This mocha buttercream may be the most delicious buttercream I’ve ever made. I wish I could take all of the credit for it, but it is from Carol Bloom’s The Essential Baker
I made the Devil’s Food Cake from The Essential Baker
It is made with whole eggs instead of just egg whites which gives it a lusciously smooth and creamy feel. The coffee and bittersweet chocolate are a perfect match for all of the sugar in the whipped Italian meringue that is the base. This recipe is decidedly more work than a simple Swiss meringue buttercream, but it is so worth it. I think this is my favorite recipe in the book so far. Over all I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a great cookbook and an essential addition to any bakers shelf!
How to Make Mocha Buttercream
See me make this buttercream step by step here and you’ll find the full recipe at the bottom of this post!
In a small sauce pan fitted with a Candy Thermometer,
Place the eggs, egg yolks and sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer and whip on medium speed until they are thick, pale in color and hold a ribbon when the beater is lifted. Once the sugar syrup has reached its temperature of 242° F,
then slowly pour it into the bowl of whipped egg yolks while the beater is going on slow. Be sure to pour it along the bowl so that the hot syrup doesn’t hit the beater and splatter! Allow the eggs and sugar mixture to beat on medium high speed until the eggs have cooled, about 8 minutes.
Add the butter 2 tablespoons at a time.
The buttercream will go through a stage that looks soupy and curdled, but continue to add all of the butter and it will come together.
The finished buttercream will be smooth and silky.
For Mocha Buttercream
Add a tablespoon of water to the espresso powder and dissolve.
Add the melted and cooled chocolate to the buttercream.
Mix to combine and decorate your cake. The buttercream will freeze if you have any left, wrapped really well in plastic. Just allow it to come bake to room temperature and whisk it on low speed to smooth it out.
For Peanut Butter Buttercream
Instead of using the coffee and melted chocolate, use 1 cup smooth peanut butter. It should be a commercial brand like Skippy or Jif, because they are emulsified and have the consistency that you want. Natural fresh ground peanut butter is awesome, but it is heavy and will make the buttercream too greasy and may even separate if you use too much.
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
- 2 extra-large eggs at room temperature
- 2 extra-large egg yolks at room temperature
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 lb (2 cups, 4 sticks) unsalted butter softened
To Make it Mocha Buttercream
- 6 oz bittersweet chocolate very finely chopped, melted over a double boiler and cooled to room temperature
- 2 tsp instant espresso powder
- 1 tbsp water
To Make it Peanut Butter Buttercream
- 1 cup smooth peanut butter. It should be a commercial brand like Skippy or Jif. NOT natural/fresh ground
Instructions
- In a small sauce pan fitted with a Candy Thermometer, bring the 1 1/4 cups sugar, water and cream of tartar to a boil over medium-high heat. If any of the sugar crystals get onto the side of the pan, be sure to wipe them down with a wet clean pastry brush. The sugar needs to cook until it hits 242° F on the thermometer. This takes several minutes.
- While that is boiling, place the eggs, egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer and whip on medium speed until they are thick, pale in color and hold a ribbon when the beater is lifted.
- Once the sugar syrup has reached its temperature of 242° F, slowly pour it into the bowl of whipped egg yolks while the beater is going on slow. Be sure to pour it along the bowl so that the hot syrup doesn't hit the beater and splatter! Allow the eggs and sugar mixture to beat on medium high speed until the eggs have cooled, about 8 minutes.
- Add the butter 2 tablespoons at a time. The buttercream will go through a stage that looks soupy and curdled, but continue to add all of the butter and it will come together. The finished buttercream will be smooth and silky.
Mocha Buttercream
- Add a tablespoon of water to the espresso powder and dissolve. Add the melted and cooled chocolate to the buttercream.
- Mix to combine and decorate your cake. The buttercream will freeze if you have any left, wrapped really well in plastic. Just allow it to come bake to room temperature and whisk it on low speed to smooth it out.
Peanut Butter Buttercream
- Instead of using the coffee and melted chocolate, use 1 cup smooth peanut butter. It should be a commercial brand like Skippy or Jif, because they are emulsified and have the consistency that you want. Natural fresh ground peanut butter is awesome, but it is heavy and will make the buttercream too greasy and may even separate if you use too much.
Thank you I am really excited to try this! Could I just make with only espresso for coffee buttercream instead of mocha!
Searching for a mocha buttercream that is light in color, looks more like coffee than chocolate, similar to the PB shown above. Any suggestions on the coffee/chocolate ratio to achieve a light mocha buttercream?
I have been searching the internet for 2 days for a peanut butter frosting and most were the usual and unappealing powdered sugared versions. This morning it dawned on me to google your name plus peanut butter frosting and luckily I found this. It’s so silky and delicious with the perfect peanut butter flavor and sweetness. I will always choose you!
