Silky smooth, sweet, and a little salty, this salted caramel buttercream frosting will be one of your new favorites to frost on special occasion cakes or anytime cupcakes!

salted caramel buttercream chocolate cupcake

Do you have a favorite baked good that you enjoy making? I’m not ashamed to admit that I love making cupcakes. They’re less intimidating than making a whole cake, but you still get the delicious combo of light cake + silky buttercream frosting. I also recently discovered one of my new favorite combos: a silky smooth salted caramel buttercream frosting on top of high-altitude friendly chocolate cupcakes. I mean, is there anything better than caramel and chocolate?

Honestly, I find piping frosting kind of relaxing–even cathartic. That said, the first few times I tried making and frosting cupcakes, I got, ahem, frustrated. I watched my mom decorate fun, fancy cakes and cupcakes all the time when I was growing up, but I hadn’t picked up all her techniques before she passed away. Eventually, I learned how to do it through trial and error, and now it’s a breeze. I’ve saved y’all the hassle and compiled a bunch of tips for making and piping frosting on cupcakes below!

Making Buttercream Frosting

Butter + sugar: The basis for frosting is two ingredients: butter (duh) and sugar or confectioner’s sugar. Most buttercream recipes will also include salt, especially if the butter is unsalted, vanilla extract, and milk or cream. In this salted caramel frosting, it has all of the above, plus caramel.

Room temperature butter: When making any buttercream, you want your butter to be soft. This can be achieved by leaving it at room temperature for several hours, or if you’re a poor planner like me, nuking in the microwave for several seconds until a finger can be pressed into the butter. Be careful and keep a close eye if microwaving–we don’t want the butter to melt!

Creaming the butter: The next most important step in making buttercream is creaming the butter, typically for several minutes in your stand mixer or with a handheld mixer. We want the butter to be creamy and light so our frosting will be too. Then we add in the rest of our ingredients, always beating on medium-low speed. When adding the confectioner’s sugar, make sure to mix on low speed so it doesn’t fly everywhere and make a huuuge mess. Can we all agree that confectioner’s sugar is the baker’s version of glitter? That stuff gets EVERYWHERE.

Tips for Piping Buttercream Frosting

Use a wide-rimmed glass to fill your piping bag. Trying to fill your piping bag without one can be a NIGHTMARE. Instead, line the glass with your piping bag and fill using a rubber spatula or spoon. No more mess.
Use quality piping bags. I recommend these reusable Wilton bags.
Don’t overfill. Typically piping bags will have a recommended fill line (which I admittedly often ignore). If you fill the bag to the very top, you won’t be able to roll it closed, and you’ll have a mess of frosting.
Cut your piping bag tip AFTER you fill it. Then place it in the outer piping bag.
Cut the hole for the outer piping bag just a tad larger than the hole for the inner bag.
Do NOT use a narrow tip if your frosting has a mix-in like Oreos (i.e. Oreo buttercream) or anything with seeds (i.e. raspberry, strawberry buttercream). It will get stuck in the tip and the frosting will come out weirdly–I learned this from experience. These larger tips should be fine.
If you’ve never piped frosting on a cupcake before and want it to look fancy and professional, watch this video! Basically, start piping from the edge of the cupcake and work your way in/up.

use a wide rimmed glass to fill piping bag