The One & Only: Frosting

Just like my sugar cookie recipe I only use one frosting recipe. I just morphed it a little depending on what I need. But to start - here's the basic frosting for the sugar cookies.

The One & Only Frosting Recipe
Ingredients:

• 2 lb bag of powdered sugar
• 10 tbsp. Meringue Powder (I find the Wilton Brand available at speciality stores or your local Michael's is good)
• 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp. milk (any you have on hand)
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tbsp. butter (salted sweet cream) melted

Supplies:

• Enough mixing bowls (or cereal bowls) to mix the frosting and color together in. I use one for each color I need
• Food coloring - I strongly suggest purchasing the gel kind (not from your grocery store). The brand I use is AmeriColor. It doesn’t change the flavor of your frosting and mixes the best and most brilliant colors.  Click here to see their website - and find places that carry it in your town!
• Spatulas and spoons to mix colors
• Ketchup bottles like you see at a old-fashioned diner. Like this:

• Piping tips #1, #2, #3, #4 and piping bags (disposable are the kind I prefer and ones that are clear. Don’t forget the couplers to connect the tip to the bag. I own 8 #3 piping tips because that way I don’t have to change and clean one out each time I need to do a different color.
• Saran Wrap
• Squirt bottle filled with water

Directions:

1. Place 10 tbsp. meringue powder into mixing bowl of mixer. Add in 1 cup water. Beat on high until stiff, normally around 8 minutes. Stop when peaks can stand on their own.

2. Add in powdered sugar, melted butter, vanilla, lemon juice, and milk and mix until everything is combined.

3. Upon mixing everything together you'll notice the frosting is rather stiff. Here's where I make adaptations to fit what I need:


If I need stiff frosting for outlining:

• I remove the amount of frosting I need from the main mixing bowl and place it into a separate smaller mixing bowl (or cereal bowl).
• Select the color you want to make, add in the food coloring and mix together with spoon, spatula or whatever your fancy. I normally add in a large amount of frosting, because I’d rather just color my frosting once, no matter if I need a stiff red for outlining, and a more runnier one to fill in my outlines. You’ll see why in a minute.
• Lay out some saran wrap on the counter, place a blob of the stiff frosting in the middle of the saran wrap.
• Wrap up the frosting like you would a burrito, so it’s tight and forms a log shape.
• Put the coupler in a piping bag, and feed one end of your burrito frosting roll down into the piping bag so the end comes through the bottom (where the frosting will come out when you have a piping tip in place). Take scissors and cut off the excess saran wrap sitting out of the end of the piping bag.
• Place selected piping tip onto end of piping bag filled with frosting burrito roll and secure with coupler.
• Outline to your heart’s content.

If I need frosting to fill – called Flow Icing:

• When making your stiff icing, you’ll only put half of it or part of it (depending on the amount of outlining in that color) onto the saran wrap. The rest you’ll leave colored in the bowl.
• Here you’ll spray about 10 – 12 squirts of water into the bowl. Stir it into the colored frosting. Flow icing should coat the back of a spoon but run off easily. When it drips back into the bowl the drips should disappear semi-slowly into frosting. If it doesn’t do that – and appears stiff – squirt a few sprays into the frosting and mix. Just be careful…you can’t take away water…so squirt carefully.
• After the flow frosting is at the correct consistency put it into a ketchup bottle and frost away.

And that’s it! ENJOY!