Rich's Bettercreme Copycat Recipe - On The Gas | The Art Science & Culture of Food (2024)

Rich’s Bettercreme is a staple for every cake connoisseur, but there’s always room for improvement. Firstly, the frosting often dries too quickly before there’s time to dye it. This makes it difficult to style cakes with it.

Moreover, there are always some personal preferences like the sweetness and consistency of the frosting, along with the structure and texture. Grocery store frosting can often be a nightmare for a special occasion where you just want wholesome desserts and not shortened whipped cream. These events need butter and wholesome goodness.

Like any good baker will tell you, store-bought frosting is only good for beginners. As you gain experience, it can start to limit the heights of your baking and even inhibit moving forward.

How to Make Rich’s Bettercreme Copycat Recipe

Let’s get started with the ingredients we need for this recipe:

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
• ¼ tablespoon salt
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 ½ cups milk (preferred 1% fat)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 sticks or 24 tablespoons butter, cut into 24 pieces and heated to room temperature (personal preference: salted butter)

Directions:

Now that you’ve got the ingredients, let’s make this concoction a memorable one.

Step 1: In a medium-sized bowl, mix the cornstarch, salt, flour, and sugar. Add the milk and slowly whisk it until the mixture gains a smooth texture. Pour this mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a medium saucepan. Cook this mixture on medium heat, continuously whisking until it becomes too viscous to whisk. It should take about 5–10 minutes. By the end, it should thicken quite a bit. Be wary of the splatter which may follow the bubbles.

Step 2: Transfer this mixture to a clean bowl and let cool to room temperature. The cooling part cannot be skipped. If the butter has even minimal heat, beating the frosting will become extremely difficult and maybe even impossible. I would recommend placing it in the fridge for a few hours and then letting it come back to room temperature.

Step 3: Once the frosting is back to room temperature, add the vanilla extract and beat on low speed until it is well combined, this should take about 30 seconds.

Proceed by adding butter, one piece at a time, and continue beating the frosting until all remnants of butter have been mixed in. Repeat this for all pieces of butter and increase the speed of the mixer to medium or high. Continue beating for 5 minutes. After beating, the frosting should sit for an hour to gain stiffness. This will allow you to pipe the frosting instead of applying it with a spatula.

Quick Tips Before We Proceed to the Ingredients

The frosting does require some additional planning, so we’d advise you to try to allow for some extra time.

Try to schedule some shows or movies into the time that you might spend waiting for the frosting to cool and gain stiffness. Make sure you have at least some experience in piping frosting because this frosting is going to require some skill.

Moreover, this is a complicated process and may require a few tries to master, as you might make a few mistakes.

The Chocolaty Version of Rich’s Bettercreme Copycat Recipe

Maybe you want a cake that has a chocolatey taste, or perhaps it’s for a kid’s birthday, and chocolate is a must. In that case, make the following changes in your recipe:

• Add ¼ cup cocoa powder in the first step, where you’re adding sugar, flour, salt, and cornstarch.
• Once, the frosting has been mixed for 5 minutes and has reached a fluffy consistency, add 3 ounces of milk chocolate, melted and then cooled to room temperature.
• Granted the frosting isn’t as brown as you’d expect from chocolate flavored frosting, but the taste is terrific. You may add food coloring if you want, but that seems unnecessary.

Quick tip: In order to gain full control of the baking experience, make sure that you use only the best ingredients, and if possible, go for organically obtained locally sourced ingredients. It can make a world of difference in the quality and texture of the finished product.

Conclusion

While it does seem to be a tedious task to go through all the extra steps to make Rich’s Bettercreme Copycat Recipe, this small difference can often have a massive impact.

It may seem like just the texture when you’re trying it, but we can guarantee that your guests will undoubtedly notice the difference.

Moreover, why not go the extra mile if you’re already in the kitchen to bake. Grocery shop frosting does seem like an excellent idea initially, but putting in this extra effort gives you more control over the whole process.