I wanted to work on some colors and some piping skills, so chose a simple vanilla cupcake recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction cookbook (not seeing it on her site) and then experimented with tweaking the American Buttercream recipe – and I think I landed on something! After using lots of different frosting types and deciding (running and ducking) that I really don’t like the Meringue type frostings (while they are definitely not as sweet, I just can’t get them to not feel greasy to me), I came back to ABC – but have remained troubled by how sweet it is. This time, however, I did my half butter half margarine with a long whip time (5 minutes plus); added in a TB of sour cream, a tsp of vanilla and a tsp of bourbon, another one minute on high, then 3 cups of sugar and a few minutes on high and then about 7 minutes on low (all with the paddle). Very pleased with what came out – a pipeable frosting that doesn’t taste as sweet as normal ABC. This may be my go-to ABC recipe (although I do love cream cheese frosting as well, on my last cake I realized that combining cream cheese frosting with a dense cake makes for a dryer cake, as CCF has to be refrigerated, whereas the ABC does not. Even with airtight containers, I feel the cold temps on the cakes zap just a little moisture out of them).
