food sectionfood section
Cake without frosting is like mashed potatoes without gravy -- you could eat either of them alone, but why would you want to? The creamy layer of sugary frosting adds the literal "icing on the cake" that finishes off your dessert and enhances the sweet experience. To ensure that you don't mar the cake while spreading cold frosting, it's easy to warm it first.
Cold frosting is difficult to spread over cake and may even tear the cake, ruining your decorating efforts. Store-bought frosting must be refrigerated after it has been opened and homemade frosting will go rancid or melt if left at room temperature, so the problem of cold frosting is a difficult one to avoid. Fortunately, warming frosting is a simple process that does not require any special equipment or skills.
Delicious and easy-to-make frosting for sugar cookies requires just a few ingredients usually found in the standard pantry. Some more common recipes offer lots of variety by adding food coloring, flavoring oils or both. You can make an easy frosting for sugar cookies any time you want to dress up this old favorite.
Buttercream is a light and fluffy frosting that can be used between the tiers of layer cakes and to top cakes and cupcakes. Many bakeries, including New York City's famous Magnolia Bakery, choose buttercream frosting for their cupcakes. There are different types of buttercream frostings. This recipe uses a butter base and is quick, simple and sweet. In 10 minutes, it will make about three cups of frosting. The basic recipe is for a vanilla-flavored frosting, but the easy steps can yield a variety of flavors when you use other ingredients.
Although cakes have existed in rudimentary forms since the time of the ancient Egyptians, frosting first appeared on the scene in the mid-17th Century. According to the Food Timeline, the first cake frosting (or icing) was a hard and gloss-like confection that was comprised of boiled egg whites and sugar. Today, a wide variety of cake frosting recipes exist. These frosting varieties cover a broad range of tastes and textures. It is easy to whip up a homemade vanilla frosting in just a few minutes, using staple ingredients that can be found in virtually every kitchen.
