Buttercream Icing

Classic icing for butterfly cakes, this basic recipe can be flavoured to compliment your cakes, it can be spread over the cake or piped onto the cakes.  If you wish to use the buttercream icing plain without flavouring then it’s best to use butter at room temperature to achieve the best flavour, it’s harder to mix but tastes a lot nice than using margarine.  If you are flavouring the icing then soft margarine is fine.

300g icing sugar – sieved

100g softened butter or margarine

1-2 tablespoons milk

Mix all the ingredients together with a wooden spoon or in a mixer until smooth.

Flavourings:

Chocolate – add 60g melted dark chocolate and 2 tablespoons good quality cocoa powder, sieved (don’t be tempted to use milk chocolate it’s too sweet and sickly when added to the icing sugar and butter.  My son calls this ‘chocolate poo icing’ if it’s piped onto cakes – guess why?

 
Mint Chocolate – as for chocolate but add in 1/2 a teaspoon of pepperrmint essence

Chili Chocolate – add a deseeded, chopped FRESH red chili – do not use powdered or dried chili it doesn’t work, make sure that you remove all the seeds and the pith of the chilli and chop it very finely, the larger the chili the less heat it contains and the seeds and pith contain most of the heat.  For this icing you want the flavour and a little heat, you don’t want the icing to blow your socks off!

Lemon, orange or lime – add the juice and finely grated rind of one of whichever fruit you wish to use, leave out the milk.  If it’s too runny add a little more icing sugar, if too thick add a little more juice.

Coffee – add 1 teaspoon of instant coffee mixed with a little warm milk until it’s dissolved.

Raspberry, strawberry or  blackcurrant - puree handful of the fruit in a mini food processor or hand blender, sieve and add the juice to the icing, leaving out the  milk.  This will also turn the icing pink or in the case of blackcurrant a shade of mauve.

Check out our website http://www.splatcooking.net for cool muffin and fairy cake cases and sprinkles to go with this icing.