Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Classic Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Recipe type: Dessert

Author: Savory Sweet Life

Prep time: 2 mins

Cook time: 3 mins

Total time: 5 mins

Serves: 2.5 cups

Classic American Buttercream frosting. This recipe uses powdered sugar, butter, vanilla and milk. This is a great recipe for decorating and piping on cupcakes and cake.

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or 1/2 pound), softened (but not melted!) Ideal texture should be like ice cream.
• 3-4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar, SIFTED
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• up to 4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream

Instructions

1. Beat butter for a few minutes with a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. Add 3 cups of powdered sugar and turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the sugar doesn’t blow everywhere) until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter. Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.

This is the frosting we used for icing the mini cakes. It is by far the best vanilla frosting I've ever tried, and easy to make, too!

Mini Designer Cakes

       

          My brother and I made some great, professional- looking mini cakes using fondant. We were having a tea party and these were the center piece. We whipped up a simple vanilla cupcake recipe, baking the batter in four small glass dishes and one slightly larger one, then iced them with homemade buttercream frosting and coated them with marshmallow fondant for a sleek, fancy look.

 To make the double- teired cake, we used the slightly larger mini cake for the bottom. For the top, we cut off the outside edge of one cake (saving the cut part for later) so that it had strait edges. We also cut off the tops so that they would be flat.

 We iced both layers and layed the fondant down on each. Then we just used some icing to stack them, and added more fondant to decorate.

 This cake was constructed from the edge of the cut cake and  both of the tops from the tier cake layers. we filled it with buttercream.
 For these, we colored fondant by kneading in a few drops of food coloring and then formed it into little balls or cut out dots and strips, attaching each with icing.

 The fondant was easy to make, as long as the marshmallow was melted thoroughly. It took more powdered sugar than the recipe suggested to knead the dough until it was elastic and not sticky. After refrigerating overnight and letting thaw to room temperature, I rolled a piece of it out  flat to 1/4", rolled it onto my rolling pin, and carefully laid it onto the iced cake. Then I shaped it onto and around the cake, cutting off extra.

Our tea party was a success!

Chocolate Velvet Ice Cream

Ice cream is one of the few desserts coveted by most everyone. You can make your own ice cream from scratch, but usually it requires an ice cream freezer, which not everyone has. I found a recipe (printed below) for chocolate ice cream that is easy to make and can be frozen in an ordinary freezer. I made a half recipe in a 9x9 pan and used 2/3c. hershey's chocolate syrup from a bottle. It turned out rich and delicious, without the dreaded ice crystals or super-fast-melting factor. Everyone who tried it said it was just as good as or better than store- bought ice cream.

Chocolatey Velvet Ice Cream

4 c. whipping cream
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 16 oz can chocolate syrup (1 1/2 c.)
2/3 c. coarsely chopped nuts (walnuts, cashews, pecans, or almonds) (optional)

In large mixing bowl combine whipping cream, milk and syrup. Beat with an electric mixer until soft peaks form (tips curl). Fold in nuts (if needed). Transfer mixture to a 13x9x2 pan. Freeze about 8 hours or until firm.

If desired top each serving with whipped cream, sprinkles, and a maraschino cherry. Makes 2 quarts. (16 servings)

Banana Crumb Muffins

These are some great Banana Crumb Muffins that I made recently. The recipe is here. I needed to get rid of some over- ripe bananas, so I tried three different recipes and this was the best one by far. I added 1 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp nutmeg and cinnamon to the batter. The recipe made 12 muffins that were moist and delicious and had a scrumptious topping.

Tomato and Brie Sandwiches

I found the recipe for these sandwiches in a magazine (copied below). They are healthy for you, use fresh ingredients, are easy to make and taste great. They contain one special ingredient: Brie. Brie is a fancy kind of French cheese, usually served with wine, that comes covered with a white mold. This mold is edible but you can always cut it off, which I suggest you do for this recipe. I found it difficult to cut the cheese into thin 1 oz. slices because of its soft texture, but I managed to do it using my food scale. Its good to remember that the quality of the ingredients makes the quality of the product in this recipe.

Ingredients

• 8 (1-ounce) slices 100% whole-grain bread (about 1/4 inch thick)
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, halved
• 2 teaspoons country-style Dijon mustard

• 4 ounces Brie cheese, thinly sliced
• 1 1/3 cups packaged baby arugula and spinach greens (such as Dole)
• 8 (1/4-inch-thick) slices beefsteak tomato
• Cooking spray

Preparation

1. Prepare grill to high heat.

2. Brush one side of each bread slice with oil; rub cut sides of garlic over oil. Spread 1/2 teaspoon mustard on each of 4 bread slices, oil side down. Top each bread slice with 1 ounce cheese, 1/3 cup greens, and 2 tomato slices. Top each with remaining 4 bread slices, oil side up.

3. Place sandwiches on grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 2 minutes on each side or until lightly toasted and cheese melts. Serve with grapes, makes 4 sandwiches.

Blueberry Muffins

These blueberry muffins were lovely! They were delicious, heavy and sweet, almost like coffee cake. They come out best using fresh, ripe blueberries. I doubled the recipe and made 15 good sized muffins. I used a different topping, from another reader's suggestion: 2/3C brown sugar, 1/4C flour, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 2T butter. I will remember to spray the whole pan better next time I make these (and I definitely will!), because they were a bit of a mess to get out.