Is It Frosting? Or Is It Icing?

Home cooks most generally use the term frosting and icing interchangeably. This can cause confusion.

In order to reduce that confusion I like to make a distinction between the two on my website.

Frosting

Frosting is a fluffy, thick concoction that will hold its shape. You can pipe decorations with it like you see on cakes.

Even though it holds a shape it stays soft and keeps its creamy texture.

There are as many variations of frosting recipes, as there are cookie recipes. One of the most popular is butter cream.

Even within the butter cream category there is no one definitive recipe.

It seems that every country that can get its hands on butter has its opinion of what butter cream frosting should be. Some are made with eggs and butter. Some varieties you have to cook sugar to a softball stage.

There are others that use shortening or a combination of shortening and butter. Still others don’t use butter or shortening at all but another substance such as peanut butter.

A simple butter cream is just butter, sugar, flavoring and a liquid beaten and beaten until it is light and fluffy. It can be flavored with most...