I hate working with chocolate buttercream. I can never seem to get it to a spreadable consistency. It's always so thick and heavy. Even when I add extra milk it just doesn't seem to thin down. I use a basic buttercream recipe and add cocoa powder. I must be doing something wrong!!! Does anyone have a recipe that tastes good and is spreadable/pipe-able?
I use indydebi's recipe then i add the dark chocolate syrup from hersheys. I also add a little dark coca powder in the milk.. Everybody loves it.
I add melted chocolate to my bc. I use Indydebi's recipe and add 6 ounces of melted unsweetened chocolate. (cool but still pourable) I just add a little bit of milk at a time until it "looks right".
Adding cocoa powder even melted tends to dry out the icing some, what about adding a touch more fat to the recipe too?
Thank you for all of the responses! I am going to try the melted chocolate with a touch more Crisco to see if that helps. I'll see how that works.
I use half and half in my icing recipe (Indydebi's) and I find that just the added fat in the half and half is enough to make my icing smooth. Just thought I'd share that with you because you don't have to add more "shortening" to get more fat. Sometimes adding more crisco will give the icing a greasy feel in your mouth is why I prefer to get the fat from the cream. Just a suggestion 
I am the complete opposite. I love working with chocolate buttercream and despise the plain stuff. I guess it's because chocolate is so much more forgiving if you happen to get a crumb or two.
I use cocoa powder in mine with evaporated milk to thin it down.
Just think of it as regular vanilla buttercream. If it's too thick, would you add more cocoa or some cornstarch to it? No, you would add liquid. So if you're making chocolate bc and you add more dry ingredient to it (the cocoa powder) it's only going to get thicker. Last time I made chocolate bc I made the buttercream dream recipe, because it uses half butter half shortening yum!, when I was creaming the two I melted 3-4 squares of Baker's unsweetened chocolate. Added that then started adding the sugar.
I've had people mistake my chocolate buttercream for mousse because of the consistency.
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