The Best Way To Thicken Up Store-Bought Frosting So It's Ready To Pipe

Store-bought frosting is a boon to modern bakers — not only is it faster and more convenient than making buttercream from scratch, but store-bought frosting is also incredibly versatile. It's delicious on cakes, of course, but it can also be turned into pastry glaze or even silky fudge with just a few extra ingredients. However, store-bought frosting just doesn't pipe as well as the homemade stuff, as it's notoriously soft and a touch gloppy. These factors make it easier to spread, but when you're going for beautiful buttercream flowers, store-bought frosting isn't it.

Luckily, there's a fairly easy way to make store-bought frosting easier to pipe — all you have to do is add a little bit of powdered sugar. Since the issue is that the canned stuff is too soft, powdered sugar helps stiffen things up, allowing the frosting to flow through piping tips more easily and helping ensure the resulting decorations hold their shape. The powdered sugar also melts a touch when stirred into the frosting, so the longer the piped decorations sit in the open air, the stiffer and more stable they become. 

Of course, the only issue with this fix is that it makes the frosting sweeter, and many store-bought frostings are already on the borderline between perfectly balanced and too sugary. If this happens to you, it's fairly easy to fix overly sweet store-bought frosting with a small dollop of sour cream or even a Salt Bae-style sprinkle of salt. 

Like any other seemingly simple baking hack, there are nuances to making it work the way it's supposed to. The biggest faux pas you can make when stabilizing your frosting this way is adding too much powdered sugar. This mistake quickly pushes the frosting past perfectly pipable and into stiff and clumpy territory, which defeats the purpose of stabilizing it. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to course correct if this happens by adding a splash of milk or even a dollop or two of whipped cream. Milk creates a smooth, creamy frosting, while whipped cream makes it lighter and airy, so which one you use depends on your desired consistency. Of course, this will also increase frosting's volume, but you can easily freeze any extra in an airtight container.

The second potential snafu is neglecting to sift the powdered sugar. Its super-fine texture plus its tendency to melt the second it comes in contact with moisture results in a tendency to clump. Sifting breaks up clumps that could ruin your pipework and aerates the powdered sugar a bit, helping to ensure it mixes evenly into the frosting without a ton of elbow grease. Typically, you only need about three or four tablespoons of powdered sugar to stabilize a standard-size 16-ounce can of store-bought frosting (about 1.5 cups, total). If the consistency is still too loose, sift in about a teaspoon or two of additional powdered sugar at a time until it's stable.