caramel sauce like this before. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Caramel Buttercream
SAM’S TIP: Sometimes I prepare the caramel the night before I intend to make the frosting to make sure it has plenty of time to cool. It can also be refrigerated, but I recommend letting it sit at room temperature a bit before stirring it into the butter (I don’t like it to be very cold straight from the fridge).
Troubleshooting Runny Caramel Frosting
When done properly, the caramel should be thick after cooling and the finished caramel buttercream should be sturdy and pipeable. The best way to avoid a runny caramel frosting is to prevent it from happening in the first place:
Make sure you’ve cooked your caramel long enough (by using a thermometer or timer, both detailed in the recipe below).Let your caramel cool completely after cooking; it shouldn’t be at all warm when you add it to your butter mixture!Be mindful of humidity; if you live in a particularly humid environment, you may need to cook your caramel a bit longer. I definitely recommend using a thermometer in this situation!
If it’s too late and your frosting is too thin after being prepared, you can try thickening it with more powdered sugar, adding a tablespoon or two of cornstarch, or popping it in the fridge. Since this caramel buttercream is so sweet, I tend to pipe it in small rosettes (shown on the right) versus large swirls (shown on the left), but I wanted to showcase in my photos how sturdy and pipeable it really is with some big, gorgeous swirls. Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
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