I've got a pile of projects that need to be photographed so I can write posts about them. But that will have to wait until the sun is up again, so tonight I'm going to share with you an icing recipe I discovered this fall and used for my oldest son's birthday cupcakes.
First I should start by telling you that I don't typically like icing. When I was a teenager I liked to decorate cakes and had my fill of buttercream frosting. Most often when served a slice of cake or a cupcake, I will scrape the icing off and eat the cake. The one exception to this is Italian Meringue Buttercream Frosting like I used on my wedding cupcakes. But this icing is a lot of work and would surely be wasted on a bunch of 4- and 5-year-olds. So I went looking for another icing recipe. What I found surprised me.
This recipe is unusual because you begin by cooking a roux from flour and milk. One of the things I like about the meringue icing is that it uses a sugar syrup made from white sugar instead of confectioners sugar which I don't like the taste of. The recipe I found also uses white sugar. The original recipe I started with can be found at this link, but it is buried in a lot of comments so I have rewritten it for you here.
The texture of this icing is almost like whipped cream (there is a grocery store chain in my area that makes a whipped cream frosting for their cakes and this icing is a lot like that). It is not overly sweet but has the rich taste of butter. I used a boxed mix for the cupcakes (my favorite is Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Classic Yellow Cake and Moist Deluxe Devil's Food Cake) and piped the icing on in a swirl pattern using Pampered Chef's Easy Accent Decorator (like a pastry bag with a trigger). The clown toppers came from Meri Meri. The cupcakes were a big hit at the party, mostly with the grown-ups (one of my friends ate 4!)
This will be my go-to icing recipe from now on. It is easy to make, most of the ingredients are always in my pantry and fridge, and the taste and texture are outstanding. I think next time I make this I will use salted butter as I thought the flavor might be improved a bit with some salt.
Hope you enjoy this. Some day I will dig out the pictures of my amateur cake decorating from my youth and we can all have a really good laugh.