And yes, this truly is the creamiest peanut butter frosting you’ll ever taste.
This peanut butter frosting delivers BIG flavor. The base of the recipe is just a little bit of butter and a massive amount of peanut butter. Heavy cream adds to its creamy texture. And unlike most frostings, it’s not loaded with confectioners’ sugar. There’s only 1 cup, so don’t expect a cloyingly sweet frosting. All you taste is peanut butter. Pure peanut butter with a creamier, silkier texture.
What Peanut Butter is Best for Frosting?
For the best texture, use processed creamy peanut butter such as Jif or Skippy, the same kind I recommend for peanut butter blossoms and peanut butter eggs. Natural-style peanut butter is wonderful for eating and cooking, but I do not recommend it for this recipe as the oily consistency will cause this frosting to separate and curdle. You can, however, use natural peanut butter in my peanut butter cookies if you have a jar that needs using!
Can you Pipe This Frosting?
Despite the creamy texture, this peanut butter frosting pipes beautifully onto cakes and cupcakes. It won’t keep any super intricate piped designs, but a simple swirl from the Wilton 1M piping tip stays intact!
You’ll LOVE this stuff and find any excuse to whip it up. If you need inspiration, don’t miss this chocolate peanut butter cake or these chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting.
Need some pairing inspiration? Try this peanut butter frosting with:
- Chocolate cupcakes
- Homemade brownies
- Banana cupcakes (yum!!)
- Cookies and cream cupcakes
- Chocolate cake
Creamy Peanut Butter Frosting
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 2.5 cups
- Category: Frosting
- Method: No Bake
- Cuisine: American
Description
This is the creamiest peanut butter frosting and tastes unbelievable on chocolate cupcakes, chocolate cake, or fudge brownies!
Ingredients
- 5 Tablespoons (71g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup (250g) creamy peanut butter*
- 1 cup (120g) confectioners’ sugar
- 1/3 cup (80ml) heavy cream, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- With a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the peanut butter, confectioners’ sugar, heavy cream, vanilla extract, and salt with the mixer running on low. Increase to high speed and beat for 3 full minutes. Add up to 1/4 cup more confectioners’ sugar if frosting is too thin or another Tablespoon of cream if frosting is too thick.
- Cover tightly and store for up to 1 week in the refrigerator.
Notes
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand)
- Peanut Butter: Use a commercial brand peanut butter such Skippy or Jif. Avoid natural, oily, or homemade peanut butters as the consistency will cause this frosting to separate and curdle.
- Quantity: This recipe is enough to frost 12-16 cupcakes, one 9-inch square or round cake, or one 9×13-inch quarter sheet cake with a thin layer of frosting. Follow the peanut butter frosting recipe from this chocolate sheet cake for any cake larger than that. Just as rich and creamy!
I used this recipe to make peanut butter cake balls for Halloween 2020 yesterday! It was a fun activity for the kids to make eyeballs ot add sprinkles to them since we are social distancing this year! This is THE BEST peanut butter frosting I have ever tasted!! I will be baking a chocolate cake next week and this will be my go to peanut butter frosting recipe from now on!!
Thank you!!
Hi! I want to make a snickers inspired cake for my birthday in two weeks and was comparing this recipe with you chocolate peanut butter frosting. This one has a lot less butter and a lot more peanut butter than the other one, which I love, do you know if I could I add cocoa powder or melted chocolate to this one and get similar results? Thank you!
Hi Luiza, I would replace 1/2 of the confectioners’ sugar with unsweetened cocoa powder. Taste, then add more confectioners’ sugar and/or cocoa powder if desired.
Made this for the second time today – it’s the best peanut butter frosting hands down – perfect texture, nutty buttery flavor and it spreads like silk. I dialed down the PB by 20 grams because I didn’t want it overwhelmingly
nutty.
Why doesn’t homemade peanut butter work here? PB is super expensive where I live so I always make my own – just curious if there’s something I can do to my homemade to make it work in this recipe. Also, can I use milk or buttermilk instead of cream? (Again this is a cost issue 🙁 )
Hi Jess! An oily or thin natural peanut butter won’t blend well with the butter. If the natural peanut butter you use is on the thicker side and isn’t too oily, it should be ok! You can use milk instead of cream. Same amount.
I just made this frosting for the first time to decorate cupcakes with, I might have to eat it all with a spoon before I make the cupcakes tomorrow!!!
It’s DIVINE!!
Light and airy but still creamy, not overly sweet with pure peanut butter decadence!!
Thank you!!! ❤️
So glad I chose this recipe!
I must say this is theeee best peanut butter frosting and I only made a smaller portion, (just to top off brownies).. I did used every ingredient. It’s perfectly yummy
Hey sally! I want to use to recipe to decorate a 3 layer cake for my husbands birthday, would I need to double it to make enough for a 3 layer cake?! Thank you.
Hi Sarah, See the recipe notes for the link to the frosting for a larger cake. Enjoy!
Such an amazing recipe!! Everyone loves it and always wants more!
Quick question. I have been asked to make this frosting for cupcakes for a girl baby shower. Is this buttercream easy to add coloring too? Thanks!
