Friday Flashback – A Little Piece of Heaven

The kids and I took a road trip to Pennsylvania with my dad, step-mom and step-sister today… we spent 8+ hours in the car with 2 kids 3 and under… it went pretty well, but we were soooo happy when we finally made it to our destination and we could all get out and move. So while I’m spending time with family that I haven’t seen in years, I will leave you with a recipe that posted to OurMommyhood.com in April 2010.

 

I’m not much of a cook… or a baker for that matter. It’s not that I can’t bake, it’s just that it usually takes longer than I have time for and let’s face it… I don’t like having to clean up the mess… and I make a big mess when I bake!

 

There are exceptions to the rule though and there are occasions when I actually like to bake and don’t mind the mess. Birthdays are one of those occasions.

 

It was my husband’s birthday the week after Abby was born. Since she decided to grace us with her presence earlier than expected, I wasn’t able to go out and buy him his gift like I had intended. Yes, I procrastinate… shoot me! Soooo, in addition to buying him a gift online, I busted out a box of Betty Crocker Yellow Cake mix and got a little domestic (yeah I took the easy way… you didn’t expect me to bake one from scratch did you?).

 

There was just one problem though… we had no frosting in the house!! I don’t keep any here for one simple reason… it would never survive long enough to make it on top of a cake. No, it would die a slow and delicious death… spoonful after glorious spoonful! Soooo… I needed to find a way to get frosting without having to go out to the store… and I needed it fast!

 

I know that my husband loves buttercream frosting. I thought to myself “How hard can it be to make that?” and started googling recipes. There were hundreds, no thousands of them. Some called for shortening… actually a lot of them did… I could rule them out, since we had none, besides it’s called BUTTERCREAM not shorteningcream. Finally after looking a few different recipes, I went to the one site I go to time and time again… FoodNetwork.com. I figured they would have something for me and I was not disappointed.

 

I did do some tweaking to the recipe I was following. That particular recipe was for vanilla frosting and Ray wanted chocolate. I wasn’t very sure of myself or my changes and hoped for the best. Once it finished beating, it was the sweet, buttery, chocolaty goodness that I had been searching for and it was so easy to make!!

 

It was so good and easy in fact, that I probably will never buy frosting from the tub again. Go ahead, try it out for yourself, I promise you won’t be disappointed!

 

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

 

• 1 cup softened butter (2 sticks)
• 3 cups confectioners’ (powdered) sugar
• 1/3 cup Hershey’s Cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons whole milk

 

In a standing mixer, attach the whisk attachment and mix together the butter, sugar and cocoa powder. Mix on low speed until it is well blended and then increase the speed to medium and beat for 3 minutes.

 

Add the vanilla and milk (I used whole milk, but you could use any milk or even whipping cream) and beat on medium speed for another 3 minutes. You can vary the amount of milk used to change the spreading consistency.

 

That’s it! Now all you have to do is frost your cake!!

 

I will admit that this frosting is sweet (it does have 3 cups of powdered sugar in it after all!) so if you’re not big on that, this may not be the right frosting for you. It also makes a lot of frosting! It was enough for me to frost the whole cake and have about a store bought tubs worth left over for later use (or in my case to be eaten by the spoonful throughout the following week). It passed the test in my house though and it is one that I will definitely be making again… and again… and again! Enjoy!