My Favourite Frosting Recipes

After my last post Tammy from Tammy's Recipes left a comment asking for my favourite frosting recipe.

I love all kinds of frosting but today I'm only going to share two recipes: the icing I like best to work with and the one I like best to eat.

The one I like to work with best is vanilla buttercream frosting - or one of its many variations. Most of the piped frostings I prepare are based on this recipe. For chocolate I add a little cocoa and a little extra milk. If I want to change the flavour to, say, orange, I swap the milk for orange juice and maybe add a few drops red and yellow colouring to make orange. Or for peppermint add a few drops peppermint essence and some green colouring.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

125 g butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract (not synthetic vanilla)

1 1/2 C icing/confectioner's sugar

2 tbsp milk

Beat butter and extract with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in half sugar, then milk, then remaining sugar. Spread or pipe on cakes.

Note: If you intend to pipe the icing onto the cakes (as I have done) you will need to double this quantity.

However, the icing I like best to eat is cream cheese frosting. This is so yummy I want to go and make some now - except that it's 10.30 at night and there's no cream cheese in the house. It's probably better for my waistline that way!

Cream Cheese Frosting

30 g (1 oz) butter, softened

60 g (2 oz) packaged cream cheese, softened

1 tspn lemon juice

1 1/2 C icing (confectioner's) sugar

Beat butter, cream cheese and juice in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy; gradually beat in sifted sugar.