This post may contain affiliate links. The best Vanilla Buttercream you will ever make! Four simple ingredients are all you need to make this vanilla buttercream American buttercream recipe.
Cake decorated with buttercream rosettes on a white cake stand. I made my own birthday cake. I think this is pretty standard for bakers, and I’m totally ok with it. I was actually not going to make a cake at all, since I was knee-deep in Pastry School at the time, but my husband insisted that we needed one, even if that meant buying one from the grocery store.
This is harder and harder for me to do these days. I can’t bring myself to buy them. From Classic Cakes to Holiday favorites and everything in between. It helped that I still had a couple cake layers in the freezer from when I baked them for my Flat Top Cakes post. The recipe I used was my Almost Scratch Cake.
So with the cake layers already done, all I had to do was defrost them, make the frosting, and decorate. I decided to go for an American Buttercream for ease. Close up of the buttercream rosettes on the side of the cake. I usually make Swiss meringue buttercream, which I love but takes a bit more effort, and I was most certainly looking for something with very little effort. The BEST vanilla frosting I’d ever had was on my wedding cake, a cake we commissioned from Gannon’s, the restaurant we had our reception at. We didn’t do any tastings or see any samples, we just sent them a picture of what we wanted it to look like and chose our flavors.
Photo of a wedding cake with vanilla buttercream and orange flowers. This cake was unbelievable, the buttercream so smooth and delicious. We had a ton of leftovers, which we happily took back to our condo and devoured over the next few days. I’d mentioned multiple times to Ryan that I wondered how they made it. I assumed it was a meringue-based one because it was so silky smooth, but it was less buttery than ones I’d made before.