Fix Runny Homemade Frosting With One Extra Ingredient

Homemade frosting is, more often than not, better than its store-bought counterpart. However, it can be frustrating if it doesn't turn out just right. One common problem, for example, is the consistency not being thick enough. Luckily, there's an easy — and delicious — way to fix this: Add a scoop of peanut butter.

As anyone who has ever enjoyed peanut butter very well knows, it has a thick consistency — similar to how you want frosting to be. Start by adding just a teaspoon of peanut butter per cup of frosting, folding it in and gauging if you need more. For this application, use homogenized peanut butter and not the natural kind, since the oil often separates.

Of course, the one caveat — or benefit, if you're a peanut butter lover — is that this method will make the frosting taste a bit like peanut butter. This will work well with a traditional buttercream frosting or a chocolate frosting recipe, since chocolate and peanut butter work so well together. Another heavenly combination? Fruit and peanut butter. With this in mind, infusing peanut butter into something like strawberry or raspberry frosting could also be delicious.

What cake flavors to pair with the peanut-butter infused frosting

The only problem with using peanut butter to fix runny frosting? A peanut butter flavored frosting won't work well with every single cake — so, in other words, this trick will only work depending on the type of cake that you're making. That being said, there are several cake flavors that will taste delicious with a peanut butter-infused frosting. 

To start with, a simple chocolate cake would pair beautifully with a chocolate-peanut butter frosting, or a strawberry-peanut butter frosting. Something simple yet delicious like a vanilla sheet cake or a buttery pound cake would also work with either of these peanut butter-infused frostings. So would banana bread!

Then, of course, there's the obvious pairing — if you just so happen to be making a peanut butter chocolate cake, then you're in luck. There's no denying that a peanut butter chocolate cake will pair well with peanut butter frosting. In fact, if this is the case, then you may have already planned on making a peanut butter frosting — so, if it's runny, then you'll simply have an extra nutty (and just as delicious) cake.