Buttercream Frosting By Popular Demand

(Where Popular equals 3 people liking it and one person asking for it; Where Demand equals a polite request.)

The day before Lauren's Birthday party, I was trying to find a new buttercream frosting recipe. I'm not a huge fan of buttercream, and most of it usually gets scraped off my piece of cake to be tossed in the trash. So I wanted to find something better - something I might actually enjoy.

I found lots of websites talking about humidity and butter to shortening ratios, and this all seemed way too complicated for the likes of me. Then I found the Land O' Lakes website, with their very own buttercream recipe. Simple and straightforward. Normal, but something I hadn't tried before. It calls for a little less butter than usual, I think. And for me, that made it better. The flavor was great, the texture was beautiful - just what I'd been looking for.

So, straight from the Land O' Lakes recipe, here's the Best Buttercream Frosting:

3/4 Cup butter, softened

6 Cups powdered sugar

1/8 tsp. salt

1/3 Cup half & half

1 tsp. vanilla

2 Tbsp. light corn syrup

Beat butter in a large bowl until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar and salt, alternately with half & half and vanilla, mixing constantly and scraping the bowl as needed. Stir in corn syrup. Makes 3 cups frosting.

Since I have trouble following a recipe exactly (thanks, mom) I did a few things differently, and I don't really know how they affected the outcome. Other than that I liked the outcome. But I'm sure the changes weren't so drastic as to affect the frosting too much.

I didn't add salt, because I used salted butter. And I didn't have half & half, but I did have half a can of evaporated milk left over from a dinner recipe that night. I used half evaporated milk, and half 1% milk. Weird combination, I'm sure, but it turned out well in the end.

And I didn't have to feel bad about wasting the evaporated milk. I'm all about using what you've got. In most cases, that means using my car to drive myself to the store. But since I'm trying to save money lately by cutting out grocery store trips, evaporated milk was just the ticket.

Try this recipe and tell me what you think. Or, let me know if you have a favorite frosting recipe of your own. I'm always open to a little help in the recipe department.