Frosting

Well, we have all heard that we can judge a cook by the way he roasts a chicken. But, how do we judge a baker? Well, if you were to ask me, I would say by the crowd-pleasing frosting on their cupcake. You have to agree with me on this one.

When I was a kid, I used to be really confused between frosting and icing. I used to think some chose to refer frosting as icing simply because of sugar’s resemblance to ice pellets. Later I learned that frosting is stiffer, pipes well and consists of cream or butter whereas Icing is a thin and sugary glaze spread that hardens on cooling. Well, whether it’s icing or frosting, who cares! Nobody can ever tamper with our love for these delicious toppings on our favourite dessert.

Folks, here I am to walk you all through various kinds of frostings we all have been gifted with:

Basic Buttercream

As the name suggests, buttercream is a frosting made with butter and icing sugar. It is a super easy frosting for cupcakes. All you need is sugar, milk, vanilla essence and of course butter in the right amount and voila!

Cream Cheese Frosting

The moment I hear the word cheese in anything, I immediately fall in love with that very thing! Same is the case with this particular frosting. Forget about me, we all love red velvet cake, don’t we? And the moment it comes to your mind, cream cheese frosting is sure to follow. The two go hand in hand. It also goes really well with carrot cake (not a big fan though!) All we need to do to make this one is add cream cheese to the buttercream.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

The code to this one is egg whites, icing sugar, whipped meringue and butter. It’s simple, delicious and kids love it!  The egg and sugar are dealt with via a double boiler technique. Once that’s done, glossy meringue and cubes of butter are added to it and there you have it!

French Meringue Buttercream

French Meringue Buttercream works on the same principle as with Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but we just replace the egg whites with egg yolks. Yolks are beaten until they give us a pale colour and sugar syrup is added to it, while continuously beating on low speed, so that they could mix well. Now all one needs to do it blend it all up real nice in a mixer. There’s your own homemade French meringue buttercream.

Ganache

Who doesn’t love ganache frosting?! It’s my second favourite and is seriously one of a kind.  All you need to do is heat heavy cream in the microwave until it’s hot (not boiling). Add dark chocolate to it and this is why I love this one so much. I choose to chop my own chocolate rather than Choco chips because.. um.. it’s chocolate. 😀 Allow all of this to stand for a few minutes and then transfer it to a fridge until it is set completely. Do not forget to thank me after that!

Whipped Cream

And last but definitely not least comes my favourite of them all. It is yum and easy and goes with everything. When I say everything, I literally mean everything. What’s not to love about this one?! There’s sugar, whipping cream and vanilla essence. The mere thought of it makes me hungry. My eternal toast to whipped cream would be “Hey true love, even when I am 80 and sans teeth, you will still be my absolute favourite.”

So, there you all go. They were few of my favourite frostings in the world. For all the sweet tooths out there, do not forget that a cupcake a day, keeps the sweet tooth away (Copied, but so dammity true :P)