Hi Danielle, This frosting is naturally brown (the color of peanut butter) so it won’t color as well as a vanilla buttercream. You can always top it with color sprinkles!
Help Sally! I used the recipe for the larger quantity of PB frosting for a chocolate sheet cake. The taste was delicious but the frosting was not smooth and looked curdled. Butter was soft but maybe cream was too cold?
Hi Jocelyn! Thank you so much for trying this frosting recipe. I wonder if the butter wasn’t completely smooth? Do they look like chunks of butter? That’s happened to me before if the butter wasn’t smooth before adding the peanut butter. It could also have been cold heavy cream. Use room temperature if you can next time.
Also, the butter was definitely softer than room temp..it was really soft! The butter and peanut butter really were well creamed, with no chunks of butter, but the whole thing looked curdled..IDK
?
Very odd. Well, it must have been the heavy cream– see if you can bring it to room temperature next time!
I’m making this frosting right now (2nd batch as the 1st batch curdled – turns out my “Natural” Jif was the culprit for my case) Using regular peanut butter is key…Good luck!
How hearty/thick is this frosting? I am doing a layer cake and wondering if this will be too soft? This looks like the best frosting as a ton other PB frostings out there always look broken so I want to give it a try. All your other recipes I have tried turned out great!
Maybe no heavy cream and sub in more butter to stabilize?
Hi Mary, You can see the photo of the cupcake above that this frosting is thick enough to pipe. Adding more butter will actual make it softer so I recommend sticking to the recipe. You can add less heavy cream, or increase the sugar, if you know you want your frosting extra thick.
I made the Peanut Butter Icing to use on the Banana Cake and it was amazing!
This frosting is amazing.
Unfortunately I clicked on the link to make for a bigger cake, assuming the ratios were the same. Nope. The other recipe was not good and tasted like sugar with a hint of pb and was incredibly hard to pipe compared to this version!
This is really good on vanilla cupcakes!
This frosting is perfect! Smooth, creamy, not too sweet… thank you for sharing!
I didn’t have any heavy whipping cream on hand, so I used half-and-half, and the frosting still came out delicious! Today’s my husband’s birthday, so I used it to frost some rich chocolate cupcakes. The combination is out of this world. Thanks for the great recipe!
I love this frosting. It’s really yummy.
I made the peanut butter frosting, I love peanut butter and I love frosting! I love it. My new go to frosting.
I’m not going to have enough to frost my cake if I don’t stop eating it by the spoonful.
Can I substitute the heavy cream with mayonnaise? Or if not, can I just omit it?
We are staying in as well and didn’t have any cream so I subbed evaporated milk and it worked GREAT. Yum! Happy little chocolate cupcakes!
Excellent recipe! Didn’t change a thing and it was perfect.
Thank you
I’ve tried a bunch of frosting recipes but this is fabulous. I had a cake mix in the pantry while we are ‘sheltering in place’ and this is a perfect frosting. SO yummy!
I just made this recipe and tweaked it the tiniest bit. I did 3/4 swerve Confectioners and 1/4 powdered sugar. I am a diabetic and live the pillsbury sugar free cake mix. There is only 29g of sugar in the whole cake! Thank you for this recipe, it’s very delicious!!!
Does this “crust” like American buttercream? I have a nephew that loves that quality in frosting and he wants pb frosting for his birthday cake.
PS) I made your nutella frosting for the last family birthday and people went nuts for it! I’ve already had a request to make it for next birthday. Thanks!
Hi Amy! A little bit, but not nearly as much as regular buttercream.
Over the weekend, I was comparing this frosting recipe to the one Ina Garden makes. They are the exact same recipe except for a minor difference in vanilla extract amount. Her recipe makes enough for an 8×8 cake. The notes here say for a 9×13 (isnt that 24 cupcakes?). Just wanted to let people know they may be short frosting, unless they are doing a very thin layer. It’s a great recipe (from both of you), just wanted to give a heads up so there’s enough frosting for future baking 🙂
Thanks Ashley! A thin layer of frosting for the 9×13 inch cake for sure– good note. I added that!
Loved it …. I substituted heavy cream for sour cream and it gave it almost peanutbutter cheese cake taste was delish.
This baking blog is by far one of my favourites. When I googled a recipe for peanut butter frosting and your blog came up I didnt think twice about using your recipe. I really appreciate the minimal amount of sugar in the frosting as well. Thank you.
I used chunky peanut butter and drizzle chocolate on top. Very yummy!
Could you add a small amount of cocoa powder to make it chocolate peanut butter? Would you need more powdered sugar to offset the unsweetened cocoa and if so, then more cream?
Yes, absolutely! I would replace 1/2 of the confectioners’ sugar with unsweetened cocoa powder. Taste, then add more confectioners’ sugar and/or cocoa powder if desired. I also have a chocolate peanut butter frosting recipe (found on my peanut butter cupcakes) where the chocolate flavor is more pronounced (a bit stronger than the PB flavor).
Hi I want to make the Big Top cupcake cake . Chocolate shell but use the frosting for 1M swirls. Would this be enough frosting or do I need to double it?
GAME CHANGER!!!