Grocery Store Frosting

My favorite person to sit next to at a birthday party is the person that doesn’t like cake frosting. Ideally, they aren’t a complete stranger, and offer to give me the frosting they don’t want to eat, but the point is, I love frosting. I also love cake. In fact, birthday cake makes my top five favorite foods.

In my family, we fought over who got the flower. You know, the icing flowers that are piled on to the four corners of the cake, to make it “classy”. For some reason I always thought that the pink, purple or blue frosting that had been piped into the shape of a rose tasted the best.

Buttercream is one of the simplest frostings to make. It can be as simple as two ingredients, butter and powdered sugar.  Even with just three ingredients, either vanilla or powdered cocoa, you can have a distinctively vanilla or chocolate buttercream.  Although I cannot deny that buttercream is absolutely delicious, what I really crave in a frosting is something lighter and fluffier; that sickeningly sweet, neon colored stuff that you can (or so I thought) only find at a grocery store bakery.

For years, whenever my birthday came around, I would request a store-bought cake. Not one of those $400-$500 Cake Boss style ones, covered in fondant and 18kt gold petals, but one of those  $9.99 ones you pick up off a shelf in the grocery store and pass back to the baker to pipe a name onto.  A Baltimore grocer, Graul’s, has my favorite.

Side note: Have you ever watched one of those cake shows and been completely disgusted by how much the cakes/fondant get handled? I’m sure they practice excellent food safety, seeing as they are on camera, but it still skeeves me out.

It finally occurred to me that I could probably make what I’ve always referred to as “grocery store frosting” at home.  Naturally I turned to the interwebs for help and in my first Google search for “grocery store frosting” I found my recipe.   The best part of finding the recipe was reading the reviews, and discovering there are other grocery store frosting enthusiasts out there. Most people look at me disgusted when I describe my passion for grocery store frosting, but the reviews confirmed I am not alone. 

 RAYvens cupcake w/ grocery store frosting

This recipe makes a lot of frosting, but it also keeps well, unrefrigerated even, in an airtight container. I lucked out recently and had three occasions to make cupcakes for within a week of one another, the Superbowl, a friend’s birthday, and my roommate’s birthday, so I used it for all three and none went to waste.  I always add a lot of vanilla, which makes it extra tasty.

Grocery Store Frosting

1 cup shorting

½ cup butter

1 ½ tbs vanilla (I add more like 2-3 tbs)

2 lbs confectioner’s sugar

1/8 tsp salt

4 tbs water (possibly a few extra)

In stand mixer, combine shortening, butter, vanilla, and water.  Add the sugar and salt and beat until well mixed. At this point, you may also need to add a couple extra tbs of water (make sure to add a little at a time, as you can always add more, but can’t take away). Turn mixer to highest speed and beat for 10-15 minutes.