YUM! This cream looks luscious and so good! I can’t wait to make it!
Wow. This was my first time making Italian meringue buttercream. It certainly will not be my last. I used it on a chocolate stout cake with coffee pastry cream filling topped with a chocolate whiskey glaze. It really does taste like a mousse.
Hi Zoe!
How is the frosting for piping decorations onto cupcakes? Is it too soft, or will it hold up well?
Thanks!
I’m making my husband a chocolate cake with mocha buttercream, and this recipe looks perfect. QUESTION – I’d like to make the filling a salted caramel buttercream – could I divide this in half, and add some salted caramel to one half? How much would you add? THANK YOU!
Hi Sally,
It sounds fantastic. It will certainly work, but you will have to add the caramel a tiny bit at a time until you have the flavor you want, but keeping a close eye on the consistency of the buttercream. You don’t want to add so much that you can no longer spread the buttercream and have it cling to the cake. The amount will depend on how tight or loose the caramel is.
Enjoy, Zoë
Zoe, hello!
Can this buttercream recipe be used for the cupcake icing?
Thanks!
Hi may I know how long can I keep the buttercream for ?? Thank u
I made this buttercream for our Christmas cake, and it looked really great half-way through adding the butter, but then the consistency started to get really off. It became curdled and sort of separated out… is there any way to salvage it? It’s sitting in the fridge right now and I’m really hoping I can still use it for my cake somehow… Thank you so much!
Hi Annabel,
Did you end up adding all the butter? As I mention in the recipe, it will go through this stage of looking curdled, but will come together when all the butter is added and mixed for another minute. If you refrigerated the buttercream before it was done, it will harden the butter and make it very difficult to add more. You will have to let it come to room temperature and can attempt to continue adding the rest of the ingredients.
Thanks, Zoë
This buttercream is indeed outrageous! 🙂 It’s the silkiest, finest, most luxurious buttercream ever! AND I forgot to put the cream of tartar in the sugar syrup! :))) I added it afterwards, no idea if it helped or not – I guess it was there to prevent the sugar from crystallising, but this never happened, the syrup went great. Maybe it was just my luck. (God knows I needed it, I was trying a completely new recipe in a new oven for a cake that I have to give for Thanksgiving, LOL!) Anyway, from now on this is my “go to” recipe when I need a delicate, elegant chocolate buttercream. I can’t wait to see the reaction of my friends, Sunday, they’re all chocolate lovers and a chocolate cake was long overdue (in their opinion; I’m not that into chocolate myself – even though after THIS buttercream things will never be the same! :)))) )
Thank you Zoë for the recipe, with its pictures too, they’re soooo incredibly useful – actually, thank you for all the generosity and the effort you are putting into this site!
Well, as yummy as this buttercream tastes, it was an epic failure consistency wise 🙁 After refrigerating the mixture and then bringing it back to room temperature and then piping the icing on the cupcakes I thought all was going to be well but after about an hour I noticed the icing was starting to slide off the cupcakes 🙁 I followed the recipe to a tee and was very careful that my candy thermometer hit the correct temperature so I have no idea what went wrong 🙁
Hi JPepper,
Did the consistency look right when it went on the cupcakes? If so, the only thing that would cause this is temperature. With this crazy heat wave it could have just been that the cupcakes got too warm. Were the cupcakes warm from the oven when you iced them?
Thanks, Zoë
Hi Zoe,
While I was making it, it was actually runnier than I thought it would be. I thought that maybe I added the butter too quickly so I covered the bowl and placed it in the fridge over night. I finished everything up the following day and it appeared still a little softer than I thought it would be, however, I am used to making the American buttercream so I really dont know what this one is supposed to look other than your picture. I meant to mention in my last post about the weather here. While most places are experiencing a heat wave right now, Vancouver, BC Canada is drowning in constant rain. No issues with heat right now….hoping that will change tomorrow! LOL!
The flavour of this buttercream is absolutely AMAZING….so amazing that the only reason I would need the cake is to hold the icing! LOL! I do have a question, though. I have made this icing for a bbq that I am attending on Saturday….I am going to make some cupcakes. While the taste is amazing, the texture didnt turn out the way I thought it would. I didnt expect it to be as firm as traditional icing sugar/butter buttcream but this turned out pretty runny for me. I think I might be able to ice a cake with it but definitely would not be able to use it for piping cupcakes or decorations. I have searched on the internet and watched some videos of a similar icing process and their’s turned out much fluffier. At first i thought I needed to whip it more but the more I whipped it the more it ‘melted’. I am wondering if maybe the egg/sugar mixture was too warm when I added the butter, causing the butter to melt? I havent added the chocolate yet but have covered it and placed it in the fridge. I am hoping that once it is cooled and I whip it again I will get the consitency I was hoping for. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance and thanks for sharing such an amazing recipe! I will be checking out your other recipes and giving them a try, especially the Devil’s food cake everyone is referring to :o)
I tried the cake twice more. Once in two 9×2 pans – the batter did not overflow, but the cake collapsed in the oven. I think this was because the pan is too small, but perhaps not. I did make this cake with full fat milk mixed with some vinegar and dutch process cocoa. My next try was successful, I am happy to report! I baked the cake in 2 9 inch springforms (they are around 9×2.5) and used half skim milk and half full fat with a tsp vinegar (what I had on hand, in case the percentage of fat was what made a difference.)
