Peanut Butter Buttercream Icing Recipe

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Peanut butter lovers, this recipe is for you! Smooth, creamy Peanut Butter Buttercream Frosting is the perfect way to top chocolate cake or cupcakes!

peanut butter buttercream frosting on chocolate cupcake

When I need a quick and easy frosting with a chocolate cake, this Peanut Butter Buttercream frosting is my go-to. Once you try it, you’ll love it too!

What is Buttercream?

We all know that Buttercream is a type of frosting (or icing depending on how you grew up referring to it!) for cakes and cupcakes, but what exactly is it? Spoon University describes buttercream as the following:

It’s made by mixing together some type of fat (usually butter, but sometimes margarine or shortening), confectioner’s sugar, and milk or cream until the mixture is fluffy and smooth.
Spoon University

Buttercream icing can be served as is or many different flavors can be created with add-ins. Today’s recipe is my favorite flavor of buttercream though!

Ingredients

This recipe is SUPER easy and requires only 5 simple ingredients:

powdered sugar
butter
vanilla extract
heavy cream
peanut butter

mixing peanut butter buttercream frosting

Step by step

First, you’ll mix the peanut butter and butter together with a hand mixer or in a stand mixer (affiliate link).
Once it is blended add the powdered sugar a cup at a time.
Then, stir in the cream and vanilla and you’re all finished!

You can pipe this frosting on or spread it, either way, it’s the perfect complement to chocolate cake or cupcakes!

Tips

I recommend using smooth peanut butter if you are piping this frosting so you don’t clog the piping tip. If you will be spreading it, creamy or chunky will both work fine.
I DO NOT recommend natural peanut butters for this recipe (the kinds that separates) it will give you an oily result that is not great.
Other nut butters would work in this recipe as long as they have the same consistency.
I do not recommend trying to color this frosting as the brown will muddy any food coloring you add.

Does this frosting have to be refrigerated?

The small amount of cream in the frosting is stabilized by the sugar, so you can keep this frosting at room temperature up to 3 days.

How much icing does this make?

The recipe below yields enough to frost a 2 layer cake 8 or 9 inch cake, a 9 by 13 inch sheet cake, or 24 cupcakes with some extra for eating with a spoon 🙂

This is the easiest, most delicious frosting in the world! Can you tell I like it???

How to Adjust a Buttercream Recipe

It can easily be adjusted from its original smooth creamy consistency to a more firm consistency by increasing the amount of peanut butter & sugar while decreasing the amount of butter. Don’t want it too sweet? Decrease the amount of powdered sugar. It can be tweaked to accommodate any taste and can’t really be messed up!