Unwanted Guests

Today I finished a wedding cake for a friend. He and his bride had requested that there be a strawberry buttercream in the center of their white cake with white frosting. Making frosting is actually very simple. The key though is controlling the moisture in the frosting in order to regulate the consistency of your spreadable goodness. If your frosting has too much moisture it will be way too thin and not spread the way you want it too. Not enough moisture and it will shred your cake as you try to spread it. For a standard batch of vanilla butter cream frosting I use one stick of room temperature butter, about a bag of powdered sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla, and enough milk to give you the right texture. I had made two batches of my standard buttercream and decided to simply add some diced unthawed strawberries to the party. Although my vanilla buttercream was perfect pre-addition of strawberries, the addition of the unthawed strawberries nearly ruined the frosting. I had WAY more frosting than I needed and did not have enough powdered sugar to offset the moisture that was in the bowl.



In order to fix the problem I had to pull out a large portion of the frosting and then add the powdered sugar to that mix to thicken. This was far easier to do than to keep adding powdered sugar until I had two gallons of strawberry buttercream that was the right consistency! The new, thicker, batch of frosting was a viable option of the wedding cake and resulted in a delicious dessert. The frosting of the cake was a whole other story that I am not going to get into in this blog. The long and short of this experience is that you need to be aware of unwanted guests that may be hiding in some of your ingredients.



Frosting is something that is FAR better when made in your own home, and it is easy to do. Leave the cans on the shelf and get out the mixer. You can make great frosting that is the perfect consistency for any job you have for it. Even if it is eating it by the spoonful!! During this week of Valentines Day frosting would be a great thing for you to try and make and sweeten up your life.