Probably two 8×3 pans would work as well, but I didn’t want to discard a lot of cake or to make a six layer cake or have a high cake to frosting ration, so i stuck with the 9×2.5 pans and tried to slice 3/4 inch layers. It sliced beautifully and this pan size seems to do the trick.
The frosting is delicious and I am happy I stuck with this recipe till I got it to work as it is so convenient to make and the components freeze. Thank you.
Hi Fay,
This is wonderful news, thank you for reporting back all your trials!
Cheers and enjoy all that cake! Zoë
On the upside, the cake is delicious, although because it overflowed in the 8x2s, the layers were a bit of a mess. I intend to try again in 2 9x2s or 2 8x3s.
I assume that you make adjustments to the recipe as you work with it. I’m wondering also if it makes a small difference if one uses natural or dutched process cocoa and milk or buttermilk in terms of how much overflow one gets.
To further confuse matters, I now notice that here zoebakescom.bigscoots-staging.com/2010/03/27/chocolate-torte-for-passover/ you subbed matzoh cake meal for the flour, and baked a *half* batch of the cake in 2 8x2s! There’s a bit of tweaking of the other ingredients too…I really don’t see how a full batch can bake in 2 8x2s and a half batch too.
Right now, the instructions in various places on the blog say to bake a full batch of the recipe in 2 8x2s or 2 9x2s, and also to bake a half batch in either 2 8x2s (albeit that is a cake meal recipe), or in one 8×3 (Flour)…?
I’m wondering now if I should be trying a half recipe in 2 8x2s…Is that what you intended when you wrote 2 8x2s – a half batch of the quantity you list in the cupcake recipe http://zoebakescom.bigscoots-staging.com/2008/01/06/not-your-average-devils-food-cupcakes/? Maybe that’s where the confusion lies?
Hi Fay,
Lots of people have asked for varying pan sizes to make this cake, depending on the pans they have or the shape they want to create. So I have tried to accomodate all the possibilities. I have baked this recipe in all the pan sizes I have mentioned, and they come out with varying thicknesses, but work. To be on the safe side, I would stick to the 9×2-inch pans, since you have had spilling in the smaller ones. This way you are guaranteed success.
For the buttercream I always suggest making more, especially if you are new to decorating, then you don’t feel like you have to spread it too thin. As you already have done, any leftovers can be frozen.
Thanks and enjoy the cakes! Zoë
“can you tell me offhand if I will need extra icing?”
…because 2 8×3 rounds, each sliced into thirds, will already yield a six layer cake…
Zoe,
‘Outrageous’ is a gross understatement! This might be the Best Buttercream I’ve ever had. Period.
My Grandmother’s 98th birthday is this weekend, and I was curious if you had ever made a Chocolate Chip Buttercream. I searched the web, but all of the recipes I found used an American Buttercream recipe, and I much prefer a French or Italian. So I’m wondering, is it possible to make a French (or Italian) Buttercream and then just mix in some mini chocolate chips? Not sure if you have any experience with this.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Many Thanks! -Genevieve
Hi Genevieve,
So glad you enjoyed the buttercream. You can certainly stir in some mini chocolate chips, but it will make spreading it more difficult, so don’t plan on having a perfectly smooth finish on your cake. Sounds wonderful!
Thanks, Zoë
hi zoe. the cakes are in the oven, in 2 8×2 pans. they have overflowed, despite being filled 2/3 full (I discarded a few tblsp batter also!). so…i guess i will wait for them to be done and see. should i deduce they really ought to have been in 9×2 pans? (these are really 8 x2 inches high, not 8×1.5 so the height of the sides is not the issue). or maybe two 8x3s? as you can see from my original questions, my instinct was that all these pan sizes can’t possibly all work for the same amount of batter without adjusting quantities….can you help out? thanks.
Hi Fay,
So sorry, I thought you were asking for the number of 9-inch pans you would need, so I only answered for those.
Here is a chart that may help you out for most cakes: http://www.wilton.com/wedding/wedding-cakes/wedding-cake-data.cfm
Thanks, Zoë