To be eating a bowl of chocolate butter icing!?

[Samoyedy]

I really fancied some butter icing so I made some, had some Coco powder too so threw that in. Now I'm sitting here eating it out of the bowl and I can almost feel my arteries clogging up. I'm just eating spoonfuls of butter FFS! Does anyone else do this!? It must be SO bad for you

[MiscellaneousAssortment]

"Disgusting, it's just taking random kitchen items and eating them for the sake of eating."

Lordy, I know eating buttercream alone is rather polarising, but it's not the morally suspect binging on unrelated and random raw foods that people keep saying.

Although maybe you have something there, as although early prototypes of icing exist from the 1600s onwards, buttercream is a somewhat newer invention, coming into its own in the 1950s as rationing ended and people celebrated the influx of foods and ingredients to the high street, like butter, and icing sugar itself.

So with a history of merely 65 years I can see how it's still a newfangled and niche oddity :)

But with types of buttercream existing across different countries and local cuisines (such as Italy, France, Switzerland and the U.S.), it's not just an obscure Brit invention.

And buttercream icing is one of the most used icings in baking, especially on cupcakes, which are defined by the presence of the butter cream topping heaped on top. (And as cupcake sales are still measured in $billions in the U.S., and £millions in the UK, kinda big and mainstream!)

Anyway, that's a super long way of saying, buttercream is a type of icing!

[MiscellaneousAssortment]

And a final treatise in defence of buttercream .

As my excuse I'm in hospital and can't sleep, I'm not actually obsessive about it ordinarily!

Homemade buttercream and cake decorations are the opposite of a ward, so they're my own personal anecdote from the boredom, beeping, snoring and my new role as pincushion. You may also find me lurking on threads about kittens for the same purpose. Ahem, I digress...

Only rivaled by fondant icing, the great buttercream VS fondant debate is a constant on baking and cooking blogs.

To my great excitement, buttercream for large celebration cakes is making a come back - yay!

Its about the ability to create soft yet striking finishes on larger cakes that also tastes good to most palates, so it's now challenging fondant.

Watercolor style designs are particularly showstopping - to my eyes anyway! buttercream creates such a delicate and more informal finish which celebrates it's imperfection rather than fondant which is more about getting a perfect finish.

Drum roll... fancy a Monet water lily inspired buttercream cake anyone? I love it, really want to try it but mine would no doubt be more err, more an 'original creation' than a recognizable one!

And so ends my defence of the humble buttercream

[MardleBum]

I do this but with cream.

When i am low carbing and I have a craving for something sweet I break a couple of squares of 80% cocoa solids dark chocolate into a mug, pour half a mug full of double cream over it and put it in the microwave until it's all warm and melted together then add some splenda to sweeten and just eat it with a spoon like hot chocolate sauce.

Sometimes I put butter in it as well then leave it in the fridge to set and voila - a mug of pure fat chocolate ganache.

[Saracen]

Mmmmm buttercream icing. And so easy!

This is the one big challenge I have when making vegan cakes. There are lots of lovely vegan cake recipes - I don't know why I'd bother making NONvegan cakes anymore! - but what do you stick on the top? It seems almost a waste NOT to use buttercream icing!

[Samoyedy]

Wow sorry, I didn't mean to post and run...I always post a thread and then don't have time to come back! Me and DS went on a bike ride, had to do something to balance out eating the bowl of butter icing I'm so glad that others do this too, I definitely feel less unreasonable now! I was thinking as I was eating it that I would NEVER EVER allow DS to eat something like that as it just seems so bad for you and yet there I was happily scoffing it myself!! I will try not to do it again for a while now

[TakeItFromMe]

YADNBU
When I'm having a bad day I make myself up a batch of buttercream and spoon it into my mouth. I get that it's gross and akin to just eating butter but it's just so good.

As a child I didn't really eat sweets but I would raid the cupboard for icing sugar and make up buttercream if I had a sugar craving. I would also steal glace cherries, cubes of jelly, and spoonfuls of golden syrup.

The baking aisle rocks! (I still don't eat sweets, and I've given up the jelly cube habit).

[sleeponeday]

I don't like the icing sugar grittiness of American buttercream. But that's okay, because there's Italian, too. You whip up egg whites in a mixer, then beat boiling sugar syrup till it goes like lemon meringue pie topping, then you beat in butter. It turns into something exactly like normal buttercream in taste, but with a silky smooth mouthfeel. SO good - and more stable to add fruit etc to without going gloopy.

[liquidrevolution]

The best chocolate buttercream has melted chocolate in - fact

YANBU. Although I generally cook cakes to put the buttercream on actually I lop the top of the cakes off (to level) and smother the top in buttercream, leaving a 'cake' for DH

[georgiatraher]

You should just sprinkle icing sugar over Philadelphia and have that. It's much more delicious.

[MarkRuffaloCrumble]

Saracen, you can use to make Trex to make white buttercream and it's made from vegetable fat so dairy free. I used it to make a rainbow cake once as I wanted a pure white icing - I worried that it wouldn't taste as good as buttercream, but I put a bit of salt in it as well as tons of icing sugar and it was actually really nice.

[bubblegurl252]

I eat cookie dough frosting probably a bit more often than I should lol but it's soooooooo tasty!!