This easy frosting made with cocoa powder beats up nice and fluffy! Its rich chocolate flavor compliments both chocolate cakes and yellow cake! With just 4 ingredients, it's ready in as little as 5 minutes to pipe on or frost your favorite dessert!
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Why You'll Love This Recipe
- Easy recipe for piping onto birthday cakes or chocolate cupcakes!
- A deeply chocolate frosting for the chocolate lover in your life!
- Makes plenty of fluffy chocolate frosting for 2 dozen cupcakes or a 2 layer cake.
- Try this one for Chocolate Cake or Vanilla Cake!
Ingredient Notes
- Cocoa - Yes, you need 2 cups of unsweetened cocoa powder. This is one of those go-big or go-home recipes. Also, DO NOT USE Hershey brand cocoa. It's cheap, bitter, and will cause your frosting to have a just plain nasty bite to it.
- Butter - Salted butter is preferable, but unsalted butter is fine.
- Milk - I usually use 2% milk, but you can use whatever you have. I've even used half and half or heavy cream.
Couple Things You'll Need
Step by Step Instructions
- The butter needs to be at room temperature.
- In a large bowl with a hand mixer or bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk or paddle attachment, beat butter until very smooth.
- Beat in the cocoa at a low speed until very smooth.
- Add half the powdered sugar.
- Add half a cup of the milk.
- Add the other half of powdered sugar.
- Whether you add more milk depends upon what you want to do with your frosting, so add additional milk according to whether you want to pipe the frosting or if you want it very easily spreadable.
- You will also notice in picture 6 how light the frosting looks. This frosting darkens in color as it sits, and it will become a very dark dark brown.
- Beat at a medium speed until you have a fluffy frosting.
- Scoop this delicious frosting into a piping bag, or simply spread it on a double-layer cake!
- Store leftover frosting in an airtight container in the fridge. It will become quite solid in the fridge so allow plenty of time for the frosting to warm up to room temperature before you plan to use it.
Recipe FAQs and Expert Tips
Frostings are made with butter or shortening so they can be whipped up nice and fluffy. Icings are thin, have little to no butter, and are made to be drizzled, poured, and set up with a solid top.
No, but it will extend the shelf life. So, for example, sometimes I will make this frosting a day or two before I'm going to need it, so I will store it in the fridge until the day I need it. Then let it warm to room temp for a couple of hours before I use it.
To me, Hershey's chocolate has a very sour, tangy taste. Why? Some experts believe that's because some companies, such as Hershey's, put their milk through a process called controlled lipolysis. This breaks down the fatty acids in the milk and produces butyric acid - the chemical that gives vomit its very distinctive smell and acrid taste.
More Homemade Frostings
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Rich Chocolate Buttercream Frosting Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 Cups Butter Room Temperature
- 2 Cups Cocoa Powder
- 2 lb Powdered Sugar 2 lb bag
- ½-3/4 Cup Milk
Instructions
- Beat the butter in a mixing bowl until creamy and smooth.
- Beat in the cocoa powder a little at a time until it has all been added and the mixture is smooth and lump-free.
- Add half the powdered sugar.
- Add ½ cup of the milk.
- Add the last of the powdered sugar.
- Add additional milk to get the frosting to be the consistency you need, whether it's just spreading it on a cake or piping it.
Notes
- DO NOT USE Hershey brand cocoa. It's cheap and bitter, causing this frosting to have a nasty bite to it.
- When first made, this frosting is light brown in color but will turn a deep dark brown color after an hour or so.
- For an easy treat, just spread this rich chocolate buttercream frosting between graham crackers and store it in an airtight container overnight to soften. So yummy!
- If you want to cut this recipe in half, 1 lb of powdered sugar is roughly 4 cups.
Nutrition
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Mindee
Never Fails
Tiffany Roberts
Could you use Hershey’s natural unsweetened cocoa?
Patricia Rosen
Does this need to be refrigerated?
mindeescookingobsession
Nope 🙂
Carol
All I can taste is cocoa. What can I do to cut the taste of cocoa out?
mindeescookingobsession
My first question is, what type of cocoa are you using? I've made this recipe more times than I can count and while this is a deeply chocolately rich frosting, I've never had the cocoa be overbearing. However if one used a less expensive, off brand cocoa I could see that happening. I always use Ghirardelli. If you are using a good quality cocoa and it's too much for you I would just cut the amount of cocoa in half next time.
Tiffany Roberts
Soooo I used Hershey’s cocoa - and the cocoa taste is also a bit strong. How do I die down that taste?
Mindee
Hershey's generally has an artificially bitter strong taste to it unfortunately. I think that if you add a little more powered sugar and a little more milk it may even it out a little.
Suzanne
This is my favorite frosting recipe!! Definitely something to eat plain with a spoon!!
mindeescookingobsession
Thank you!