The Best Strawberry Buttercream Frosting Recipe Is So Simple (With Freeze-Dried Strawberries)

Store-bought strawberry frosting has a pretty pink color, but it may also have a slightly chemical or artificial taste since it's tough to synthesize the flavor of a fresh strawberry. Recipe developer Jessica Morone, however, makes homemade strawberry frosting with a special ingredient that provides both flavor and color: powder made from pulverized freeze-dried strawberries. (Don't try this trick with air-dried berries, since dried fruit has a chewy texture while freeze-dried fruit is crumbly.)

"The freeze-dried strawberries give the frosting a nice pink color without having to add any food color at all," Morone tells us. adding, "This frosting has a really strong strawberry flavor, so its the perfect frosting recipe to use for so many things." In fact, she's such a fan of this frosting that she declares, "If you're a strawberry lover like me you'll want to use this for everything you need to frost." Easy to make, delicious, eye-catching, and versatile — sounds like this frosting recipe's a keeper.

This strawberry buttercream frosting is so simple you only need six ingredients to make it. These include freeze-dried strawberries, butter, confectioners' sugar, milk, vanilla extract, and salt.

Place the freeze dried strawberries in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until they are finely ground. Set aside.

Add the butter to the bowl of a stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment until creamy.

Mix in the confectioners' sugar until combined.

Add in the ground strawberries, milk, vanilla extract, and salt and beat until frosting is smooth and fluffy. If your frosting is too thick, add more milk a teaspoon at a time until it reaches the desired consistency.

Use the frosting immediately or cover and store in the fridge for up to a week.

This frosting is a natural fit for cakes such as our strawberry lemonade swiss roll and also for our Neapolitan and strawberry lemon cupcakes. You could also use it to frost a chocolate layer cake and add some fresh strawberries in the middle, then decorate the top with chocolate-dipped strawberries to make the perfect Valentine's Day dessert.

Moving beyond cakes, this strawberry frosting would be tasty on brownies or other types of bar cookies. You could also use it to sandwich together cookies such as shortbread or macarons. It could be used as a filling for doughnuts or cream puffs if you're feeling ambitious enough to whip up a batch, but for more of a low-effort dessert, you could set out a bowl of this frosting surrounded by sliced fresh fruits, graham crackers, pretzel sticks, and cookies for dipping. Finally, you could even use it to rim the glass for a sugary dessert cocktail such as a strawberry daiquiri. Dip the glass in the frosting, then decorate it with colored sugar, sprinkles, or extra pulverized strawberry powder.

If you can't get hold of freeze-dried strawberries, you have several options available to you. If you have sufficient time and freezer space, you can make DIY freeze-dried berries by washing, slicing, and then freezing them for several weeks. For them to dry out sufficiently, you won't be sealing them in plastic bags, but will instead keep them on baking sheets exposed to the air in the freezer. An easier way to get that strawberry flavor and color into your frosting would be to use strawberry jam or puree. In both cases, however, you'll need to boil the substitute ingredients down a bit to remove some of the moisture.

Another option is to switch out the strawberries for other freeze-dried fruits. Freeze-dried raspberries would also make for a pretty pink frosting, while blueberries and blackberries would get you something in the blue to purple range. Freeze-dried peaches and mangoes would tint your frosting orange.

You can also make a vegan version of this frosting with two simple ingredient swaps. Just about any plant-based milk would work in place of dairy milk, while the butter could be swapped out for a dairy-free substitute or coconut oil.