This is a simple buttercream icing to use as a good base. Start with this recipe and then adapt it to mach your cake with different colourings and experiment with replacing the vanilla with different flavours too!!

Ingredients

500g Icing Sugar (sifted)

115g Unsalted butter at room temperature

60ml Milk

1tsp Vanilla Essence

Method

1. Cream the butter with your electric whisk

2. Add half of the icing sugar

3. Add the milk and vanilla and whisk until smooth

4. Slowly add the remainder of the icing sugar whilst continually whisking

This will leave you with enough buttercream to experiment with some piping techniques

Tips

I like to use Tate & Lyle icing sugar as I find this to be of really high quality. At the moment you can buy a box of this in Lidl for 69p!!

When adding colourings I tend to use a gel as opposed to a liquid to avoid affecting the consistency of the buttercream

you can store the remainder in the fridge in an air tight container for three days. When re-using you may need to whisk it up with a couple of drops of milk